Danza Macabra Volume Three: The Spanish Gothic Collection

Horror is the same in English and Spanish

I’m not sure I’d call all four of the films “gothic” in this new 4K Blu-ray collection from Severin Films — basically the Criterion Collection of horror —but they’re weird, entertaining and all movies I’d never so much as heard of let alone seen.

The subgenre Spanish gothic is a lot like Italian gothic (i.e., Mario Bava’s 1960 Black Sunday, Pupi Avati’s 1976 The House with Laughing Windows) but in Spanish. The sensibilities otherwise are remarkably similar. Gothic horror in general embodies a baroqueness from which emerges anxiety, dread and, most of all, a feeling of underlying disorder about to take hold any moment. Plots are often labyrinthine, and formal institutions often have no power here. Gothic horror can take place in either present-day or period settings — the term “neo-gothic” to me seems like unnecessary hairsplitting; neo-Nazis are Nazis. I find that Spanish and Italian gothic horror differ from their less Romantic counterparts due to a distinctive moody luridness … and to my eye, the Italians tend to go for the more drenched, saturated color palette as well as an over-the-top panache — they crank it up to undici.