Psychedelic adventure with brilliant images , silly messes and a lot of songs sung by famous bands . The surrrealist script develops a derivative curiosity about the Eurovision Song Contest, dealing with a group of Spanish fans of the best British pop music from the late sixties owned an odd record store, which only sell what they like. The misfit group (Patty Shepard , Judy Stephen , Tina Sáinz , José María Íñigo , Ramón Pons , among others) decide to boycott the song "Lie, lie" that will represent Spain in a contest called 'Mundo canal' . In order to accomplish the aforesaid, they will put in practice several stratagems to avoid that the selected bands would participate in the festival, whose performances will be happening throughout the film , resulting in a lot of irony about apparent rebellion and with full of clichés .
This film packs strange situations , parodic sketches, swift frames , twists , turns and attractive images made in a sort-of psychedelic manner ; but it especially contains popular entertainment and naif amusement . The film is a joyous romp through a so-so adventure starred by a motley group of actors , singers and presenter José Maria Iñigo , moving between the carefree and the absurd . Iván Zulueta shot this film that celebrates the psychedelic pop culture at the time, using emphatic aesthetics , not lacking generational clashes and independent desires for youth manifestation . This is an exciting action/musical comedy , ironizing musical festival at the time , as Eurovision, narrated in psychedelic comic pop style , it packs groovy scenarios , thrills , wild effects , strident and gaudy sets. The picture chooses to play freely with the elements of audiovisual language including zooms , disjoined frames with wide angle, low angle, split-screen , the occasional circular traveling shot and it results to be a challenge for movie exegesis , that's why some reviewers panned extremely the film because of it contains uncompelling characters and "inscrutable" screenplay.
Apart from its lysergic-surreal and non-sense set pieces , the story is imaginative but not very interesting , being an excuse to concatenate a series of performances by Spanish groups of the period , signifying as a whole the attraction of youth for Anglo-Saxon pop soundtrack and abroad culture , while performing a lot of songs , including as follows : ¨That Woman¨ performed by Pop Tops ; ¨Créeme¨ Performed by Los Ángeles ; ¨Hey Girl¨Performed by Los Beta ; ¨Woovy Groovy¨ Performed by Los Buenos ; ¨Tengo tu amor¨ Performed by Fórmula V ; ¨You Love Me¨ Performed by Henry y los Seven ; ¨Hiding Behind¨ Written by Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington Performed by Los Íberos : ¨La Tarara¨ Performed by Ismael ; ¨Cantemos así ¨(Aleluya) Performed by Los Mitos ; ¨I'm Just a Fool¨ Performed by Shelley y Nueva Generación ; ¨Cardboard Watch¨ Performed by The End.
Following the style of Richard Lester and his films with the Beatles : A Hard Day's Night (1964) , and the Spanish movies as ¨Los chicos con las chicas¨ (1967) by Javier Aguirre and ¨Dame un poco de amooor...!¨ (1968) by Jose Maria Forque with the notorious band of the sixties ¨Los Bravos¨ who achieved a big international success.
The picture was original but rarely directed by Iván Zulueta . The reason for Iván Zulueta did not belong to the union of filmmakers, the film was signed by the prestigious filmmaker José Luis Borau who officially appeared as a director along with Zulueta . Iván was born in 1943 and died 2009 in Donostia-San Sebastián, Guipúzcoa, País Vasco, Spain . He was a director and writer, especially known for this Arrebato (1979) , Un, dos, tres... al escondite inglés (1970) and a lot of shorts as A mal gam (1976) Frank Stein , Masaje , Kinkón, among others . And shooting a ¨cult movie¨ : ¨Arrebato¨deemed to be the fundamental and essential film of the ¨Spanish Movida¨ of the late 70s and early 80s that took place mainly in Madrid , and away from the thematic and technical assumptions of conventional cinema . Zulueta with Arrebato won several nominations and prizes as Chicago International Film Festival 1980 Nominee Gold Hugo Best Feature Iván Zulueta ; Fantasporto 1982 Winner Critics' Award Iván Zulueta Winner International Fantasy Film Award Best Screenplay Iván Zulueta Best Actor Eusebio Poncela ; Nominee International Fantasy Film Award Best Film Iván Zulueta and Mystfest 1980 Nominee Best Film Iván Zulueta. 1, 2, 3.....rating : 6/10 . The flick will appeal to ¨Cult Movies¨fans.
