H6: Diario de un asesino

I thought that H6: Diary Of A Serial Killer was a good but brutal horror film. H6 tells the story of Antonio Frau, a serial killer set free after serving 25 years in jail for the murder of his girlfriend. After inheriting and old motel from a relative he never knew, he sees this as a place where he is able to do his tasks of relieving the grief of those who have lost the will to live. He takes his victims to room Number 6 in the motel where he 'purifies' them, while, at the same time, continues his everyday life next to his wife. I thought that this was a very brutal, but a good horror film. The film contained quite a lot of strong violence and torture.

Antonio Frau is a cold-blooded killer.Frau has just been released from prison after serving 14 years for killing his girlfriend.He has inherited a run-down former brothel from a late aunt and married Francisca,who he met through a dating service and started writing to while inside.He lures prostitutes,most of them drug addicts,into his hotel at night where he ties them to a table,tortures and rapes them for days then cuts them into pieces using a chainsaw."H6:Diary of a Serial Killer" is occasionally pretty grim,but mostly uninteresting serial killer movie.It is not as extremely intense as my all time favourite Austrian "Angst",but there are some mildly shocking moments including rapes and chainsaw dismemberment.Fernado Acaso is pretty believable as a misogynistic killer and there is a bit of gore.Give it a look.

Visually speaking, this film is stunning. It has some delightful black comedic moments. But on the whole, the plot is very clichéd, as is its seeming message. If you're a fan of over-the-top violence in mainstream movies like hostel or saw, you'll love it. If you're looking for something at all high-brow, steer away. I saw it as part of the edinburgh film festival 06, and I only chose it because I was looking for something disturbing. Ultimately, it isn't disturbing. Just grinding and unpleasant to sit through. If you genuinely want to be challenged, go see something like The Lost. If you want to be grossed out, or tell your friends about a really messed up film, then this is for you.

A man out of prison for strangling his girlfriend inherits an uninhabited "guest house" that had been used as a house of prostitution. Inspired by the unexpected gift and by real life serial killer Henri Désiré Landru, he prepares room 6 to starve, interrogate, humiliate, rape, and kill prostitutes he invites in from the street. He thinks he can somehow purify them, but his motives aren't all "good," as he's interested in money and fame for himself as well. Like Landru supposedly did, he keeps a detailed diary with Polaroid photographs (now a thing of the past) as evidence of his crime, since he manages to destroy all the other evidence he doesn't care to have discovered.

Meanwhile, he also manages to be a loving husband to his new wife, even tolerating her open affair with a doctor at her hospital where she is a nurse. The inspector who had arrested him for his first killing is the one who comes to suspect him of the recent ones.

There is plenty of blood spray in the movie, and some cannibalism, but the cuts themselves are not shown, so if that's your bag, you'll be disappointed. I found the movie to be engrossing enough and very well-shot for it to hold my attention.

With all the promising reviews warning about the morbidity & intense shock-value of this film, and especially with knowing what formed basic inspiration for the story , I can't help admitting I was a little disappointed after my viewing of "H6: Diary of a Serial Killer". Sure this Spanish effort is remotely gruesome and confronting, but not nearly as much as I expected (or hoped) and there are far more dull moments than shocking ones. As for the inspiration, the script (and even the main character Antonio Frau himself) often refers to Henri Landru. Landru was a French serial killer who murdered nearly a dozen of women during the years of World War one and carefully noted down his grim actions in a diary that eventually proved his guilt. Landru selected his victims randomly and killed without apparent motives, and maybe the character of Antonio Frau could have used a bit more sense of nihilism like that as well. His seemingly forced motives for killing young girls are (partly) what makes the film so implausible. Once freed from jail, where he did 15 years for murdering his girlfriend when he was a teenager, Antonio inherits an old and ramshackle motel in the middle of a prostitute-infested neighborhood. With his new wife working night shifts at the hospital, Antonio has plenty of free time to fulfill his new mission in life, namely the purification of sinners. He lures drug-addicted prostitutes to his motel and locks them up in room 6, where he rapes, humiliates and tortures them (talk about 'cleansing') before practicing his chainsaw dismembering skills on their scarcely dressed bodies. Antonio's modus operandi and motivations don't make the least bit of sense, but they do result in several nauseating and blood-soaked sequences. Totally gratuitous footage, of course, but suitably sadistic if you're interested in this type of cinema. But, like I mentioned before already, the film badly suffers from too many tedious moments as well. Antonio Frau really talks too much and insists on narrating all the things he writes down in his precious diary. Near the end of the movie and totally out of the blue, the script suddenly turns ambitious and actually attempts to make us believe the protagonist is a criminal mastermind, even more intelligent than the Jigsaw Killer or even Hannibal Lector. Yeah right. "H6: Diary of a Serial Killer" is nicely shot and benefices from macabre settings and a thoroughly grim ambiance. Fernando Acaso is fairly convincing as the twisted killer (at least during the first half of the film), Mariá José Bausá is bewitching as his voluptuous wife and Antonio Mayans (a Jess Franco regular!) makes a brief appearance as her lover. "H6" isn't nearly as sick and repulsive as some people claim, but nonetheless an interesting movie for Euro-horror fanatics to check out.