Aborto criminal (1973) User Reviews

hard to believe

[cobas · 17 February 2002]

This is one of the worst Spanish movies ever made. A brief sketch of the subject (plot?) may give you some idea: a police lieutenant (Maximo Valverde) chases a net of illegal abortion practitioners. The clumsy storytelling is doomed by a childish moralistic symbology and a perpetuous, exhilarating soundtrack: a jazz-electric-organ arrangement of Bach's "St Matthew Passion". Iquino's camera language (movement, zoom in-out, etc) adds to the horrible flaws of this fine trash.

Watch this movie only if you're Spanish, with a special sense of humor and have a crush for really bad movies that make you laugh. It has some scenes that will make you stop your VCR so as not to die laughing.

this film requires contextualisation

[bpeb · 26 October 2009]

A needed perspective Whilst not disagreeing with all the previous harsh comments, a sense of historical perspective is useful when trying to understand, over thirty years later, a film made and released in 1973 and thus make the most of the experience. With this more cautious perspective cinema becomes a powerful reflection of the past in need of interpretation. Iquino made his first films during that potential Golden Age of Spanish Cinema in 1934. After the war he set up "film factories" in and around Barcelona, predominantly for crime films, usually made on small budgets within the limits of strict and, by our standards, frequently puerile censorship. As a producer, screenwriter and director he none the less often raised implicit questions about the imposed values of the regime and their frequent hypocritical implementations. The early seventies were socially very difficult and as political dissent became more vocal and violent in Spain and the authorities more repressive, so film censorship became more permissive in sexual matters perhaps to provide a safety valve for pent up testosterone and re-locate it from street protests to cinema theatres –period referred to as the "destape". Iquino is adapting to the changes with this criminal investigation of abortion practices, all illegal, with the presence of an affluent and limited hippie culture. The perspective adopted earned the film the official "Interés especial" –the seal of approval from the Establishment. Iquino, however, also points the finger at preferential treatments based on economic differences and the final sequence does raise the silent question, where does the responsibility lie? Were the real culprits found guilty? (Keep a discrete eye for the road-worker and his pneumatic drill.) It must also be remembered that the regime would not tolerate the representation of its police force as ever failing in its responsibilities (hence the power of José Antonio Zorrilla's 1983 "EI arreglo").