A relative of Jack the Ripper too horrifying for a true crime

The dark Spanish and Catalan tradition of real-life serial killers (the Werewolf of Allariz, Jarabo, Arropiero, Enriqueta Martí, the Olot caretaker...) has not had a very successful audiovisual exploitation; perhaps because there is no such fascination halfway between morbidity and cautionary tale –which does exist in the United States film and series industry– surrounding these figures who are too horrifying for a conventional true crime. That is why we only find sporadic works, such as the series La huella del crimen, the film Romasanta and the documentary La vampira del Raval.

David Pérez Sañudo now recovers the Sacamantecas, real name Juan Díaz de Garayo, who sowed terror in Álava at the end of the 19th century, where he raped and murdered six women, some of whom he disemboweled. As in the comic From hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, these criminal fictions are also a pretext for historical revision: the search for the killer portrays a society of rigid hierarchies, investigations intoxicated by the context of the Third Carlist War and judicial processes that, paradoxically, seem designed to impart anything but justice. Aside from the notable performances of Antonio de la Torre and Patricia López Arnaiz, Sacamantecas is especially attractive for the way Pérez Sañudo chooses to film some especially cruel scenes, with an aesthetic criterion that is also ethical: fixed, distant shots, without ever reveling in the horror.