José Sirgado is a low-budget filmmaker whose heroin addiction distorts his perspective of the real world. Although he is a depressed and unstable individual, his mood improves when he receives the mysterious films of Pedro, with whom he shares his passion for cinema.
Wafer factory-owner P. Tinto and his wife Olivia want a child of their own more than anything else in the world. Years of trying, however, have left them with nothing but a pair of extraterrestrial midgets living in the spare bedroom. When they decide to try adoption, a series of misroutings and chance encounters results in an escaped adult mental patient arriving at their door with adoption papers in hand. P. Tinto and Olivia accept this without question and welcome him in as their son. Can this family arrangement work?
Teodoro, a Spanish engineer working as a professor in the United States, returns to Spain to enjoy a sabbatical year.
The Way They Were is a Spanish Drama starring Antonio Banderas
Adaptation of a novel by Pedro García Montalvo that tells a story of destructive passion conditioned by social components that takes place during the 1940s.
An ex-convict, troubled by dreams that he strangles women, is hired as the caretaker on an estate owned by three very strange sisters. Soon after his arrival, a serial killer begins slaughtering blonde, blue-eyed women - and leaving their eyeballs in a bowl of water.
In Medieval France a warlock is beheaded and his wife is tortured and executed. Hundreds of years later, an isolated group of people discover his head buried on their property. Soon it comes back to life, possessing people and using them to commit sacrifices and to search for the rest of his body.
Matacanes dies and goes to heaven just to discover that it was not as he expected, and everyone there is revolutionized lately. Peter explains that God was concerned about the progress of the world, and decided to send a second son to Earth. However, Jesus hears and does not agree, as they would have to rewrite history.
The brain of a male engineer is transplanted into a female’s body. He soon finds it very frustrating to cope with the daily sexist discrimination most women deal with. For example, he is surprised when no one will hire a female engineer. When he is faced with dealing with female sexuality, he quickly begins exhibiting lesbian tendencies.
A hit man working for the Yakuza double crosses his employers and flees with a cache of diamonds from the latest heist. Injured and hiding in the mountain regions of Spain, with Japanese assassins in hot pursuit, he takes refuge in the home of a local doctor and his two daughters who nurse him back to health and hide him from his pursuers, taking drastic and murderous measures to protect him... for they have plans of their own in store for their current guest.
A couple of English tourists arrive at the island of Almanzora, off the Spanish Mediterranean coast, where they discover that there are no adults in a small fishing village, only some children who stare at them and smile mysteriously.
In a small Spanish town, during the Christmas holidays, a group of rich old ladies organize a peculiar event that consists of inviting a homeless person to sit down to dinner at their wealthy table. Plácido, a humble worker, is hired by the organizers to participate in a parade with his three-wheeled vehicle, a seemingly simple mission that will not be easy for him to accomplish.
Temeroso, an elderly nursing home resident, reminisces about his younger years, when he possessed a singular sense of rhythm and a special intuition, unique abilities that enabled him to become the chief detective inspector of Prim's Household Appliances.
An Indian mystic uses magical chants to raise women from the dead, then sends them out to perform revenge killings for him.
Emilio is an executive in his thirties who is driven to set up an abandoned factory with the participation of a variety of quirky characters. For it, agrees to carry a suitcase with 40 million pesetas inside.
In order to solve economic problems, "Leguineche" family decide to move to France with their limited belongings.
After the death of General Franco, the Leguineche family leaves their estate of Los Tejadillos, where they have remained for decades in voluntary exile, with the purpose of returning to Madrid to actively participate in the social events of the aristocracy and to get closer to the closest circle of the Spanish monarch. The obsession of the old marquis is centered on getting in touch with the most illustrious surnames, to ascend socially and to resume the pomp and courtly life that his family lost a long time ago. To this end, he decides to move into an old palace he owns, located in the center of the capital, but not before overcoming the difficulties posed by his wife, who deeply hates both her husband and her son. To regain control of the palace, the Marquis of Leguineche tries to handicap his wife, arguing an incurable mental illness, and then undertake a reform of the place in order to adapt it to aristocratic life.
A band of outlaws has assaulted the car that carries the state tax. Oswald, the most powerful man in Montana, is celebrating the success of the robbery as an accomplice steal to him $ 300,000. The sheriff is determined to get evidence against Oswald and to judge. All suspect that Roger seeks the sheriff protection, promising evidence against Oswald.
"Total" opens the trilogy that close "Amanece que no es poco" and "Así en el Cielo como en la Tierra" Year 2598. Three days ago, the world has come to the end in London, a lost and a small Castilian village atmosphere. Lorenzo, a shepherd, tells a series of extraordinary events that have been announcing the end of the world: the cows want to go to school, walls crumble, or Doña Paquita appears in the most unexpected places ..
South of France, XIX century. Alfredo de Quiroga, a Spanish gentleman in exile, is reluctant to admit that Vera, his wife, has died. Very concerned, begins to rebuild its surroundings as if she were still alive. The objects, dialogues, gestures ... again everything is back to make sense to him. Even his faithful butler rests on this fiction. But one day, by accident, he meets the daughter of the notary and his world begins to crumble.
After a robbery at a bingo hall, Azucena, the girlfriend of one of the thieves, decides to seize the money for herself. On the run she stumbles upon Verónica, the manager of a nursing home that wants a cut in exchange of helping her to evade the criminals and the cops.
A famous composer creative in crisis and must compose a new album, but is going through a painful separation that prevents him from concentrating. In this situation, your manager will provide a time extension
A man's body turns up on a Barcelona beach with a message tattooed on his arm: "I was born to revolutionize hell". Detective Pepe Carvalho is put in charge of the case, taking him from the back streets of Barcelona to the Amsterdam canals, with no effect whatsoever on his peculiar investigation methods.
After a heartbreaking miscarriage, a couple adopts a stray male dog in hopes of saving their rocky marriage. But as the wife develops an obsessive bond with her new companion, it will trigger jealousies and rivalries that may lead to the most inconceivable act of all.
A peculiar family, which owns a nougat factory, decides to set out on a trip to Madrid in order to advertise its products in a Food Fair. Besides the disapproval from the family head and company founder, events are not as expected.
One of the presidential candidates whose main campaign promise to end crime. When a day come back home with his wife, found the lifeless body of her son who had come to steal. The young man was a drug addict, just with what the candidate wants to end. So he decided hide his body until elections are for the matter not to spill his candidacy.
Don Luis is the owner of an industry and all his family work in it, allowing he to become a staunch patriarch.
Portabella’s first feature, co-scripted by poet Joan Brossa, became one of the most influential works of the Barcelona avant-garde, although like all his early films, it circulated only in an underground fashion. Eschewing dialogue, the director constructs a non-narrative story in fragments that reveal the daily lives of an adulterous couple interspersed with a cryptic stream of unrelated imagery. The title of this homage to directors including Eisenstein, Antonioni, Bergman, and Buñuel refers to the 29 “black years” of the Franco dictatorship. — chicago.cervantes.es
A film buff can't watch his videos in peace as he is disturbed by his clingy girlfriend and noisy neighbours. He will take drastic measures to get them to shut up for once and for all.
A woman uselessly insists on entertaining a man by telling him stories that don’t interest him as much as his works. A film about the impossibility of telling a story that, to this end, concentrates on the story of two people who have a relationship that is destined to fail.
Ana is a middle aged woman who many years ago decided to start a new life in Paris. Now she must return to her hometown after the death of her parents, since they have left her an inheritance. There she meets Laura, her only sister, with whom she has to share the money received and, especially, an old house located in the center of Guadalajara. Now, the two women will have to leave the differences and problems behind that have arisen in the past to catch up and recover the fraternal relationship. Written by lament
A few days ago, Lucia (Assumpta Serna) receives anonymous letters in which he is forced to perform certain actions that she accepts without question. Her current boyfriend, Arthur (Xabier Elorriaga), suspects the mysterious sender can be Lucia's former lover, whose strange death never reached clarified. Now it's time it's Arthur who put the cards on the table to get to the bottom of it.
In a castle, somewhere in the Thirld World, Diaz is delirious, dreaming of the power he had in Eldorado, while oppressing the indians, workers and peasants. He is well aware of the menace his old victims represent, while a miracle-making shepherd fascinates and frightens him. Diaz finds a countrywoman, symbol of purity, and prepares a ceremony in his castle resembling his own funeral.
Forty-two-year-old Lorenzo finds himself out of work. Through an ad placed in the local newspaper, he gets a job as a helping hand for an aging homosexual poet who can barely manage on his own. From this moment on, Lorenzo juggles his strange line of work with the life he leads alongside his long-suffering wife and his secret encounters with Faustina, his lover. Everything goes awry from one day to the next due, amongst other things, to some compromising photos and an unexpected funeral.
Hans, a German director, is in Madrid to film a television production about the capital and the Civil War, 50 years after it occurred. Accompanied by Lucía, his editor, and Goyo, his cinematographer, he films shots of the modern city, searching for spaces and people related to its past. At the same time, he views materials related to the past. In this search, Hans questions the point of his project, and disagrees with his producers until he discovers a project that he is passionate about.
A sailor escapes a mutiny on his ship and finds himself stranded on a jungle island--with a tribe of gorgeous amazon women.
On an island buffeted by storms, the seamen are confined with no desire to abandon the life by the sea. They spend days and nights drunk in the tavern. The young woman who serves them has one desire: to go far away. This sets the stage for a musical in the open, and will frame a story of love and adventure, reminiscent of the director's film Aoom.
Without a family, penniless and separated from her sister, a beautiful chaste woman will have to cope with an endless parade of villains, perverts and degenerates who will claim not only her treasured virtue but also her life.
Persecuted by her controlling ex-husband, Rosa plots an escape
Tenacity and perseverance are qualities of a good bill collector. You can reach any remote place on Earth, even some other planet in the solar system.
As in the novel of the same title from Camilo Jose Cela, "La Colmena" is a sad composition with the stories of many people in the Madrid of 1942, just the postwar of the spanish civil war. The main theme of the film is the contrast between the poets, surviving close to misery under the Franco's regime, and the winners of the war, the emerging class of the people that makes easy money with illegal business.
A rich businessman, Julián, runs a foundation that seeks cures for people with disabilities or abnormalities. During one experiment he finds an extraordinary being, but it is just a mirage, as cerebral abnormalities begin to appear, and the being does not want to return to its primitive state.
The frustration and vital weariness of Michel des Assantes, a prestigious plastic surgeon in Paris, is unbearable: he has a wife whom he does not love, a son who is foreign to him and friends whom he despises but, at the same time, he is incapable of taking his own life. One day, he buys a bike from a bizarre cyclist who was to make the Paris-Timbuktu route and sets out to make the journey: then, Timbuktu becomes for him the Promised Land.
A catalan manufacturer of intercoms travels to Madrid, accompanied by his mistress, to attend a hunt that he has organized. Its main purpose is to mix with people of high society to improve their business. All seems well until the owner of the farm shows full authority over James, who is the real organizer of the meeting. The celebration is diverse characters who live next to absurd situations.
Bernabe (José Sacristán) works as an artistic director for a publicity firm but his avocation is fawning after his bosses, sleeping with whomever might advance his career, and ignoring his wife. Life continues on in this vein until he meets a young model whom he invites up to his boss's temporarily vacant country house, pretending the house belongs to him. Not very far away, bulldozers and other machinery are clearing the beautifully wooded area so construction can start on an amusement park. Little does Bernabe realize that his potential new conquest is a seriously fanatical environmental advocate, and she arrives at the house with friends, gets Bernabe high and "out of it," and then she and her friends proceed to trash the construction machinery. Once Bernabe comes around again, he finds out what has happened, loses heart for his planned sexual escapade, and begins to appreciate his wife for the first time.
Portrait of the life of an amateur boxer, who falls into the hands of a cruel manager while turning into professional.
A busload of tourists stops in to visit a small European town. What they don't know is that the town is completely inhabited by vampires.
A group of young amateurs participants in chats begin a risky game, attracted by the mysterious personality of a surfer. In one of these adventures, one of them dies. Then begins a nightmare of suspicion between them.
Ends the season and Victoria, widow, mature and owns the beachside motel, does not want to spend another winter alone. To avoid it, buy the company of Paul to continue working for her. Paul agrees, provided remain free and enjoy other women. Days after reaching the motel Gloria, a beautiful biologist who claims to be working on a book and, to the surprise of Paul, seems to know everything about Victoria and her past.
A family, expelled from their shack, occupies the museum in Cordoba where once lived the prince who, in his youth, was the grandmother's lover. The curators and administrators of the museum, aided by a couple of inexperienced policemen, harass the squatters to force them to leave.
Once upon a time, there was an empire where the sun never set. This empire had a court. This court had a king, but this king had no heir. They married the king, who understood that copulation was a duty of state and attempted it with exemplary dedication, but failed. The entire court, from the nobility to the jesters, gets down to work, sparing no means or methods, to produce the desired heir, and they reach a conclusion: the king has been bewitched and needs be exorcised.
The story concerns an actor who is unhappy with life and decides to separate from his body and integrate his mind into a doll. When his body dies, a group of characters search the countryside to find the doll.
Raquel's not able to have children, so she and her boyfriend manipulate another young woman into bearing his child.
Miguel is a young Spanish naval engineer in love with an American student of History of Art. When she becomes pregnant, she decides that the easiest solution to her situation is to marry her civilly. However, in Spain in the 1970s, prior to the passage of the Divorce Law, the only way to do so is to apostatize the Catholic Church. For Miguel, a believing devotee, taking this step involves a deep inner conflict.
Count Dracula's pregnant granddaughter arrives at his castle, along with her husband, who is not a vampire. While she prepares to give birth to a new member of the Dracula line, her husband secretly launches into a series of affairs with the Count's resident "brides."
During the Spanish Civil War a platoon of mismatched Republican soldiers cross the front-line to steal the bull that the enemy is going to fight on the local holiday of the nearby village. In addition to ruining the Nationalist faction's celebration they want the animal in order to butcher it and feed their famished troops. They get caught in the process and have to go through a series of funny and pathetic incidents before they can get back to their side.
A group of homosexual friends tries to set up a gay club in a town in Andalusia, meeting the opposition of the chief who will use all his resources to try to prevent it.
A bizarre cult that practices a ritual of sacrificing humans terrorizes a young doctor and his wife, who have just moved to the group's village.
Four part anthology horror film, with segments featuring witchcraft, ghosts, Frankenstein and his monster, and ancient Christians battling Celtic vampires.
A powerless man finds a solution to a childhood trauma.
A film team arrives at a more authentic and old square in Madrid to shoot a film. The area is full of children, working families and simple people who see the cinema as something unattainable. From his balcony, Paloma, does not lose detail of the shooting, nor of the movements of the gallant, for which he feels a strong attraction.
La Raulito travels to Madrid when she gets out of jail in Argentina to carve out a better future. Once in the Spanish capital, she participates in a documentary recounting his experience as a patient in a psychiatric hospital.
Cebrian, a blast furnace worker Asturian, being held at the Civil Guard barracks. There has to be accountable for the disasters in a day of party with two friends.
In a restaurant they're preparing a grand banquet in honor of a sports association of anglers, but several circumstances seem to have conspired to boycott the event.
Following the Spanish Civil War, a man goes into hiding to avoid arrest by the victorious Nationalist forces.
In the Headquarters of the T.I.A. (Terminal Intelligence Agency), someone has stolen Professor Bacterio's most dangerous invention, the D.O.T. (Demoralizer of Troops), an artifact that ends up in the hands of a very short, wacky dictator who is ready to use it for criminal purposes. The T.I.A Chief, though, is firm in his resolve: if he wants to get the D.O.T. back, he must NOT count on his agents Mortadelo & Filemon. But when the crime fighting duo discover that the T.I.A. has engaged a cocky and slimy detective from outside the agency, they decide to act at their own risk, even if that risk involves all of Humanity.
Ditirambo never smiles, always tells the truth and ruthlessly carries out all the missions entrusted to him. The widow of a writer orders him to locate the former lover of her husband with the purpose of getting revenge on her.
Sister Patrocinio is a nun who is stigmatized by Christ in her hands and feet. Although some believe in this mystical fact, others suspect of manipulation and take it to the court of justice.
July 1, 1888. The body of a woman is discovered during a house fire, but the examination reveals that she died victim of a stabbing, not the flames. Her maid and pet dog are found drugged in another room.
Antonio is married to a very wealthy woman but the sole heir of the family fortune is his daughter. He induce his dying wife to swear in the daughter of remaining "chaste and pure" ( so that she cannot marry ) until his own death.
Patricia (Mijanou Bardot) is a wealthy party girl who is bored with her jet-set lifestyle and friends. She gets in her car and drives off into the mountains in search of a new thrill. When two men wreck and burn her car, she joins them in their mountaineering life. She sleeps with one man, but jealousy ensues and she leaves for swinging London town with the other man. Eventually the men end up back in the mountains as the profoundly disturbed Patricia packs a loaded gun and goes after them both.
Baldiri, a farmer on the Catalan coast, is reluctant to sell his garden, where they want to build a tourist hotel. Through a stratagem, they convince him and sell the land. Loaded with money and after a series of experiences, he realizes that that life is not what he wants, he abandons everything and goes to live in the mountains.
In this film Paul Naschy embodies the Roman general Agrippa Vipsanio in a fierce battle against the tribal leaders Cantabrians, Corocota. Fierce battles, gladiators fighting, adventure and intrigue in this film as in the Roman conquest of Hispania.
Daniel is a member of The Organization. He is sent on an assignment to Bilbao to determine what has become of a lad his age, a former member. He takes over the boy's room in an odd rooming house. When he is given the photo of the boy's girlfriend, he is so taken with it that he puts off his quest. The Organization requires him to continue, however, so he tracks her down to a remote fishing village.
David (Mark Stevens) is a physician who returns to Spain 30 years after his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Now a member of a medical convention, he looks up old friends and finds his former lover, now a married woman with a flamenco-dancing daughter. He and the daughter (Manuela Vargas) have an immediate and mutual attraction to each other. He considers running away with the exotic beauty before asking his wife to join him for an extended vacation after the convention .
After a long absence, Ulises, a theatrical author, returns to his home to be with his wife, Carlota, and their son. However, upon arriving in Madrid he discovers that Carlota has become a great theater actress and that she is sentimentally united to Miguel, a renowned playwright who copies the comedies that Ulysses himself had written.
In 1939, in a French prison camp, José Garcés of the defeated Spanish Republican army raises the spirits of his fellow prisoners by telling the story of the year he was 8 years old, 1911, in a small town in northeastern Spain. He was a rascal, baffling his father, always in trouble, and in love with Valentina, a neighbor girl. On his roof top at night he sends semaphore messages to her. He writes poems. He gets them into trouble, killing her father's breeding pigeons. When the two families camp at a decaying castle, his tutor, a sympathetic priest, tells him about the most valiant men, the saints, the heroes, and the poets. Already a poet, he learns a lesson about being a hero.
A group of friends finds a dilapidated place and decide to repair it, paint it and live in it in communal plan. The problem is the bank, owner of the premises, does not want them occupied so they threaten to call the police to evict them.
A conflicted youth confesses to crimes he didn't commit while a man and woman aroused by death become obsessed with each other.
A prison in Valencia hosts an event recognizing political prisoners jailed during Franco’s reign. The reunion proves more raucous than the organizers intended.
Somebody has decided to celebrate New Year's Eve 2011 in a very twisted way - by dressing as a nun and brutally dismembering a little old lady. Lt. Arribas, a bald, toothless, one-eyed and lonely detective is called in on the case. His investigations lead him to the door of renegade Doctor Werner, who tells him the strange story of "The Beautiful Otero" the most beautiful woman in the world (former Spanish model Galera) who, before Werner s miraculous surgery, was the ugliest woman in the world! But Lt. Arribas now has a new problem - he is falling in love at a distance with his principle suspect who, because of her traumatic childhood, is planning her vengeance - to sabotage the Miss Spain Beauty Pageant, leaving behind her a trail of dead beauty queens. A super-slick science fiction thriller with a dark and bizarre finale.
Enrique Vila-Matas directed in 1969 a black and white short film entitled "All the sad young people". The copy was lost and today there are only a few photographs of the shooting. In 1970 he directed his second work, "End of Summer", played by Maria Reniu, Luis Ciges and Yvonne Sentís and photographed by Xabier Miserachs. The film was premiered at the Benalmádena festival in 1971. The second exhibition took place 39 years later at The Peripheral Film Festival (S8) in La Coruña in a program dedicated to opere prime of filmmakers of the Spanish transition and which had as title: "Peter Pan in the cinema of the Spanish transition"
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.
Faustino Briones is a hardline Falangist who, unhappy with the changes in Spain and after mounting several scandals in his work, is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Without waiting for him, he begins to interact with the nuns of the place, but especially with one, Sr. Angustias with whom he is beginning to feel things
Mercedes (Neus Asensi) Mariángeles (Ana Risueño) and Carmen (Miriam Diaz Aroca) need to escape something: the stress of the job, a divorce or a gray and boring existence. And all three are looking for something: a love affair in an exotic country. The destination is Tunisia, land of contrasts, from the deserts and beaches. But far from land into a paradise unprecedented journey undertaken with a group of quirky characters.
Antoñito is a bachelor who works in a cabaret as a clarinetist. He has put an advertisement in the newspaper, looking for a good and honest girl, and to which responds Rocío, who escapes from her native Córdoba to hide the embarrassment of her pregnancy. The coexistence with the naive clarinetist, who refuses the insinuations of a co-worker dedicated to prostitution, who idolizes his deceased mother and keeps as a relic the orthopedic leg of his late father, is not easy. The other men will tend their ties around Rocío, that makes way in the world of the spectacle pretending to be blind. When she can no longer conceal that she is pregnant, Antoñito decides to give his name to the fruit of sin.
Antonio Castro, Sinatra, is a fighter of life working in an old cabaret in Barcelona imitating Frank Sinatra, accompanied in his show by Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich and Lola Flores. But one day, the sky dresses in gray for him; his wife, who works as a waitress in the same place, decides to leave him.
In this lighthearted crime comedy, Nicolas is a Barcelona ice cream vendor who inadvertently helps a friend who has just committed a robbery. He is chased by several shady underworld characters trying to get their hands on the stolen loot.
In Madrid, during the postwar, Miguel, decide to live supported by women. He has two workers who doesn´t make much headway, for that reason, advised by one of his friends, he decides to go to other town to find a young girl, naive but ambitious in order to take her to the city and make her work.
Paco and Lisa flee to Barcelona in a stolen car with the intention of building a future in show business. After unsuccessfully looking for work, the two youngsters will be immersed in crime and prostitution.
A publisher of novels begins to receive packets containing macabre: members of a female corpse. The appearance of a mysterious woman who seems related packages will lead to a situation of dramatic denouement.
Julian is a womanizer who has affairs with several girls at once. To escape the clutches of a cuckolded husband, he is forced to dress as a woman and join a women's professional football team, posing as a famous athlete in Argentina. This is the beginning of a series of deranged adventures.
A work of Valle-Inclán, the story takes place in Galicia in the early twentieth century. To escape poverty, the wife of a sacristan uses a hydrocephalic child as a sideshow attraction. This causes a confrontation with her sister-in-law.
The life of Juan de Dios and his struggle against social, political and religious structures.
Leo Pozas, native from Burgos and high bank clerk, arrives to a town on the Costa Brava, with his mother to marry Loli. Unexpectedly, Leo's mother died. This may mean the suspension of the wedding, a year of mourning and, perhaps, another relief, so that Leo and Loli hide the corpse of the old betrothal until after the wedding...
A bounty hunter named Arizona helps a group of beleaguered farmers in their fight against a large landowner named Austin Styles and his gang of outlaws.
During the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, young, wealthy Lluis de Serracant leads a double life: by day he's a lawyer, and by night he's a transvestite performer known to his fans as "Flower of Autumn".
Spain, 1950s. The corpse of an unknown person appears in the town square of Bocentellas, within the mythical territory of Región. The inhabitants will ask for help to Captain Medina, young officer in command of a nearby military fort, until the arrival of the judge.
Spain, 1940s. While returning to Madrid by train, Paca, a chorus girl who aspires to join a prestigious company, meets Luis, a young man of helpless appearance.
Luisa's daughter attempted suicide. While attending the clinic and, contemplating the state of his daughter, Luisa recalls the early happy years of her marriage to Pedro, a popular and friendly sports journalist. Soon after came the first deception of her husband.
In Galicia, in northern Spain, Malvís, a frustrated day laborer who, fed up with his life, has become a clumsy bandit, tries to make a name for himself by robbing travelers passing through a forest inhabited by colorful characters.
Two unmarried siblings live together without problems until the day a friend leaves her baby in their apartment because she does not have time to take care of him.
Eleven years ago Fernando Tobajas, a man of a certain age, decided to live in the bathroom, in which he created a small apartment, and never leaves it. Tobajas has given up everything except vanity, and his contacts with the world are reduced to visits from friends and messages sent through the toilet inside aspirin tubes in the hope that someone will receive them and know about his existence. Arabel Lee, a beautiful girl, finds one of those messages.
This excellent short film written by the magnificent filmmaker duo of Luis García Berlanga and screenwriter Rafael Azcona was to be part of a series entitled Los Pícaros (The Rogues) which was never continued. These two artists were responsible for such masterpieces of Spanish cinema as Plácido and El verdugo (The Executioner). Here, Berlanga and Azcona collaborated for the first time, setting the stage for the post-war "Berlanguiana" vision that would develop. José Luis López Vázquez plays Julián, a seedy swindler, who with his cronies tries to sell a streetcar to a rich but naive farmer, a newcomer to the city. High jinx ensue. With this film begins the great stage of Berlanga's filmmaking in which he mixes a little social criticism and notes of anti-clericalism with a great deal of farce.
In the early Spanish Civil Post-war, in Madrid, during the most hard times of the Franco dictatorship, a group of second-rate players try to get out of their wretched lives taking advantage of the artistic caprices of the son of a rich man who supports the regime. They try to stage a Pre-war 'zarzuela' (a sort of Spanish operetta), 'La Corte Del Faraón', which ironically, thirty years later, is too obscene for the regime censorship. They finally manage to perform the 'zarzuela' but end up in the police station where they confirm that justice depends on which side are you on
Dawn in Madrid. In the Plaza de la Cibeles begins the daily grind. The statue of the goddess, from its source in the center of the square tells the story of a man, petty speculator, owner of an old building that is going to ask Saint Nicholas for his cooperation to make it sink, and thus be able to lift a twelve-story modern building. But the inhabitants of the block have also implored the Saint to prevent this from happening.
Andrés, a young provincial who became blind during his childhood, comes to the capital with the possibility of having a transplant and recovering his sight. Upon arrival, he stays with an old friend of the family, Rogelio Molinos, who lives with his daughter Marisol. Soon a relationship is established between the two young people that makes Andrés conceive false illusions.
An array of outrageous people, including a desperate nymphomaniac and a terrorist with an acute sense of smell, seek love and happiness in Madrid.
Pablo is a twenty-year-old man who wants to be a musician in order to be appreciated by his mother and find a male partner he can share his love with. He finds one, but because of his demanding behaviour, he is soon alone again. He tries to become a French horn player in the Youth Spain National Orchestra, but the examiner turns out to be his father, who's been living apart from his family and doesn't really accept Pablo's sexual trends. Once Pablo fails in his exam, he feels very depressed. When another French horn player from Valencia hasn't got a place to sleep, Pablo takes him home to his house. The next morning, however, he finds a girl named Salome inside of his bed.
Persecuted by her controlling ex-husband, Rosa plots an escape