The Last Circus

Alex De La Iglesia's The Last Circus (Spain, 2010) - 2010VENic Best Director Winner and Best Screenplay Winner. This political slasher portraying life in Franco’s Spain as a horror movie must be one of the most hysterical films ever made about a fascist regime, and among the least pleasant pictures devised about circus life and particularly about jesters. A genre film par excellence, owing its inspiration to such sources as James Whale, Alfred Hitchcock, Tod Browning, King Kong and Pan’s Labyrinth, to mention just a few, it may very well catch the fancy of Venice jury president Quentin Tarantino, but its grating black humor, if that’s what it is, will have a lot of trouble travelling beyond the borders of Spain. 2010TOR, 2010VENic, 2011SANSmis, 2011SEA. RATING: 8.