Cries In The City! Urban Modernity, Serial Killing, Female Liberation, in the Spanish Horror Film in Franco’s Dictatorship (1963-1975)

Abstract

The article focuses on the urban representation in the horror films of the second Franco regime as a scenario of fear in the face of the profound transformations of the period. The city in Spanish horror was constructed as a degenerate space and container of vices that facilitated the rupture with traditional roles.

Through four films (Ella y el miedo, El espectro del terror, Una libélula para cada muerto and El sádico de Notre Dame), the urban serial killer embodies a monstrosity born of two fundamental discourses. First, the anxieties about the dangers of modernity associated with dehumanization and fear of strangers that had constructed the serial killer in other cinematographies. On the other hand, the strong conservative component of the Spanish version created an antagonist derived from the deformation of national Catholic and patriarchal values. Thus, the urban monster also symbolized youth insecurity in the face of the persistence of a repression that hardened its measures during the last years of the dictatorship.