6 Films to Keep You Awake DVD review Pt 3.

Well kiddies it’s time to get to the third and last batch of reviews for the Spanish horror TV series 6 Films To Keep You Awake. This time I will be looking at Enrique Urbizu´s Adivina quién soy (Guess who) and Paco Plaza’s Cuento de navidad (A Christmas Story). Now I have to admit that I was more anxious to see Plaza’s film, mainly because he’s the second half of the director duo responsible for the horror hit REC, the other being Jaume Balaguero who directed the stellar "To Let" in this series as well. Enrique Urbizu I had never heard about before but saw when I looked him up that he was one of the writers of Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate. Both films are hit and miss, one of them being almost nothing but misses but read on if you want to know which one that is. Muuuahahaha!

Adivian Quién Soy (Guess Who)
Estrella is the kind of kid that I was when I was her age, I read a lot, drew a lot, didn’t partake in sports and I lived for movies and horror was my favorite flavor. Like me Estrella has a vivid imagination but unlike me she has a few invisible friends. But these are not any regular invisible friends, oh no, these are Leatherface, Nosferatu's Count Orlok, Italian zombies and Mr. Hyde. Fuck Harvey and his ilk.
The ten-year-old child lives alone with her mother who works at a local hospital. Estrella’s father is dead and her mother has some sort of commitment issues, manifested in having sex with strangers in public places. Estrella’s mother is concerned that she isn’t socializing with any other kids and wants her to stop reading all those horror books cause they seem to be messing with her mind. But the girl has just made a new friend who she calls The Vampire, because he dresses in leather trench coats and rides a badass motorcycle. But the Vampire might not be a figment of Estrella’s imagination because the bloodshed he’s left behind him is real enough.
Oh and did I mention the creepy looking old guy who’s been stalking Estrella´s promiscuous mother, carrying a rosary and a gun? No? Oh well he is.

You might think that with that kind of synopsis this episode would be chock full of horror goodness. Well you’d think.
What you do get is over an hour of pure and utter boredom, sprinkled with terrible acting and a feeling that nobody cared.
HOW THE HELL CAN YOU FUCK UP A SHOW WHERE YOU HAVE LEATHERFACE, ZOMBIES, VAMPIRES AND EVIL MIDGETS?
I don’t know how Enrique Urbizu did it but he fucked it up real good. Looking over his career I wondered why the hell this guy was involved with the show. He has never directed anything remotely horror and the only thing that can sort-of, kind-of be called horror that he has worked on, if you squint your eyes real tight, is The Ninth Gate. This guy has no idea of what he’s doing, there is no tension, no atmosphere and he certainly doesn’t know where to put the camera. The sound design is also extremely poor, especially noticeable when Leatherface screams, which he does a lot, and he sounds exactly what you see on the screen, a dude whining in a crappy Leatherface mask. Bah humbug!
This episode is the poorest of the bunch and that is saying a lot compared to the god awful “The Guilt” that came before it.

Cuento de navidad (A Christmas Story)
It’s the awesome 80’s and five kids are spending their time during Christmas at an off-season summer resort. There’s not much to do really but they love movies and horror movies in particular. One day Moni, the only girl in the group, discovers something strange. A woman, dressed in a Santa suit has fallen down a deep hole in the forest and can’t get out. When they go to the police to report it they see that the woman is wanted for robbery and decide to keep her down there until she tells them where she hid the two million pesetas she stole. The days go by and the woman, constantly hurting herself by trying to escape, is getting more and more crazy. Moni wants to let her go but the rest of the group think that might not be a good idea cause she might hunt them down for revenge. The kids even go so far as to consider telling no one until she’s dead.
But as with most horror films the tormentors become the tormented when the woman escapes the hole and seeks revenge on those pesky kids.
The first noticeable thing about this episode is the massive amount of nostalgia that’s crammed in to it. Everything from cheap Italian horror films, The Karate Kid, The Goonies and some sort of fucked up episode of Scooby Doo are mixed together to make a story that has the heart in the right place but falls short on some levels. I’m sure that Paco Plaza is using some elements from his own youth to make up the story, from the toys and TV shows, possibly the town setting and the beautiful neighbor that practices her morning exercise in the nude.
But what harms the likeability of the main characters is that they behave like complete assholes. Trapping a person down a hole, starving and torturing her in hopes of cash does not make you want to partake in their adventure as The Goonies, The Monster Squad or The Explorers did and still do when I watch those films. I wanted to be one of the gang, to go on these adventures, down old caves or to outer space in home made space ships. Trapping a bank robber down a hole is not exactly appealing but maybe that is what Paco was trying to convey. Kids can be very cruel but this cruel, I don’t know, especially when you start to sympathize with the captive it sort of falls on its face and you’re not sure what exactly Paco is trying to say. The whole point of afore mentioned adventure films was to draw the viewer in to the experience, make him relive his youth and his childhood fantasies but I don’t know if many had these fantasies.
The show is not big on horror really until the end; in the meantime we are entertained with a very funny recreation of a dubbed Italian zombie film, which inspires some of the gang. The film is also viewed from the children’s point of view; adult’s faces are never shown, sort of like cartoons from that era, except for the trapped woman and the cast of the crappy horror film. When the prisoner finally escapes it becomes a gory Scooby Doo episode, complete with a closed amusement park chase.
The cast is pretty good, most will recognize Ivana Baquero, playing Moni as the lead from Guilermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and the rest are pretty convincing. The look and the recreation of the era is the show’s winner though and I’m sure many will point towards items on the screen and say that they either had that in their youth or wished they had.
As Paco is the second half of REC’s director’s team I was hoping for more, especially after such a stellar episode from Balaguero. But the show was just so so, putting more emphasis on nostalgia than scares.

Now with all the episodes done I have to ask; “Was it worth it?” Well yes and no. I was glad that I saw "To Let", that is a fucking great show and one of the best horror films I've seen in a while. Simple yet extremely effective. The best episodes turned out to be the first two, De La Iglesias’ “The Baby’s Room” and Balaguero’s “To Let”. The rest were either utter crap, “The Guilt” and “Guess Who” or just average, “Return to Moira” and “A Christmas Story”. Some of the episodes have been released in Europe, just a few days ago I saw a Scandinavian released box set here in Iceland called “4 Films To Keep You Awake” which didn’t feature “To Let” surprisingly but featured the weakest episodes plus "The Baby's Room". I’m not sure I can recommend the Spanish released box set at the price it is currently at as an import but if a US distributor releases it for a decent price it might be worth it. But I do hope that “To Let” will receive a wider release because it certainly deserves that.