Page 71 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

The problem with Perdita Durango is that nobody in this Spanish-American production
knows enough about the American culture (as embodied in the characters of Duane and
Estelle) the film is meant to be ridiculing to tease out the subtleties and nuances that would
transform mere crudity into social satite, shock and laughter.14
In the end what is significant about Perdita Durango is that it represents for Spanish cinema the
continued Hollywood dominance of the world entertainment market. De la Iglesia 'tailored it'
to Hollywood, to make an English-language production. In this he joined a very select group of
European directors to even attempt to break into the dominant industry, which Marsha Kinder called,
in a reference to Bunuel, 'the obscure object of global desire'.'5 More sinisterly, it also means that
Spanish directors, after they develop strong careers in Europe, continue to be expected to interpret
Hispanic culture for a US Latino market.

MUERTOS DE RISA: A RETURN TO NATIONAL REFERENTS AND POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Unlike Perdita Durango, de la Iglesia's 1999 film Muertos de risa is rife with subtleties, evoking Spanish
national history and culture. Within the course of de la Iglesia's career, this return to national referents
can perhaps be read as resistance to global capitalism. Nonetheless, the commonality of interests
defined in this film is different from other significant Spanish films of its same genre. Muertos de risa
is a less regionally inflected film than Dia de la bestia, whose main character, a Jesuit theologian, was
Ur-Basque. As such it echoes Dimitris Eleftheriotis who notes a trend to 'the increasing engagement
of European films with precisely the issues of identity, similarity and difference, and cultural
exchange'.16
It is worth noting that Muertos de risa came on the heels of the politically incorrect comedy,
Torrente, brazo tonto de la ley (Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law), the highest grossing Spanish
film in history, in 1998. Its main character, Torrente, is an alcoholic, fascist policeman who acts
out against immigrants and any rules of physical propriety. Like Muertos de risa, Torrente starred
Santiago Segura; actually, Torrente was Segura's first film. Segura's 'neocostumbrismo subversivo' is
closely associated with de la Iglesia.17 Yet precisely the issues of pan-European 'cultural difference and
exchange', as detailed by Eleftheriotis, and at the heart of Torrente, seem absent from de la Iglesia's
Muertos de risa, which was released one year later (with ads featuring Segura).
Muertos de risa tells the story of the comedy team of Nino and Bruno. They meet in a remote,
shabby nightclub in Andalucia in the waning years of the Franco regime. When they try out for a
variety show, they fortuitously discover that slap humour has a cathartic effect on the audience. From
then on their rise to fame as a comedy team is meteoric. Muertos de risa juxtaposes two decades of
their lives, the 1970s and the 1990s, as it foregrounds Nino and Bruno in the media event of Spanish
history. Beneath the surface of camaraderie and media adulation, the two become mortal enemies.
At their reunion television special on New Year's Eve 1993, they kill each other in an on-stage
bloodbath.
In part because it is rereading 1970s Spanish history and the national media monopoly of that
time period, Muertos de risa deals with the production of a Spanish national identity through the

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