SDSDSVDSVS58 FT383MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO
celebrates the career of
a much-loved director
who brought Gothic film
and television to Franco’s
Spain.On theevening ofFriday,
4 February 1966,
television screens in
Spainwent darkfor
a second.A flash of lightning
reve aled a set unusual in
Franco’s era: a Gothic window,
a cobwebbed shelf with a skull
serving as a bookend.A soft
masculinevoice pronounced the
names embossed on the book
spines: “Maupassant, Gaston
Leroux, HenryJames, Edgar
AllanPoe, Stevenson.Theyall
wrote immortal tales. Stories
where horror, madness, and fear
intertwine. Stories that often
robbed of sleep those whoread
them.” It was the beginning
ofHistoriasPara No Dormir, or
“Stories toKeepYou Awake”, the
wildly popular series thatran for
just three seasons but defined
the horror genre in Spain. Its
creator and director, Narciso
Ibáñez Serrador, affectionately
known as ‘Chicho’, passed
away aged 83 thisJune, four
months after havingreceived an
honorary Goya Award for lifetime
achievement from the Spanish
Film Academy. At the ceremony,
an internationally successful new
generation of Spanish horror film
makers (Alejandro Amenábar,
Juan Antonio Bayona, Rodrigo
Cortés, and Álex de la Iglesia,
among others) paid tribute toa
man whosework was adoredby
the masses but whose influence is
often understated.
Ibáñez Serradorwas born in
Uruguay in 1935, the onlychild of
an actor couple.After his parents
split up, he stayed in South
America with his mother, who
was often touring. Hewas a sickly
boy who enjoyed reading horrorclassics, but he’d also been bitten
by the acting bug, and when he
and his mother moved to Spain in
1947 he appeared in severa l stage
plays. He cut his directing teeth
in Argentina, where he helmed
Obras Maestras delTerror(1959),
aTV adaptation of short stories
by Poe – whom he called his god–
Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ray
Bradbury.
In Franco’s Spain, however,
horror (of the fictional kind)
was a rarity. It had seldom been
shown on screen: aside from
Jess Franco’sThe Awful Dr Orloff
(1961), therewere traces of it in
the silent films of Segundo de
Chomón and in Edgar Neville’s
ExpressionistmysteryLaTorre
de los SieteJorobados(1943).
When Chichoreturned to Spain
in 1963, he knew he had to use
a different calling card. Sci-fi
was an internationally popular
genre, so he showed theexecutive
directors ofTVE an episode of
Mañana Puede SerVerdad,the
sci-fi anthology series he’d co-
directed with hisfather, Narciso
Ibáñez Menta, in Argentina.They
agreed to broadcast it. Sincethe response from the audience
was positive, he was offered
the chance to direct a Spanish
version of the series.
HistoriasPara No Dormir
came later, capitalising on the
success of this first series. It
was conceived as an anthology
of horror and suspense, with
adaptations of classic stories (La
Patawas based on WWJacobs’s
“The Monkey’s Paw”,El Pacto
on Poe’s “TheFacts inThe Case
of M.Valdemar”) along withnew stories writtenby Ibáñez
Serrador himself under the
alias of LuisPeñafiel. In the
manner of Alfred Hitchcock, he
introduced each episode, usinga
different tonefor each tale, often
employing black humour. In his
first introduction hereve aled
his intentions to the audience:
here, he said, theywouldn’t find
“suspicious-looking butlers”,“old
manor houses”, or thunder and
lightning. He made itveryclear:
he wanted to strip the genre of its
conventions – and so he did.
The first episode,El
Cumpleaños, was based on
“Nightmare inyellow”, a short
storyby Americanmystery
writerFredric Brown.As jazz
music played in the background,
two diamonds branded the
top right corner of the screen- the infamous “dosrombos”
qualification, the censor’s
warning that the contentwas
only suitablefor over-18s. Indeed,
Ibáñez Serrador intended to
shock the spectators: the use
of internal monologueforced
them to identify with the main
character, a man with a pencil
The man who kept Spain awake
FORUMABOVE:Reinventing the Gothic for Spanish TV inHistorias Para No Dormir.BELOW:Ibañez Serrador’s first feature.