La Campaña del infierno (1973) from Tuna

The French/Spanish co-production of La Campana del infierno, or a Bell from Hell, is a horror offering shot in Franco's Spain. The horror premise masked the fact that it was also intended as a condemnation of bourgeois hypocrisy in Spain.

After his mother's suicide, a young man has been confined to an asylum under psychiatric care by his aunt and three cousins so they can control his inheritance. He is released on a sort of trial basis just before he returns to court. Before returning to his aunt's house, he makes a brief stop working at a slaughterhouse, where the film actually pictures the killing and butchering of cattle. These scenes have historically been cut from the film, but have been restored for this DVD. After he learns the butcher's trade, we get the idea that he will be seeking revenge back home, and we wonder if the slaughterhouse detour is relevant. The opening act establishes the characters, but is mostly about inference and imagery, much of it surrealistic.

As his revenge begins, we initially see him doing nothing more vengeful than a series of elaborate and somewhat cruel practical jokes. In one of his early jokes, he wears arm casts and braces, gets a targeted man to hold his dick while he urinates, then "tears his eyes out" in front of his wife, so convincingly that she faints. He then removes her panties, unbuttons her blouse, and leaves a note claiming to have had sex with her.

The final act escalates his vengeance to a new level. The climax is inventive and makes the film more than just watchable. I will leave it up to you to discover what his final revenge plans are, how the new bell for the church fits into the plot, and why he took the time to learn how to butcher cattle.

The original director was Claudio Guerín, who was considered one of the most promising directors of European horrotica. On the final day of shooting, he either jumped or fell from the church bell tower and died at age 33. The post production work was done by Juan Antonio Bardem.

Scoop's notes:

• Hell's Bell's fill-in director, Juan Antonio Bardem, is the uncle of the highly acclaimed Spanish actor, Javier Bardem. (Javier has seven Goya nominations, including four wins, plus two Golden Globe nominations, and an Oscar nomination.) The Bardem family is Spain's version of the Barrymores, beginning with the paterfamilias Rafael Bardem, who stated his film acting career in the early 1940s.

• The famous Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors is in this film! Decades after Sweden and Hollywood were finished with her, she seems to have spent about six or seven years making Spanish movies. I never knew that!