I had never heard of POPPERS (José María Castellví, 1984), until I came across it on the marvellous box set of Spanish ‘S’ classified films of the transition, EXORCISMO: DEFYING A DICTATOR AND RAISING HELL IN POST-FRANCO SPAIN. And it’s a discovery: a punk/new wave proto queer film made at the height of the Movida Madrileña. It’s about a punk musician who finds his girlfriend flirting with another guy during one of his sets and, before he knows it, he’s stabbed him. Cut to two years later when he’s mysteriously released from prison. It turns out the father of the boy he killed wants in turn to kill him. But not in any old way, no; he wants to organise a hunt, with a coterie of his most perverse rich industrialist friends as the hunters and with the young punk killer as the hunted. The film does posit a new generation out of control versus the old Francoist guard, steeped in power, privilege, and, in this film at least, perversion. In this type of film in this period, a beautiful woman wearing as little as possible is necessary to ensure financing and distribution. Giannina Facio, who later went on to wed Ridly Scott is that woman here, though she’s of so little interest to the main narrative that she’s dropped in as killer/accomplice, love interest and not given much else to do. Miguel Ortiz, whose first film this is, and who wears less than she does, is the punk and real object of the film’s desire: the narrative starts off with a close-up of his chest. The film is beautifully designed, steeped in queer S/M imagery, with surrealist touches (a horse giving birth in a palace, a church (Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral, before it was finished) decked out with 18th century furniture in which farm animals walk through, a herd of goats barely separated from mad dancers in the nightclub scenes. Castellví was a famous photographer of huge stars (Sara Montiel, Carmen Sevilla, etc) undressed for Interviu magazine as well as – for a while – Julio Iglesia’s personal photographer, so the film looks ravishing. It’s very interesting to consider it next to other queer films of the period such as LAW OF DESIRE (Almodóvar, 1987), which was also designed by Javier Fernández. The title has no bearing on the film except by association. It is the intoxicant most sniffed in gay nightclubs of that period. It’s not a great film, perhaps not even a good one, but few bring up the queer structure of feeling, even with its alibis and delusions, of that particular place and time better. It would make an interesting double-bill with Tony Scott’s THE HUNGER, which visually at least, looks like an influence. Alfredo Mayo, one of the icons of Francoist cinema, is the leader of the hunters.
José Arroyo