Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: The Devil's Backbone/El Espinoza del Diablo (2001) - The excellent Gothic genre-mix that is Del Toro's best film so far

4/07/2015

The Devil's Backbone/El Espinoza del Diablo (2001) - The excellent Gothic genre-mix that is Del Toro's best film so far

♥♥♥♥♥

One of the chilling posters for Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone

The boy Carlos arrives at an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. Among the complexities that he tries to navigate in his life there is the eerie ghost of a recently deceased boy.

Devil's Backbone is a sweepingly beautiful war horror drama about the haunted life in a war-torn orphanage, with great cinematography by Guillermo Navarro (Pacific Rim (2013)). The film is the result of an unusual and bold script by great Mexican director Guillermo del Toro (Blade II (2002)), Antonio Trashorras and David Muñoz (Holy Night! (2011), both).
The children act impressively well, and it is a highly effective plot with Carlos (Fernando Tielve (The Shanghai Spell/El Embrujo de Shanghai (2002))) and the ghost boy Santi (Junio Valverde (Shiver/Eskalofrío (2008))). Of the adult actors, the film also features fine turns from Spain's great Marisa Paredes (All About My Mother/Todo Sobre Mi Madre (1999)) as the institution's mysterious 'mother' with a strange prosthetic leg, Federico Luppi (Phase 7 (2010)) as her doctor husband and Eduardo Noreiga (Beauty and the Beast (2014)) as the vengeful caretaker. This is a solid, imaginative ghost story rich with details that makes it worth watching several times. It has a really soulful Spanish feel to it.
The Devil's Backbone is often compared to its director Toro's three-times Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth/El Laberinto del Fauno (2006), which is also a dark film about a child in war-torn Spain, but I find that Backbone is the better film of the two and still Toro's best film.
He has since its release grown to become one of the most prominent directors in the world with several huge upcoming projects: The first one to arrive will be the highly anticipated, hugely stylized gothic horror Crimson Peak (2015), which will be the director's first film since the kaiju movie Pacific Rim.

Related reviews:

Guillermo del Toro: Pacific Rim (2013) or, The Monster Resistance
Blade II (2002) or, The Vampire Ass-Kicker 2

Watch the strange American trailer for the film here, which, - characteristically (and ridiculously), - avoids revealing that Spanish is the spoken language in the film

Cost: 4.5 mil. $
Box office: 6.4 mil. $
= Big flop
[Despite being well-received critically, Devil's Backbone didn't make much money outside its native Spain, (where it made 3 mil. €.) It made 0.7 mil. $ (11 % of the total gross) in the US.]

What do you think of The Devil's Backbone?
Is it also your favorite Del Toro movie?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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4/07/2015

The Devil's Backbone/El Espinoza del Diablo (2001) - The excellent Gothic genre-mix that is Del Toro's best film so far

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