El mirón (1977)

The cliché of “better late than never” certainly applies when it comes to José Ramón Larraz. Although Vampyres (1974) has long been a favorite among fans of European horror, it's only been in more recent years that other crucial Larraz titles like Whirlpool (1970), Symptoms (1974) and The Coming of Sin (1978) have made their way to home video with presentations they'd long been deserving of. It's also worth noting that Larraz didn't enter the realm of filmmaking until he was in his 40's, having previously been a fashion photographer and comic book artist and writer. He wasted no time however diving headfirst into the horror and thriller genres with the aforementioned Whirlpool, Symptoms and Vampyres along with films like Deviation (1971) and Scream and Die (1973) which established Larraz as unequaled in terms of conjuring atmosphere out of location shooting and delivering visceral sexuality and violence. Spending the majority of his early directorial career in the UK, Larraz returned to his home country of Spain in the mid-70's when censorship became more laxed and proved himself to be a versatile talent behind the camera. While his Spanish period contains a handful of horror films like Stigma (1980) and the infamous Satanic sex horror of Black Candles (1982), Larraz also found himself at the helm of a few sex comedies and drama's, El mirón being a standout example of Larraz's more dramatic side.

Roman and Elena (Alexandra Bastedo) find themselves at a crossroads in their marriage stemming from Roman's fetish of watching his wife with other men. Despite trying to fulfill her husbands fantasies, even going so far as agreeing to let Roman bring strangers home, Elena can never fully go through with sleeping with any of them, much to Roman's frustration. With the rift in their marriage growing wider, the two become more withdrawn from each other with further complications arising when Elena becomes friendly with a young neighbor.

Feeling and looking very much like a soap opera, El mirón (The Voyeur) is certainly one of Larraz's most subdued films, surprisingly so given the subject matter and director, yet Larraz's approach still manages to retain certain traits that gives Larraz's work its own identity. The idea of a marriage in dire straits must have been on Larraz's mind a lot around the time as he would follow El mirón with La ocasión (1978), another film with an indifferent married couple at the center of it. The biggest difference between the two being La ocasión gradually becoming a thriller in the vein of Deviation, whereas the even more interior El mirón is more focused on the dissolving marriage itself. Despite its lack of genre thrills, the film is nonetheless filled with an uncomfortable tension, with Larraz starting the film with Roman's fantasy having long been established making nearly every scene between Roman and Elena distant and awkward. The presence of Roman's near-death mother living in the same apartment further adds to an already combustible domestic situation, a key element in so much of Larraz's work. An especially fascinating aspect of the film is Roman's curious mentality behind his fetish, especially as it relates to Elena's acquaintanceship with the young neighbor leading to questions of jealousy and more importantly, control. Larraz does give a bit of an opening for Roman and Elena to reconcile their differences, though at the same time Larraz, rather affectingly, concludes the film on a bit of an ambiguous downer.

El mirón was the first Larraz film to feature Alexandra Bastedo, though the former Champions actress was no stranger to to world of Euro horror from which Larraz came. One of Bastedo's finest roles was that of Mircalla Karstein in Vicente Aranda's adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, The Blood Splattered Bride (1972). Bastedo also appeared alongside Peter Cushing in Freddie Francis' The Ghoul (1975). Following El mirón, Bastedo would again work with Larraz on Stigma which was another in a series of Spanish films Bastedo appeared in throughout the mid-to-late 70's. Larraz seemed to be comfortable in the world of the domestic drama around the same time period with El fin de la inocencia (1977) and Luto riguroso (1977) preceding El mirón the same year. Larraz would then focus mostly on comedies like ...And Give Us Our Daily Sex (1979) and The National Mummy (1981) before making a return to horror in the late 80's with the trio of Rest in Pieces (1987), Edge of the Axe (1988) and Deadly Manor (1990). This middle Spanish period of Larraz's career remains the most underexplored. Save for The Coming of Sin and possibly La ocasión, the films lack the genre credentials that would make them marketable which is an unfortunate reality of economics as the films offer a slightly different side of Larraz while still making sense within the context of his other films.