Cinema
Pura sangre
Luis Ospina · 1982
Synopsis
Roberto Hurtado, an old sugar magnate, returns to Cali after a medical examination in the United States. The doctor tells his son, Adolfo, that the father suffers from an illness requiring massive transfusions of boys' blood. The old man lives shut away in his apartment, crippled and disfigured, runs his empire through a closed-circuit television system and does not know where what keeps him alive comes from. Adolfo holds three employees, two drivers and a nurse, through compromising photographs, and charges them with finding the blood. Bodies begin to turn up on the city's wasteland.
Context
The author's first fiction feature, co-produced with the Cuban film institute and shown at Cartagena in 1982 before an audience that had never seen Colombian horror; it only reached cinemas in May 1983. It starts from a Cali legend, that of the monster of the vacant lots, to whom in the sixties were attributed the bodies of boys found drained of their blood, and from the hypothesis then circulating: a sick millionaire was obtaining them. The film makes the vampire a figure of class rather than a monster, and it is dedicated to the memory of a writer from his group.
Who it is for
One hundred and five minutes, in Spanish. Explicit horror, with scenes of violence against children that remain difficult to watch.
Prizes and reception
Best actress and best soundtrack at the national festival in 1982, critics' jury mention at Sitges the following year. A classic of the country's horror cinema.