Looking through my old film books from the 70s, it never fails to amaze me how many of those gnarly, mysterioso Spanish horror films I’ve seen in the intervening years.  I can’t believe I actually have in my possession flawless DVD transfers of such you’ve-never-seen titles as Eloy de la Iglesia’s LA SEMANA DEL ASESINO (aka CANNIBAL MAN, aka THE APARTMENT ON THE 13TH FLOOR, 1972), Vicente Aranda’s LA NOVIA ENSANGRENTADA (aka THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE, 1972), Carlos Aured’s LOS OJOS AZULES DE LA MUÑECA ROTA (aka BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL, aka HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN, 1973) and EL ESPANTO SURGE DE LA TUMBA (aka HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB, 1973),  José Larraz’s VAMPYRES (1974), Jorge Grau’s NO PROFANAR EL SUEÑO DE LOS MUERTOS (aka THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE, aka BREAKFAST AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE, aka LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE, aka DON’T OPEN THE WINDOW, 1974) and Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s ¿QUIÉN PUEDE MATAR A UN NIÑO? (aka ISLAND OF THE DAMNED, aka WHO CAN KILL A CHILD, 1976), as well as many of the titles in Paul Naschy’s Spanish Wolfman series (e.g. WEREWOLF’S SHADOW, aka WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN and THE NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF, aka THE CRAVING) and all of Amando de Osorio’s “Blind Dead” films (TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD, RETURN OF THE BLIND DEAD, HORROR OF THE ZOMBIES and NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS).  A classic title from these years is León Klimovsky’s nasty-ass 1976 horror/sci-fi hybrid ÚLTIMO DESEO (“Ultimate desire”), which is known alternatively as PLANETA CIEGA (“Blind Planet”) and was released in this country, recut and retitled THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK.  I’ll bet you haven’t seen it.

ÚLTIMO DESEO is a real product of its times.  It’s got enough exploitable elements to sell it to moviegoers in any number of ways: as a sexy Sadean romp (see Spanish poster at left), as a sci-fi think piece, as nuclear disarmament agitprop or simply as a balls-out, board-up-the-windows horror film.  The project originated with a story by writer Gabriel Moreno Burgos, for whom we have to thank for the delightfully titled LA ORGÍA NOCTURNA DE LOS VAMPIROS (aka THE VAMPIRES’ NIGHT ORGY, aka GRAVE DESIRES, 1974).  The finished script also bears the stamp of writer-directors Vicente Aranda and Joaquim Jordà but as you watch this thing, you’ll swear all the filmmakers did was shuffle pages from Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit with those from George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968).  Here’s the 411:  in some unnamed European backwater (actually, the countryside surrounding Madrid), a group of affluent men gather for a regularly scheduled bacchanal in the basement of a sumptuously appointed villa.  (Switch out bacchanal for orgy and villa for bordello and you’ll have Act One in the palm of your hand).  With the men dressed in shorty Roger Moore robes and rubber masks and the ladies draped in transparent gowns like Greek statuary, the “The Grand Ceremony of Pure Pleasure” proceeds into the night… until a tremor upsets the wine goblets and alerts the revelers to the likelihood that a thermonuclear war is in progress.  It all plays a bit like DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1962) meets THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972).  When the gang ventures into the local village for supplies to sit out the imminent radiation cloud, they find that a.) they’ve been spared a blight of sightlessness that has lowered upon the region (and perhaps the world) and b.) are now considered dramatis personae non grata by the provincials, who a.) have not been spared the blight of sightlessness and b.) now pursue them (with agonizing slowness but unfailing precision) back to the villa in the form of an unstoppable and merciless army.

American distribution rights for ÚLTIMO DESEO were bought by Sean Cunningham, prior to his branding of the calendar date FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980).  Lovers of European exploitation films often bemoan the way that films from the Continent are sold in the American market: cut, sometimes re-edited, and usually dubbed with atrocious carelessness, with the cast names Anglicized so Yankee hayseeds will think it’s a domestic release.  Even though THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK is guilty of nearly all of the charges leveled against it, I’m here to tell you that Cunningham’s American recut of ÚLTIMO DESEO not only stands up on its own merits but is actually better than the original.  Mind you, it helps thatÚLTIMO DESEO is a kick ass movie to begin with.  Who knows what its actual inspirations were, but the narrative evokes a rich fund of siege scenarios, from Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (1962) and Sidney Salkow’s THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964) to George Romero’s THE CRAZIES (1973) and John Carpenter’s ATTACK ON PRECINCT 13 (1976).  Klimovsky and his writers presage the encroaching Apocalypse with wonderfully subtle touches: the neo-Sadeans run from their sin salon cum fallout shelter to find a pigeon flapping blindly through the villa, its eyes pure white, as if boiled; meanwhile, up on the parapet, a lonely siren can be heard echoing across a valley as distant and still as a Goya landscape (the use of the face-distorting masks in the orgy scene is reminiscent of the figures in Goya’s “The Burial of the Sardine,” a study in pre-Lenten excess) and a once swarming anthill is now shown to be unoccupied, the lower forms having fled deeper into the earth.  THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK cuts 12 minutes out of the original film; while a bit of characterization is lost the result is a cracking thriller that races to a brutal, but hardly unexpected downbeat finale.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD-isms abound, from the sole black character (regrettably minor), to the character reduced by the aggregation of horror to infantalism, to the sympathetic young couple who perish early and horribly, to the incineration of two characters during an intense action scene, to protagonists who turn on one another in extremis, to a climactic montage of corpses stacked for disposal.  Yet ÚLTIMO DESEO or THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK or whatever you want to call it is very much its own animal.  The film’s first act is surprisingly potent, introducing an uncommonly compelling roster of characters: cynical American scientist Bill Fulton (Alberto de Mendoza – think Richard Carlson with his shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum), bastard fat cat Bourne (Paul Naschy, in a rare non-starring role), bordello madame Lily (FREUD‘s Maria Perschy), Lily’s ex-lover Berta (Teresa Gimpera, of THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE), Russian envoy Vasily (Antonio Mayans, whose career spans KING OF KINGS and MACUMBA SEXUAL … and beyond), sad-faced beauty Clara (Nadiuska, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s doomed mother in CONAN THE BARBARIAN) and fledgling call girl Marion (Paul Naschy’s frequent leading lady Julia Saly), among others.  The notion of a nuclear holocaust is broached early in the film, then fobbed off by various characters as unlikely, inopportune, inconvenient.  People have places to go and things to do and nothing ever happens… until it does.  Unlike various NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD clones, Klimovsky et al do not make their protagonists blameless – they incur the wrath of the sightless locals by stealing and killing in order to survive, prodding the superstitious provincials towards a reactionary conservatism that lies latent in all societies, waiting for that one calamitous event or series of events that makes the complacent fearful.  Fernando Meirelles’ recent BLINDNESS (2008), based on the 1995 novel by José Saramago, attempts a somewhat similar scenario but for all it does right gets mired down, I think, in artiness, intellectualism and importance – it’s a big, international production full of big stars and big moments, none of which quite connect with my heart and soul and punch me in the gut quite like THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK, which is concerned less with how we change when the lights go out than who we thought we were before.