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"La prima Angélica" (1974) is one of the most sensitive and important movies of Carlos Saura. Set in 1974, one of the most transcendental moments in Spain with the debacle of franquism, the film is a wonderful portrayal of the effects of the Spanish civil war in a family and the love that Luis -great José Luis López Vázquez- feels about his cousine Angélica -beautiful Lina Canalejas-. The childhood, the adolescence of both -Luis and Angélica- and their forbidden love is seen in the past and in the present with a nice nostalghia. Carlos Saura creates a great love story with an historical background -spanish civil war- and shows to the audience a passional game between past and present reality. "La prima Angélica" is for me one of the most important movies of the Spanish Cinema. This is one of the masterpieces of Carlos Saura.

SCREAM...AND DIE! (or "The house that vanished" (1973))is the unknown piece of horror and sex that the master José Ramón Larraz did in England in the seventees. It's an erotic thriller with psychopatic murderer (Karl Lanchbury) perfomed by a beautiful model called Valerie (terrific Andrea Allan)involved in a haunting mistery and sadistic murders occurred in a isolated manor in the forest at midnights. Scream and die has an excellent and very particular quality in images and atmosferes. The movie is slow, yes, but this thing is normal in Larraz's movies: the story is very slow and predictable, but it's too sexy (the love scenes are really good and erotic) and brutal sometimes, and has the mark from the director of masterpieces as "Vampyres" and "Symptoms", both from 1974. The fog, tne night, the sounds of the killer walking with his black gloves following Valerie, the anguish in her face in her firsts shots, the slowly music give to the film a personal sight. The first murder seen by the hidden Valerie and husband as intimate witnesses and the escape from the manor are a classic composition of horror shots, wonderfully executed by the "voyeurisitic filmmaker" with a rare and genuine talent. It's a really brutal moment of sophisticated murder and "naïve" sex. Scream and die has the very personal "touch" of the catalanian director, all the constants that are in the most part of his baroque, sensual and horrific world (Emma puertas oscuras,La muerte incierta,Vampyres, Symptoms,Estigma,Whirpool, Deviation or Deadly manor) are present in here. The spiral of terror and tension grows very slowly -step by step- describing the world of this sexy model for fashion photographers in a continuated state of danger. Larraz creates a really personal style in a very traditional thriller that must be remembered by the tension,the british locations in Kent in winter,the quiet and dead moments of inusually fascination, the use of the photography, the artistic colors and the incredible dark shots of nights, the typical "english" fog, the horror moments and the clever sex that impressed me a lot in my adolescence. Scream and die has a kind of elegance in the horror genre that others horror thrillers hasn't. All the personal obsessions of José Larraz are here in a fine lesson of cinematography in his best period of his career, the british period. The fans of José Larraz need to know his firsts features, as "Whirpool" (1970) and "Deviation" (1971)-nobody has said anything more specific about these movies? (Please: more information and reviews in IMDB or other places,webs, etc.) and his last contribution tot the terror lately in "Deadly manor"(Savage lust, 1990)produced by his old british friend Brian Smedley-Aston. When the fans of José Ramón Larraz, Brian Smedley-Aston (editor of "Performance" ,etc.), his actresses and his horrific world will have a web or a personal page about the director? Where are the fans of this spanish/british filmmaker?. Goodbye!

JILL is the name of this movie, and this is the name of this sexy starlette called Jill Robinson,perfomed by the nice and beautiful chilean actress Raquel Evans-¡nobody remembers this erotic actress and their terrific body in films of Jesús Franco, etc!- that arrives to "the Costa Brava" in Catalonia (Spain).Directed by his brother Enrique Guevara, JILL tells the story of a lonely woman, manipulated sexually by her lesbian secretary (Mireia Ros)and others supossed friends (Lynn Endersson, etc.) that help her to survive artistically as a striptease and singer in music halls in the summer of 1977 when I was a teeneager. A woman reporter (Emma Cohen) follows Jill and tries to save her from this hell of life as an pure object of desire. JILL is a nice and femminist portrait of a young, sexy and tormented woman that appeared in theaters in Barcelona during the period of the "destape"- in the seventees- and impressed the audience for theirs nudes and explicit eroticism, but 25 years after, JILL is an interesting approach to a tragedy of loneliness, artistic bussiness and free life. I suppose that this film never appeared on video in Spain or around the world (someone has seen this film?), but I have a copy on beta really bad. Someone has references from this movie? In this same period the same crew did anothers sexy films as "Una loca extravangancia sexy", "El último pecado de la burguesía" or "Cariño mío,¿qué me has hecho?". JILL wasn´t really a great movie, but had a haunting aspect of sexual freedom, hippie attractive and beautiful locations of the incredible "Costa Brava", in the coast of Catalonia, in the mediteranian sea, in the summer, that the filmmaker captured with his camera and with really hot scenes of lesbianism and love never seen in commercial spanish films before. A decent and classic of the '70 erotic film that deserves a second chance. For fans of darkness and hidden movies, difficult to find, of the decade of freedom, really hot sex, sun, beach and life. Refreshing style!