The first idea about "El día de la
bestia" (The Day of the Beast) belongs to a very old film project:
it was a sort of summary of the short stories by Lovecraft, in
which a studious old man discovered that Cthulhu was about to be
reborn from his own ashes and this announced the end of the world.
The old man had only a few days left to prevent it. The story
unfolds in Toledo, on the 1920s. Subsequently the first versions of
the script focused more on the University of Deusto, where a series
of crimes were committed and there was a satanic rector against
whom an old priest fought. But had a film been made on that basis,
it wouldn't have been so amusing; It would have been more shocking
and terrifying [...]
It was a matter of placing the spectator in Angel's perspective so
that together they might discover an apocalyptic city, a very
gloomy place, as fantastic as one might want it to be, but built
with elements taken from reality. To that end, we even contemplated
the possibility of including real events taken from the newspapers;
specifically an article about the bodies of fifty newborn babies
that had disappeared from the cemeteries in Madrid. The priest
reaches the conclusion that the antichrist is going to be born
precisely because of all the things he sees as he travels around
the city. To strengthen that sensation of chaos and urban hustle
& bustle, we use ambient sound of an American film that unfolds
in Manhattan [...]
I actually filmed two alternative endings to the film. In the
version that I finally discarded, Ángel finally finds the child
and, convinced that he is the antichrist, shoots him in the head,
but that ending is too brutal and wasn't satisfactory. On the other
hand, I like the fact that a fanatic priest should end up being a
discredited layman, while the fake preacher becomes a true
believer.
ÁLEX DE LA IGLESIA.