I've been duped. With a title like Exorcism's Daughter, I was expecting another Euro rip-off of The Exorcist, complete with a foul-mouthed possessed woman spewing green vomit. That's not what I got.
This film was retitled to cash in on the success of William Friedkin's 1973 horror blockbuster, but the original title, Las Melancólicas (The Melancholic), is far more apt: it's a dreary, depressing tale about a liberal doctor (Rafael Alba, played by Espartaco Santoni) at a rural asylum trying to cure a woman (Analía Gadé) of her madness via progressive methods, and it's incredibly boring to boot.
I have my suspicions that the film is allegorical, with the untrusting townsfolk and brutal asylum guard Fuso (Francisco Rabal) representing Franco's military dictatorship, the insane women representing the oppressed Spanish people, and Alba representing the voice of reason. Or something like that. I'm no expert in the history of Spanish politics-I wanted spinning heads, not hysterical women screaming for almost two hours about wanting freedom.
This film was retitled to cash in on the success of William Friedkin's 1973 horror blockbuster, but the original title, Las Melancólicas (The Melancholic), is far more apt: it's a dreary, depressing tale about a liberal doctor (Rafael Alba, played by Espartaco Santoni) at a rural asylum trying to cure a woman (Analía Gadé) of her madness via progressive methods, and it's incredibly boring to boot.
I have my suspicions that the film is allegorical, with the untrusting townsfolk and brutal asylum guard Fuso (Francisco Rabal) representing Franco's military dictatorship, the insane women representing the oppressed Spanish people, and Alba representing the voice of reason. Or something like that. I'm no expert in the history of Spanish politics-I wanted spinning heads, not hysterical women screaming for almost two hours about wanting freedom.