Director – Alex de la Iglesia, Screenplay – Alex de la Iglesia & Jorge Guerricaechevarria, Producers – Alex de la Iglesia, Roberto di Girolamo, Gustavo Ferrada & Juanma Pagazaurtundua, Photography – Jose L. Moreno, Music – Roque Baños, Digital Effects – Felix Berges, Special Effects – Molina Effectos Especiales S.L., Art Direction – Jose Luis Arrizabalaga & Arturo Garcia “Biaffra”. Production Company – Planet Pictures S.r.l./TVE Television Espanola/Canal + (Espana)/EITB/Ministerio de Cultura ICAA/Instituto de Credito Oficial/Panico Films S.L./Sogecine S.A..
Cast
Guillermo Toledo (Rafael Gonzalez), Monica Cervera (Lourdes), Luis Varela (Don Antonio Hernandez), Enrique Villen (Commissario Campoy), Fernando Tejero (Alonso), Javier Gutierrez (Jaime)
Plot
Rafael Gonzalez works as the head of womenswear at Yeyo’s department store in Madrid where he is a brilliant salesman. Rafael has affairs with every woman on his staff in the store after hours. Rafael is in heated competition with his rival Don Antonio, the head of menswear, for the prized job of overall floor manager. This is to be decided based on monthly sales figures at which Don Antonio is slightly ahead. At the last minute before sales close, Rafael persuades a middle-aged woman to buy a fur coat and wins. However, the woman’s cheque bounces and Don Antonio gets the job. Don Antonio takes the opportunity to humiliate and then fire Rafael. This erupts into a fight in the changing room, during which Don Antonio is impaled on a hook and killed. Rafael goes to dispose of the body in the furnace only to find that someone has taken it. This turns out to be the frumpy sales assistant Lourdes. She helps Rafael dispose of the body but demands that Rafael become her lover as price of her help. She starts to demand increasingly more, including getting rid of the pretty sales assistants and hiring only unattractive ones. As her demands grow, Rafael, aided by the ghost of Don Antonio, begins to think of disposing of her.
Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia has created a strong and watchable body of work since the 1990s. de la Iglesia has ventured into genre cinema a number of times with the gonzo science-fiction comedy Accion Mutante (1993), the Biblical end of the comedy The Day of the Beast (1995), the amazingly deranged Perdita Durango/Dance with the Devil (1997), the ghost story Films to Keep You Awake: The Baby’s Room (2006), the sf tv series Pluton B.R.B. Nero (2008-9), the circus psycho-thriller A Sad Trumpet Ballad (2010), the witch comedy Witching and Bitching (2013), The Bar (2017) with a group of strangers trapped inside a bar during the outbreak of a deadly infection, the occult and deviltry tv series 30 Coins (2020-23) and Veneciafrenia (2021) about tourists being stalked in Venice, as well as produced Venus (2022) for Jaume Balaguero. Outside of these de la Iglesia has made dark comedies such as Dying of the Laughter (1999), Common Wealth (2000), As Luck Would Have It (2011), My Big Night (2015) and Perfect Strangers (2017)
Ferpect Crime is another of Alex de la Iglesia’s Black Comedies. It is a film of very minor genre association – after being killed by Guillermo Toledo early in the show, rival Luis Varela turns up as a ghost (who is quite possibly in Toledo’s imagination), sitting as a severed head with a machete in it on a bar, enjoying popcorn with Toledo as they watch videos, and offering general advice.
Alex de la Iglesia has a comedic hand that is often delightfully wacky but can also overbalance into farce. Ferpect Crime sits just between the two. The film has a near flawless set-up – we meet Guillermo Toledo who lectures us on his go-getter outlook on life as he walks through the streets and then introduces us to the department store where the various beautiful co-workers are in admiration of him. We see him enjoying numerous affairs after hours and polishing his masterful salesman pitch on a middle-aged woman.
Rafael (Guillermo Toledo) with his partner in crime Lourdes (Monica Cervera)
Ferpect Crime is one of those films where you know that such a self-assured character is heading for a big fall and you sit back waiting for it to happen. And it works even though bearded mid-forties Guillermo Toledo doesn’t quite come across as the smooth charming playboy he is described as being. The fall comes and de la Iglesia takes us through the hilariously black twists as Toledo accidentally kills rival Luis Varela, tries to dispose of the body and it goes missing and then the introduction of his co-conspirator Monica Cervera and her increasing hold on him and making a misery of Toledo’s life.
However, not long after Monica Cervera is introduced, Ferpect Crime starts to head for fairly broad humour territory. This treads an uneven line between the amusing and far too broadly farcical. The material, one suspects, would be far more suited to directors like the Coen Brothers who would have mined everything for mercilessly black humour. Alex de la Iglesia doesn’t quite and there are times that what is amusing strays into becoming a belaboured and sometimes predictable joke.
