THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (EL ANGEL EXTERMINADOR) (1962) B/W 91m dir: Luis Bunuel

w/Silvia Pinal, Jacqueline Andere, Jose Baviera, Augusto Benedico, Antonio Bravo, Xavier Masse, Ofelia Montesco, Nadia Haro Oliva, Javier Loya, Ofelia Guilmain

From The Movie Guide: "One of the greatest masterworks of a giant of cinema. A brilliantly pointed blitzkrieg on bourgeois values and organized religion from the master of iconoclastic assault, Luis Bunuel, this deceptively simple film works with consummate artistry and uncompromising irony.

"The allegorical story tells of a group of upper-class dinner guests who, for no apparent reason, find themselves incapable of leaving the sitting room at the end of the party. Days and days pass, and their well-mannered facades are torn down by the animalistic qualities they harbor inside themselves. One guest (Bravo) dies and is irreverently stuffed into a cupboard; a pair of lovers (Masse and Montesco) commit suicide; a believer in witchcraft (Oliva) hallucinates and brings forth demons; an incestuous brother and sister (Loya and Guilmain) steal morphine from a cancer-ridden guest. Making mincemeat of a stray sheep at one point, they later contemplate cannibalism to stay alive. After memorable encounters with a bear and a child, they do escape, but Bunuel has similar fun in store at a cathedral.

"The theme of entrapment in a hell of our own making --- one fashioned largely of social conventions and traditions --- is a familiar one in literature, but it has never been more successfully rendered in visual terms. Bunuel's subjective, surreal imagery recalls the outspoken savagery of L'AGE D'OR 30 years earlier. Like no other director, Bunuel has continually aimed at the faces of the bourgeois the swiftest of blows, and in this film he is in top form. Lacking the softness of his similar Oscar-winning THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL brandishes a bitter hilarity almost unequaled in the history of cinema."