Amar... tal vez morir

There are films whose strength lies not in what they tell, nor even in how they tell it, but in the visual universe they construct to envelop us. "A Drop of Blood to Die Loving," also known as Clockwork Terror, cannot be highlighted for the finesse of its script or the precision of its dialogue-both crude, even rudimentary-but for something much more difficult to achieve: a magnetic aesthetic and absolutely extraordinary direction. Eloy de la Iglesia, with modest means but undeniable talent, manages to film a dystopian world that not only rivals that of A Clockwork Orange, but in certain shots and visual ideas could even make Kubrick's work feel a pang of jealousy.

When I was living in Mexico, at a university in Mexico City, a colloquium was organized around A Clockwork Orange. Young intellectual prudes, intoxicated by pretensions, all of them educated among poorly digested photocopies of Deleuze and Godard, gathered to dissect Kubrick's "violence" and "the aesthetics of chaos." They all congratulated each other for mentioning Schwitters or Malevich with ease, without even suspecting what connected them to Alex DeLarge. Taking advantage of the void of real thought, I proposed replacing the screening with another: A Drop of Blood to Die Loving. I presented the DVD to them as a forgotten European rarity. When it was over, several applauded, speaking of its "fascinating conceptual design" and a "mise-en-scène inherited from Resnais." They didn't realize they were watching a Spanish film by Eloy de la Iglesia, and that the alleged cult gem was known in their country as The Clockwork Mandarin.

They all analyzed it enthusiastically, without realizing that they were watching a fierce critique of people like themselves. The same complacent academics, the authoritarian system, and the alienating consumerism that Eloy de la Iglesia passionately despised. The worst part was watching them applaud the work without understanding that he was pointing the finger at them. One even said that the characters' coldness was "a metaphor for the loss of intelligence and individual thought in postmodernism." I couldn't help but smile. If de la Iglesia himself had been there, he would have run away.

The film, however, has more to offer than that anecdote. Despite its narrative weaknesses-and they are not few-it constructs a coherent, icy, and disturbing visual world. The future it portrays, a society where the individual is worth only in terms of their usefulness, dangerously resembles our fascist-like present, only without the metal uniforms.

Eloy constructs an authoritarian and surveilled society with a narrative economy that many an established director would envy. The coldness of the spaces, the geometric design of the interiors, the expressive use of color-all evoke a modern, icy, even brutalist sensibility that elevates the final result. Its sense of framing and visual rhythm recalls the best cinema of the 1970s, which wasn't afraid to let the image speak without underlining it.

The story is minimal and, honestly, very poor. The script barely articulates its ideas. The dialogue is functional, if not downright ridiculous, and the acting, for the most part, is poor and flat. However, Eloy de la Iglesia's direction is so refined, expert, and steady that it elevates the whole. The subversion of cinematic language to create its own makes it as unsettling as it is thoughtful and functionally (indeed, brutally) aesthetic. The architectural minimalism, the geometric framing, the clinical coldness of the space-all contribute to a highly effective atmosphere of suffocation. It's a film that seems designed more to be seen than to be told, more to be intuited than understood. And therein lies much of its strength.

A Drop of Blood to Die Loving is a living work, charged with visual energy, committed to its own vision of the world. And that, in a landscape full of empty imitators-since we're talking about an imitation-makes it a brave rarity.

This movie is OBVIOUSLY (and quite blatantly) inspired by Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange". In fact early in the movie, right before a family is attacked by a group of "droog"-like bikers with bull-whips, they are actually settling down to watch "A Clockwork Orange" on TV!(it's hard to imagine even in a futuristic film like this THAT movie showing on television in what was still Franco's Spain at the time). There's also other blatant references to other Kubrick movies. The female protagonist has a copy of the infamous Vladimir Nabokov novel "Lolita" on her nightstand, and the film adaptation of that was also directed by Stanley Kubrick--and Kubrick's "Lolita", of course, was played by Sue Lyon, who plays the female protagonist of this movie! So pat yourself on the back if you notice all this and then move on.

I kind of have a problem with people that simply dismiss Italian and Spanish films like this as "rip-offs". First they seem to assume that bigger-budgeted Anglo-American/Hollywood films are all completely original (nowadays Hollywood "remakes" a lot more Spanish films than vice versa). Moreover, they don't seem to realize that a lot of these movies were blatantly aping popular Hollywood films on the surface, but were often doing something quite interesting and even subversive underneath. The most interesting part of this movie, for instance, isn't Chris Mitchum and his "droog"-like gang, nor is it Lyon's boyfriend (played by Jean Sorel) who works at a "Clockwork Orange"-type behavior modification institute. The most interesting part is Sue Lyon's character, a respectable nurse and "pop" art collector, who likes to pick up beautiful young men, take them home to bed, listen to the post-coital beating of their hearts, and then stab them to death with a surgical scalpel! The director of this Eloy Inglesias was a famous gay Spanish director. The bizarre scene where Lyon dresses up as a man and picks up an effeminate (but closeted) homosexual, or the scene where she picks up a narcissistic and (even more closeted)male model give a very noirish psychosexual--and decidedly homoerotic--ambiance to this film that has little to do with "A Clockwork Orange" and a LOT to do with the rest of the director's oeuvre like his most famous film, "Cannibal Man" (aka "Week of the Killer"). Inglesias didn't make a whole lot of films, but I would advise anyone to check out some of the ones he did before dismissing him as some kind of rip-off artist. He was, in fact, one of Spain's most interesting and courageous directors.

The English-language title of this, "Murder in a Blue World". is interesting, but even more interesting is the Spanish title which loosely translates to something like "A Drop of Blood for Dying while Making Love" . This colorful title serves to connect this film (despite its futuristic sci-fi elements)to the Italian/Spanish giallo genre. This is basically a homoerotically-charged, futuristic dystopian, psychosexual giallo, which makes it pretty damn interesting--and original--in my book.

On the surface, Eloy de la Iglesia's MURDER IN A BLUE WORLD is set in a future where young gangs are directly influenced by Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and pull off home invasions almost exactly like that movie, banned in Europe during this time...

Meanwhile, handsome doctor Jean Sorel is experimenting on a way to shock criminals into submission to become normal citizens, also like the Kubrick classic, one of his most controversial since LOLITA...

Enter that film's teenage starlet turned thirty-something beauty Sue Lyon, who went from studio films to exploitation b-movies, wherein MURDER aka CLOCKWORK TERROR is the epitome of...

But the best scenes exist beyond the whole CLOCKWORK juxtaposition, centering on Lyon, as Sorel's head nurse and semi-girlfriend, who's so rich and lonely she murders equally lonely (and equally beautiful) men in scenes straight from a kind of melancholy/arthouse giallo that BLUE WORLD mirrors more than the offbeat sci-fi homage/satire intended...

More scenes should have been given to Sue Lyon as the surreptitious costume-wearing, nightclub-frequenting, bedroom-seducing, black-widow-like killer providing a slow-burn intensity perfectly suited for a cult starlet usually prone to victims, and less to her own personal stalking blackmailer in a bland Christopher Mitchum, member of a "droogie" style gang that he seems to both co-lead and be bullied by...

Enveloped in this deliberately doubly-ironic curio where one of the most famous Kubrick starlets not only exists in a violent CLOCKWORK ORANGE-style death WORLD, but at one point even reads that book by Nabokov before broodingly yet delightfully adding to the body count - that's all her own.

The third De La Iglesia film I am watching in a row – and the best (though the "Cult Films" website rates this a measly *1/2) – that, while it touches on the same theme of a serial-killer on the loose, is the most ambitious (numbering no fewer than 5 scriptwriters!) because it is set in a dystopian future and employs international actors. Since I have made it a point to discard Sci-Fi titles for this year's "Halloween Challenge", I was a little wary of adding this but, thankfully, it proved a continuation of De La Iglesia's preoccupations.

The film wears its obvious inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) proudly on its sleeve because, not only is there a Droog-like band of violent criminals marauding at night (wielding whips at leisure), but they also assault an upper-class household that is very much decorated in the ultra-modern fashion seen in CLOCKWORK and, as if this was not enough, a screening of that very Kubrickian adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel is about to start on TV when their doorbell rings! Likewise, a subplot revolves around an experimental program which is supposed to render hardened criminals into acceptable society members (but, predictably, the last scene demonstrates that the scheme has failed horribly), while peppering the soundtrack with classical music pieces (albeit being otherwise scored as if it were a Spaghetti Western!). Interestingly, whether deliberately or not, Kubrick returned the favor by utilizing music by the composer of this one (Georges Garvarentz) for his own swan-song EYES WIDE SHUT (1999)! Indeed, while the original Spanish title translates to the poetic A DROP OF BLOOD TO DIE LOVING and that the film was released on R2 DVD as MURDER IN A BLUE WORLD (for the record, the widescreen copy I acquired, albeit VHS quality, was fairly good and did not noticeably detract from my enjoyment of the striking visual look of the décor and costumes), the film was apparently known in the U.S. under the rather condescending moniker of CLOCKWORK TERROR.

Moreover, Sue Lyon – as it happens, the young star of Kubrick's LOLITA (1962) – has the leading role here and, at one point, is even seen leafing through Vladimir Nabokov's eponymous novel while lounging in a gay bar! The rest of the cast is made up of Christopher Mitchum (who would later appear in another foul-play-in-a-hospital movie, FACELESS {1987}) and Jean Sorel (who had already played a doctor in his most famous film, Luis Bunuel's BELLE DE JOUR {1967}: incidentally, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE itself was Bunuel's own favorite movie!). For being the younger son of Hollywood legend Robert Mitchum, Chris worked with some far-out directors: in fact, apart from De La Iglesia, he also made films for Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jess Franco! Lyon, while ostensibly renowned psychiatrist Sorel's girl, moonlights as a serial-killer of males between the ages of 17 and 25 (though her reasons for running amok are attributed to the traumatic death of the girl's parents in childhood, it is never quite clear why she targets that particular age group, one of whom she ensnares by outbidding him at an auction for the very first edition of the "Flash Gordon" comic-strip!) and, therefore, according to news reports, the murderer must be a homosexual! Conversely, Mitchum is one of the four members of the afore-mentioned "Droog"-like anarchists who falls foul of his team-mates and, to earn some cash on the side, takes to blackmailing Lyon (whom he had unwittingly spied while disposing of a body: she often affects disguises herself – as a mature woman or a man! – to lure her victims, who include a macho publicity guy modeling underwear on TV, linking the film, as do the entire lady-killing scenario and the overriding influence of TV, to the recently-viewed THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA {1976}). Eventually, Mitchum's former friends beat him up and he is hospitalized and, ironically enough, put in Lyon's care…but, in eliminating him there, she also gives herself away – to Sorel's obvious horror.

Given my rewarding experience so far with the filmography of Eloy De La Iglesia (on a side-note, that of Alex, who is not a relation, is no less intriguing but somewhat less consistent), I opted to acquire yet one more effort i.e. his adaptation of Henry James' classic – and much-filmed – ghost story THE TURN OF THE SCREW (1985), but which I was unable to include in the "Halloween Challenge" that has just come to an end.

When I picked up "Una gota de sangre para morir amando" (called "Murder in a Blue World" in English), I think that the box loosely said something about it being a Spanish "Clockwork Orange". It turns out that the movie is a total rip-off of "A Clockwork Orange" (to the point where they even mention "ACO" in a scene right before a motorcycle gang attacks). The main plot has young nurse Sue Lyon luring men to their dooms...just for the hell of it, apparently. What makes this world so blue?! Aside from the plot, the other Kubrick connection is "Lolita". There's of course the ex-nymphet Sue Lyon, but one scene even shows a person holding Vladimir Nabokov's novel! For the most part, it wouldn't be fair to compare this movie to any of Kubrick's movies. It's an OK way to pass time. The only real downside is that Sue Lyon doesn't do any full frontal nude scenes (in this sort of movie, she should have). Also starring Chris Mitchum (Robert's son).