Freddy's 31 Days of Horror Day 25: Alex De La Iglesia's Witching and Bitching
Alex De La Iglesia makes some crazy awesome movies and if you've seen The Last Circus you know what I'm talking about. Here he decides to tackle the subject of witches, but in Iglesia fashion he throws in a lot of humor and some great subtext on the battle of the sexes! This flick is two hours of insanity that will keep you laughing and at no point do you know where it's going to go. 
It starts out with a gold heist involving people dressed up as Minnie Mouse, Spongebob, the Invisible Man, a toy soldier and Jesus Christ himself painted silver. Jesus runs into the cash for gold store and takes a shotgun out of his cross telling everyone to get down. What makes this better? Jesus brought his kid who has two pistols aimed at the person behind the counter to help him rob the joint. Jesus and the toy soldier argue about why Jesus brought his kid and Jesus says he gets him on week days and every other weekend so he doesn't ever want to miss spending time with his son. The people on the floor begin arguing about the ethics of bringing the kid as a man and woman bicker about divorce. Just a taste of Iglesia's comedic genius! Well the cops show up and Spongebob gets trigger happy and the boys have to make a run for it! Unfortunately the toy soldier's girlfriend has taken his car for the day without him knowing, so they have to steal a cab with the driver and passenger inside, giving us an awesome car chase with Jesus shooting his shotgun and arguing with his ex wife who is wondering where he is with her kid! They finally get away and we're introduced to our characters. There's Jesus whose actual name is Jose, his son Sergio, the Toy soldier named Tony, the cab driver named Manuel and an unwanted passenger who they call Badajoz because he's constantly whining that he's trying to get to Badajoz! They are making a break for Paris where they plan to spend their riches and live like kings! Hot on their tails are the cops and Jose's ex wife, Silvia. Unfortunately for them they have to pass through the town of Zugarramurdi which is notoriously known as the town infested by witches! As they get closer, things get stranger and they discover it was fate that brought them to the town and the witches that inhabit it!
First of all everything I've described so far is as absurdly awesome as it sounds. Now we're going to get into the subtly clever subtext. After the robbery the film turns into a bromance road trip movie for a bit as we discover each one of the men have been spurned in some way by women. Jose's ex wife makes his life a constant living hell, Tony is dating a well to do attorney who he is constantly afraid of, especially of her sexual prowess and Manuel has three loving kids he breaks his back for to pay his wife the child support. They all bond and their group becomes very tight knit, at first this can seem a little sexist as the beginning overtly vilifies women but it comes to a good parallel when we meet the witches. The witches themselves are part of a large coven led by Graci and her mother, Maritxu. Graci's husband left her with two kids and became a priest funnily enough. She along with the rest of her coven talk of the blasphemy that is the story of women being created from Adam's rib, how men are worthless unless they can be used, how women are the superior sex born under their god "The Mother." Jose and his group don't help to sway their opinion as they run over one of the witches, pull guns on others and basically do everything they can to make guys look like the worst sex ever! What really brings this whole battle of the sexes to a stand still is the relationship between Jose and Graci's daughter, Eva. This relationship comes out of nowhere under the worst circumstances! Jose just came from robbing people and Eva had been torturing the rest of the group! Love at first sight blossoms as the two butt heads for relationship supremacy where Iglesia slyly states both sexes have their faults but both also have their perfection that they can bring to one another in a relationship. This comes full circle in a really dark but happy ending for our characters. That's the genius of this flick! Now the witches themselves have a bunch of different things they do. They can fly, crawl like spider-man, screech, force others to do things against their will and a whole bunch of other torturous ways to hurt our heroes. My personal favorite though is fairly simple as senile, crazy Maritxu has steel teeth she puts in her mouth to munch down on people that piss her off! At one point in the flick you discover that one of the men is to be sacrificed to "The Mother" to bring down the world of man, as man betrays man. There are thousands of different witches in this scene with all kinds of different looks and ages that fly around and sing a crazy awesome chant that you'll be humming hours after you see this movie. This chant brings, "The Mother" who is a giant monstrous creature with a basket on it's head that does not give a damn who she steps on as long as she gets her dinner!
This movies is all over the place jam packed with all kinds of movie tropes and jokes. You even get a bumbling cop pair with authority issues with one another! Every scary situation is defused with nervous comedic dialogue that makes you think, "You know that's probably something I'd say in that situation." A witch asks you what games you like to play? Your answer is FIFA and PSP. She flirts with you as she pulls teeth out of the guys head sitting next to you. Then uses her powers to make you and your friend make out. You know? The usual fun witch stuff. This definitely a film for multiple viewings just so you can catch all the jokes and maybe even learn some Spanish! Six more Days til' Halloween Halloween! Six more days til' Halloween! Silver Shamrock!
