Page 77 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

international stages, his star has not come back to shine with the same intensity as during the
Francoist years.28
Raphaels own official website today continues to proclaim that he has performed for audiences
across the political spectrum. This apolitical disclaimer only makes the rightist association more
pronounced.25
Within the context of the film the character Bruno plays at being an anarchist, going to a rally
to hang out with an attractive girl whom both of them are wooing. Nino and Bruno have their first
falling out over an extended gag that Nino plays on Bruno. Secret police, 'acting' for Nino, falsely
arrest Bruno for printing seditious pamphlets. As in the case of Nino/Raphael, for a Spanish audience
the film here is re-enacting the politics of the media performance artist known as 'El Gran Wyoming'
who is playing Bruno. El Gran Wyoming is a well-known leftist. In the 1990s he accused the socialist
Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez of selling out, bringing to the surface again Gonzalez's 1970s
ultimatum to the P S O E , 'Marx or me'. 30 El Gran Wyoming was instrumental in forming the new
party/alliance Izquierda Unida (United Left). Embedded in Muertos de risa is a coherent iconography
of national politics, yet the film overall does not operate only on that terrain. In particular, the final
joint self-destruction of Nino and Bruno is less strongly marked by political caricature than any other
part of the film.
Muertos de risa never puts us in the position of a studio audience. In this the camera's point of
view is absolutely the opposite of Día de la bestia, where we became part of the television programmes
invited audience for Professor Cavan's show on exorcism. The film comes full circle to its beginning
as Nino and Bruno march onto the stage to shoot each other. We are them, not the innocent studio
audience. I would suggest that this positioning of the camera on the stage behind Nino and Bruno,
and then in an overhead crane shot to view the bodies - both what I would call 'subject positions'
- shocks us into seeing our complicity, our guilty pleasure at the staging of violence through humour.
The overall effect of this critique, however, is gently diffused in the film's bemused 'happy ending'.
As in a cartoon or video game, excessive violence does not necessarily mean death. The coda posits
a fantasy of this kind of closed system and returns us to our pleasures as viewers of spectacle. Both
comedians are revived to survive on life-support. Technology and the screen, in their heart monitors,
again define their lives. In intensive care Bruno keeps Nino alive by slapping him to start his heart, a
graveside wry gesture of hitting the mark as a saving grace.

CONCLUSION

Alex de la Iglesia is an important case study for the directions of recent Spanish cinema. We have
seen how the expectation of technology is a key element in the definition of this market, nationally
and globally, and likewise in the interpretation of those films. Through the close analysis of Muertos
de risa, with particular attention to the way that F-23 is inserted in the film, we have seen how the
narrative works against the leveling effect of pastiche to produce a sense of historical consciousness.
Muertos de risa calls the viewer to rethink the links between the history of Spanish democracy and its
media history. It also actively positions the viewer within that process.

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