Fu Manchu and his henchmen executing their diabolical plan to become masters of the world from their secret hideout in Barcelona’s Parc Güell while Chuck Norris, the firstborn of the "Action-Hero Villa" clan, visits his Chinese cousin Bruce Lee in 'Karate-Kick-to-the-Groin' Kong."
In the solitude of my "boomer" years, I sometimes feel a wave of nostalgia for those fascinatingly grotesque and delightfully dim-witted cinematic train wrecks of my childhood and adolescence. I’m talking about the films that invaded the video rental shops where I used to hide, simply because there was nothing else to do. Although the plots were always incredibly similar—if not identical—featuring terrifying villains and henchmen like Fu Manchu and his seven brides, or abominable monstrosities like Dracula, his possessed cousin, or his pet werewolf. Whenever I started to lose interest—which usually happened within three minutes—the plump, bulging breasts of some warrior woman or a slave girl trapped in a papier-mâché dungeon would inevitably appear on screen, instantly heightening my interest in the narrative once again.
Unfortunately, the arrival of galactic special effects and, above all, the siblings of the clan born and raised in "Action-Hero Villa"—Chuck Norris, the great Arnold and his "friends-with-benefits" Brigitte Nielsen, Stallone (not to be confused with Stalin!), Steven Seagal and his mentally challenged brother-in-law Vin Diesel, or Van Damme and his Chinese cousin, Bruce Lee—put an end to them. And although their stories were just as absurd and puerile as the previous ones, they lacked that exotic flair that used to enchant us so much.
In our current era of overabundance, you might still find some of these films on YouTube, uploaded by some nostalgic soul. But amidst the sea of forums, free porn, and influencers, no one is crazy enough to waste a single minute on them. The paradox of these films is that despite being fascinating, they were also frankly unbearable. They were only watchable—provided you had a potent anti-emetic syrup close at hand—in those times when the cultural misery and intellectual rot (especially in post-Franco Spain) were so profound that the only alternatives were to shut down your mind, blow your brains out, or watch the daily trash on TV—inevitably starring Paco Martínez Soria, Pierino, or the Calatrava brothers.
Yet, despite it all, that whole load of garbage had some positive side effects. The stories were so soporific that, whenever there weren't any breasts on screen to distract you, your thoughts would lead you to ask questions that went far beyond the film. Intriguing questions like: "What do they gain by dumbing us down like this? What do they expect from us? What kind of morons are they trying to turn us into?"
Another beneficial side effect was the dream that something different might exist, a desire to find it almost as intense as yearning for a summer love. You would end up waiting months or even years just for television, by pure chance, to broadcast a film by a director you had heard of—Dreyer, Bergman, Resnais, Tarkovsky, Fellini—of course, duly cut, dubbed, and betrayed (traduttore, traditore!), or you would end up reading books with a dictionary in hand because they hadn't been translated into Spanish—and you had to buy them during a trip abroad.
In short, B-movie cinema is now a relic of humanity's dark past, and it is probably for the best. Now, everything—from the most repulsive trash to the most exquisite wisdom—is just a click away. Yet, as the saying goes, "What costs nothing is worth nothing"—the rich and ostentatious squander their wealth, while the poor fiercely guard their precarious possessions. Likewise, the new generations—Gen Z, millennials, and the rest—don't seem satisfied or capable of appreciating the value of almost anything cultural, while the value of houses and real estate skyrockets, becoming the most prized possession of all.
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