Fantasia 2017 – ‘THE NIGHT OF THE VIRGIN’

You, my friend, are a 20-something loser. On New Year’s Eve, at a nightclub. You’re flying solo, hoping to find someone to connect with. The ladies won’t even give you the time of day. Hell, even the bartender won’t pay any attention to you. Then you spot a hot lady dancing by herself and you make your move. She, of course, is wasted. She pukes on your shoes and stumbles away. As the clock strikes midnight, you’ve given up and sat at a table in the corner. But then suddenly a beautiful, older woman appears and takes an interest in you. Why YOU, of all people?? She invites you back to her place! Holy shit!! But then you realize how strange this situation actually is. How nasty her apartment is. How INFESTED her apartment is. And what is up with that gold statue? But forget all that! She wants to sleep with you! Oh, by the way, you’re a virgin…and this is going to be your worst night ever.

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Fantasia 2017’s raunch-fest didn’t end with Assholes for me, even if the actual event did. No, for me the final film of the festival that I watched was this Spanish comedy-horror. Roberto San Sebastian’s The Night of the Virgin is the spirit of Alex de la Iglesia’s The Day of the Beast, the over-the-top lunacy of Evil Dead 2, matched with the gross-out, teen comedy boom of the 90’s like American Pie! If any of that piques your interest, don’t get excited. I think I got more entertainment out of American Wedding.

The film opens with a New Year’s news broadcast which may or may not be humorous (it was lost on me). It felt like it was humorous. What’s notable is the mention of the female anchor being pregnant, and her co-anchor mentions giving birth to the devil, or something of that nature. It’s perhaps a pre-cursor of what’s to come? Oh, and what is to cum…or come, rather! The movie is pretty much a non-stop endurance test after half an hour or so, unrelenting in treating our protagonist Nico (Javier Bodalo) like Bruce Campbell’s Ash, as Medea (Miriam Martin) and her boyfriend Arana aka. Spider (Victor Amilibia) torture his mind and body in ways you can’t imagine. I thought Assholes was the yuckiest movie I’d see in 2017, but I was absolutely wrong. No bodily fluid is spared here, and I mean none. More vomit than The Exorcist? Done! You want an impossible amount of semen from one person? Sure thing! How about a shower of ass blood? You GOT it!

The charms of Virgin are there, but you have to suffer through an endless stream of increasingly disgusting torture for an entirely too long 117 minutes. Past an hour I started checking my watch, wondering when is really going to get to the point. It IS shot and lit rather well, with the apartment set design shining in it’s squalor. There’s a mythology set up to help explain what’s going on, but I found myself not really caring once the movie started pushing my patience beyond it’s limits. There’s a fun credit scene that wraps everything up nicely…but, y’know, I still didn’t care. Those with the stomach and a liking for the extreme and the gross will likely be happy with some of this. I, however, can only take so much…and I’m shocked that I’m saying that.