Rethinking values through the prism of comedy To count the comedies in the filmography of the legend of the Spanish (and, perhaps, European) horror Paul Nashy will be enough fingers of one hand. Still, the heart of Jacinto Molina from early childhood was given to the genre of horror films, which he loved selflessly and to which he gave all his strength without a trace. But there was a period in his life and work when, after the death of dictator Franco and the abrupt change of political regime in Spain, the actor found himself at a crossroads. Later, he recalled that at this moment he experienced a creative and life crisis, which ended in a severe heart attack after the failure in 1987 of the painting “The Devil’s Howl”, which was supposed to become the quintessence of his creative path, but was misunderstood neither by the public nor by criticism. But the decade before that, which almost became a tragic incident for Nesha, turned into a painfully long period of reassessment of political, moral and simply life values, during which the artist, openly sympathetic to fascism, slowly and with great difficulty tried to convince himself of the values of the victorious democracy.
But I don’t seem to have convinced him. Otherwise, a year after the penitential-confessional Last Kamikaze, in which Molina-director through Nashy-actor publicly renounced his fascist beliefs, the ironic-bitter satire Operation Mantis. Satire, under the guise of a careless parody of spy comics, causticly ridiculing the falsity of "democratic" society and "advanced" public ideas. And the point here is not so much in the main storyline, in which the idea of feminism is brought to the point of absurdity, but in the details, not immediately striking, but, following one another, gradually developing into a picture, because of which today the film could easily be obstructed. For all these “Blancanieves” from the protagonist to the black “Gerillero”; as if accidentally dropped by another character racist jokes; outright banter about North American “greatness”; teasing about “persons of homosexual orientation”. It seems in passing, almost by accident – but collected together such episodes are very frank about the skepticism of the author of the picture in relation to new ideas and new values. Not because he doesn’t share them. I just don't believe they're shared by people in power.
So it's no surprise that, like most of Nashie's 80s films, Operation Mantis failed at the box office. After all, going to the cinema for an eccentric comedy, people want to laugh from the heart, and not fight with cockroaches from the consciousness of its author, who happily climb from each frame. Where to enjoy life! And an unfunny comedy is an unnecessary oxymoron. However, to call this picture “unfunny” would probably be an exaggeration. There are a lot of funny episodes and almost clown gags, although the skills of a comedy writer Molina, of course, lacked. The matter is different - in the general, rather painful and evil atmosphere of the film, turning it not so much into a parody of a particular genre, but a parody of the reality surrounding the author of the tape. Hence the gloomy jokes (especially the poor Tashi – a gift that the Japanese produced the picture of their countrymen), and some hopelessly dull atmosphere in which laughter literally gets stuck in the throat.
No, Operation Mantis is not a bad movie. Rather, inappropriate to the stated genre. Within its framework, the trio of comic superagents had to “burn out” against the background of untempered villains without any second thoughts. In fact, the adventures of superagent Sam Stevenson, pseudo-couturier Marcello Antonelli and the “Marlin” blonde Allison Love turn into a series of feuilletons that have not lost their relevance today, but still pretty “loading” the viewer with their relevance. Let’s face it, Juliusz Machulsky, who shot his “Sex Mission” about the same topic a couple of years earlier, hit the target with much greater accuracy than Jacinto Molina, who shot at random. And the girls were much more sexy.
There was no actor like Juan José López Vázquez. The great (without exaggeration) Spanish master of reincarnation could play both a killer maniac, and a tragicomic klutz, and a sneaky crook. He looked organically in a psychological thriller, and in an eccentric comedy, and in a touching melodrama. In Molina, López Vázquez played two main roles: a poor musician who gives the last to his son in My Friend is a Tramp; and a middle-sex couturier who works for the secret service in Operation Mantis. And in both, he was fantastic. A hurricane named Marcello Antonelli saves the picture where it is pulled to the bottom organically unable to mix horror maestro Paul Neshi and just present in the frame Swedish Anna Karin. Not alone, of course. There are enough good acting works here - and the faithful friend of Neshi Julia Sali in the role of the main villain, and the eccentric Paloma Sela, and hara comedian Sasa in the image of the cynical chief of counterintelligence. They may not be able to convince that Jacinto Molina was a great comedian, but make his evil and overly personal satire a little more accessible to the general public, reconciled with the message that its author tried to convey to the world, and most importantly to himself.