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Despite its film history perhaps not being as well-known or regularly lauded as that of the U.S., France, or Japan, the country of Spain has a rich and fascinating cinematic catalog. Of course, there are the iconic works of Pedro Almodvar and Luis Buuel and satirical comedies like The Executioner and Welcome Mr. Marshall! One film that may have passed the average film-lover by, however, is the 1972 horror short classic from director Antonio Mercero, La Cabina.

New month, new recommendations from Deep Cuts Rising. This installment features random picks as well as selections reflecting the month of March 2024.

Regardless of how they came to be here, or what they’re about, these past movies can generally be considered overlooked, forgotten or unknown.

This month’s horror offerings include a killer robot, a haunted mini-mart and more.

The Telephone Box (1972)

Pictured: José Luis López Vázquez’s character talks to a boy inside the namesake of The Telephone Box.

Directed by Antonio Mercero.

An obvious rec for International Find a Pay Phone Booth Day (March 10) is La Cabina (a.k.a. The Telephone Box). This Spanish, made-for-tv short-film turns a silly situation into surreal horror. José Luis López Vázquez‘s unfortunate character enters a freshly installed phone booth, only to then learn it neither works nor allows him to leave. As onlookers gather around and fail to help him,...

Murky blue- brown images, bringing to mind a Lorca play developed for today’s premium TV audience, fill the screen in the trailer for “The Gypsy Bride,” from “Penny Dreadful” director Paco Cabezas, which world premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival.

The fiction is produced by ViacomCBS International Studios (Vis), with the participation of Atresmedia Televisión, and in collaboration with Diagonal TV.

As well as presenting the first season of the series at the Spanish-speaking world’s highest-profile festival, Cabezas, the show’s creator and director had something else to celebrate on Wednesday.

The show, which premieres on Sept. 25 on Atresplayer Premium, the ebullient Ott service of broadcast network Atresmedia, has renewed “The Gypsy Bride” (“La Novia Gitana”) for a second season.

The Seville-born director sat down with Variety to talk about creating he eight-part Season 1 of “The Gypsy Bride,”shot inside the Madrid gypsy community, Spain’s largest,...

Atresplayer Premium, the burgeoning Ott service behind HBO Max hit “Veneno,” has renewed “The Gypsy Bride” (“La novia gitana”), whose Season 1, from “Penny Dreadful” director Paco Cabezas, world premieres at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Atresmedia Television will produce with Banijay Iberia’s Diagonal TV, producer of Netflix hit “Heirs to the Land.”Produced by Vis with the participation of Atresmedia Television and the collaboration of the Diagonal TV, the first season of “The Gypsy Bride” will bow on Atresplayer Premium on Sept. 25.

Directed in its totality by Cabezas, whose credits also include “American Gods,” Season 1 is set in a gypsy community on Madrid’s humble outskirts as homicide inspector Elena Blanco, is called in to investigate the torture and assassination of a young woman just before her wedding.

Channelling echoes of a Lorca tragedy, the series, shot with large visual ambition by Cabezas – mixing bold panoramics and hand-held camerawork...

The Spanish literary world was rocked on Friday night by the revelation that one of the country’s most celebrated female novelists, Carmen Mola, was in fact a work of fiction. Her books are the work of three male screenwriters: Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero.

Until Friday, Mola was believed to be a professor in her 40s who wrote violent crime thrillers between classes. Hanska Literary and Film Agency, which represents Mola, features a photograph of a woman facing away from the camera on her author profile page.

The ruse was revealed on Friday night during a prize-giving ceremony for the country’s most prestigious literary award, the Premio Planeta de Novela, where Mola was announced as the winner of the 2021 prize. Gasps were heard across the auditorium as the mysterious Mola’s name was called to accept the award, which comes with a €1 million ($1.16 million) cash prize.

Gracia Querejeta’s “The Invisible,” toplining Emma Suárez, star of Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta,” and Toni Bestard’s “Pullman” have been acquired for international sales by Feel Content.

They will be made available for online access to buyers as part of next week’s Malaga Festival’s Spanish Screenings Market Premieres showcase, one of the industry event’s main draws.

A distinguished director of now 10 increasingly varied features – including 2017 dark melodrama “Happy 140” and doc feature “Tanto Monta,” and 2018’s absurdist thriller “Crime Wave” – “The Invisible” sees Querejeta returning to her more observational, character-driven mode of 2004’s Malaga Festival winner “Hector,” and “15 Years and One Day,” a 2013 best picture Goya contender, and Spain’s 2014 Academy Awards submission.

She does so in “The Invisible,” written with regular co-scribe Antonio Mercero, with a directness contrasting with her early often more oblique work.

In what Querejeta herself recognizes as her most personal work to date,...

Spanish production house Dlo/Magnolia, owned by the giant Banijay Group, has revealed an ambitious TV drama slate, led by psychological thriller series “La Caza. Monteperdido,” a TV adaptation of Agustín Martínez’s best-selling novel “Monteperdido.”

Filming in the Aragonese Pyrenees, the eight-episode, 70-minute high-concept TV drama is scheduled to premiere on Rtve’s flagship channel La 1 in first quarter of 2019.

Under managing director José Manuel Lorenzo, Dlo/Magnolia is upping the ante on TV fiction, underscoring the Banijay Group’s aim of building its scripted offering in Spain, as the superindie continues acquiring production assets to increase its TV drama footprint worldwide.

“After many years focused on TV entertainment, Banijay is betting very seriously on TV fiction. As a traveling companion, I could not find a better one, they help you get the projects moving forward,” Lorenzo said.

“Monteperdido” marks the first step in this new era at Dlo/Magnolia,...

After the cold reception at the box office, mixed reaction from critics and only two tech award wins at the recent Goya awards with A Sad Trumpet Ballad a.k.a The Last Circus, director Alex de la Iglesia has commenced filming on “La Chispa De La Vida”. Based on an original screenplay by Randy Feldman (“Tango & Cash”), the film stars Salma Hayek (“Frida”) and Spaniard comedian José Mota. Although De la Iglesias has claimed this will be a dramatic feature film, in his own words ”…it has a lot in common with “The Last Circus” intentions wise. A strange story that also makes to think about “La Cabina” by Antonio Mercero in which it resembles story wise since it's about a man that has an accident and is left trapped in such a way that nobody knows how to rescue him, but in this case, the character being a publicist,...

Alex de La Iglesia plans a bigscreen adaptation of The Yellow Mark Spanish director &#193lex de la Iglesia will finally make his long-planned big-budget adaptation of Belgian comic film, which was set up at France's La Fabrique and Spain's Tornasol, according to Variety.

"Every time I talk about a project it doesn't get made." So he prefers to be stingy in revealing details about the film.

However, &#193lex de la Iglesia said financing is in place and he will shoot the new movie in Spain.

Though "terribly dramatic, but appearing a comedy," the new production resembles Spaniard Antonio Mercero's 1972 "La cabina," &#193lex de la Iglesia said. The absurdist "La cabina" turned on a man stuck in a phone box who never manages to get out.

film will head into production after the promo blitz for &#193lex de la Iglesia' The Last Circus ends.

Madrid -- Daniel Monzon's prison drama "Cell 211" walked away the grand winner at the 24th Goya Awards ceremony with eight statues, including the top categories, Sunday night after a close head-to-head battle with Alejandro Amenabar's epic film "Agora."

"Cell" not only took best film, director and adapted script, but also actor for Luis Tosar's intense portrayal of a prison inmate.

Penelope Cruz got passed over for the best actress award for her part in Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" to see Lola Duenas take home the honor for her touching role in "Me Too."

And though tongues started wagging early in the evening that Cruz and beau Javier Bardem finally made a public appearance together by sitting side-by-side at the ceremony, the big event of the evening was undoubtedly Pedro Almodovar's surprise appearance to award the best film award -- marking a new peace with the Spanish...

Madrid -- Daniel Monzon's prison drama "Cell 211" and Alejandro Amenabar's Ancient Egypt epic "Agora" led the pack with 16 and 13 nominations, respectively, including all the main categories, for the 24th Goya Awards, announced Saturday.

 

The two films will vie for the top categories of best film and director against Fernando Trueba's "The Dancer and the Thief," with nine nominations, and Juan Jose Campanella's "The Secret in Their Eyes," with eight.

 

Gone are the days when one strong contender snagged 18 or 19 nominations as the only powerhouse in the Spanish industry. The nominations for 2010 divvy up the biggest nods among a half-dozen titles, like Daniel Sanchez Arevalo's "Gordos," with eight nominations; Sigfrid Monleon's "The Consul of Sodoma," with six; and Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces," with five.

 

Penelope Cruz will run a tight race in the actress category for her role in Almodovar's "Embraces" against Maribel Verdu for her...

MADRID -- Take My Eyes, Iciar Bollain's dramatic look at domestic violence, led the pack Wednesday as Spain's Film Academy announced nominations for the XVIII Goya Awards, snatching noms in nine of the 28 categories. Eyes will compete for best film against Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me, Antonio Mercero's The 4th Floor and David Trueba's Soldiers of Salamina, Spain's candidate for the foreign-language Oscar. Soldiers, a Lola Films/Fernando Trueba co-production, Life, produced by El Deseo, and Eyes, produced by La Iguana and Alta Prods., also will see their helmers vie for best director. Also nominated in the directing category is Cesc Gay for his In the City. Gay and co-writer Tomas Aragay will face off for best original script with Bollain and Alicia Luna for Eyes, Jaime Rosales and Enric Rufas for Hours of the Day and Pablo Berger for Torremolinos 73.

MADRID -- Spanish rights broker Grupo Pi said Tuesday that it will handle worldwide sales for four Boca Boca productions, including Boca's latest hit "The 4th Floor". Directed by Antonio Mercero, "The 4th Floor" has earned €2.1 million ($2.5 million) at the boxoffice since its release two weeks ago, landing it in the weekly rankings behind "The Matrix" and "Intolerable Cruelty". "4th Floor" stars Juan Jose Ballesta, Luis Angel Priego and Gorka Morena and tells the story of three boys' relationship and will to live while undergoing treatment at a hospital. Pi will peddle "4th Floor" at the Lanzarote Screenings, a market that will run on the Spanish island Nov. 27-29. Pi will also handle sales on "They're Watching", "The Hit" and "X."...

MONTREAL -- Vladimir Alenikov's The Gun is the only American entry among the 19 films that will compete for top honors this year at the Montreal World Film Festival, festival organizers said Tuesday. A total of 224 feature-length films -- including 115 world premieres -- are to unspool at the festival, Aug. 27-Sept. 7. Alenikov's Gun is described as a dramatic thriller that documents a brief moment in the "life" of a gun and the people who must have it. Other films in the world competition section include Spain's 4th Floor, by director Antonio Mercero; Romania's Bless You, Prison, by director Nicolae Margineanu; and two films from Serbia/Montenegro, Dusan Kovacevic's The Professional and Goran Markovic's The Cordon.

Antonio Mercero's film is a wacky, upbeat, slapstick comedy that is funnier than one would have anticipated. Its lowbrow humor may catch the highbrow art-house crowd a bit off-guard, but it will most likely find them laughing despite themselves. The film's broadness should appeal to even the non-foreign filmgoer.

Don Juan is more like Don Two as the story involves a case of mistaken identity between the real Don Juan and Juan Marquina (both played by Juan Luis Galiardo), an actor portraying the legendary lover in an upcoming play.

It is the eve of Oct. 31, 1990, and the ghost of Don Juan arises from his grave in Seville, Spain. For 450 years his soul has been trapped in purgatory and he is now once again attempting to perform some good deed that will free him from this limbo.

At this same moment and unbeknownst to him, across town an acting troupe is preparing for a production of "Don Juan Tenorio.'' The lead actor, Juan Marquina, is an arrogant, womanizing, egotistical bag of wind who has virtually antagonized every cast and crew member.

In an "artistic'' rage, after losing his wig, he storms off and rendezvouses with a drug kingpin arranging for a big drug exchange. This guy is bad news.

Meanwhile, Marquina's assistant, Ciutti (Vicente Diez), accidentally retrieves the real Don Juan and brings him back to the theater. Once there, the great romancer tries his charms on the leading lady, Dona Ines (Maria Barranco), only to discover that she too mistakes him for Marquina. She suggests Don Juan do something to himself that is anatomically impossible.

The case of the two Don Juans leads to a wildly comic series of misunderstandings that find both of them in trouble, in bed with the same women and in each other's way.

There is also a bunch of supporting players that hilariously add to the chaos. One acrobatic woman (Rossy de Palma) bumblingly tries to somersault her way into Don Juan's bed, while another with similar intentions does all her talking with castanets.

Then there is Police Commissioner Ulloa (Jose Sazatornil) who struggles to catch Marquina in a drug transaction, but can't understand it when Don Juan's image fails to appear on the video surveillance. It's a ghost thing.

Plus there is slapstick aplenty as we find a naked Marquina rolling blindly down a street while trapped in a garbage can on wheels. Or when mistakenly placed in an insane asylum, Marquina has a fight with an inmate who thinks he's a dog.

It all adds up to a laugh-filled, fun-filled ribald romp that is pure unpretentious entertainment. It is with affection that we greet "Don Juan, My Love.''

DON JUAN, MY LOVE

An International Film Exchange Release

DirectorAntonio Mercero

Writers Joaquin Oristrell, Antonio Mercero

Director of photography Carlos Suarez

Editor Rosa Graceli-Salgado

MusicBernardo Bonezzi

Color

In Spanish with subtitles

Cast:

Don Juan/Juan MarquinaJuan Luis Galiardo

Dona InesMaria Barranco

Ana(woman with castanets) Loles Leon

Vuida Prodini (acrobat) Rossy de Palma

Police Commissioner UlloaJose Sazatornil

CiuttiVicente Diez

Ruben (theatre director) Pedro Reyes

Running time ---96 minutes

No MPAA rating

(c) The Hollywood Reporter...