Such a frustrating disappointment

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

El Crimen Ferpecto was viewed at the 2006 Valladolid film Festival in Spain. Director: Alex de la Iglesia. Stars Guillermo Toledo and Monica Cervera. A sidesplitter about a skirt chaser who works as a salesman in the women's wear section of an upscale department store and is bucking for the job of floor manager. Rafael is not only the best salesman in the biggest department store in Madrid but an irresistible lady's man whose female colleagues cannot get enough of. His philosophy of life is live it to the hilt and get laid as much as possible. But he is an ambitious go getter as well and aspires to be the new head of sales on his floor. However, to do so he has to beat out Don Antonio a surly veteran top salesman who has much more seniority. The competition between them gets more and more acrid until Rafael accidentally kills Don Antonio in a scuffle inside a changing booth. Lourdes, the ugliest woman in the store, the only witness to the event, volunteers to help Rafael hide the corpse. After much bungling they manage to dispose of the body in the store incinerator. He's now in the clear except for Lourdes who is in love with him and threatens to expose him unless he marries her. No buts and ifs about it!To save his skin he goes through with a most unwelcome wedding but now he has to figure out a way to get rid of her ... another "perfect crime"? -- as ghastly visions of Don Antonio with a knife protruding from his green head come back to haunt him regularly -- Because of the bungling all around the director purposely misspells the Perfecto (perfect) of the title so it becomes "Ferpecto" -- and the Perfect Crime becomes most imperfect.-A super hilarious black comedy from start to finish with plenty of subliminal social commentary embedded in the madness and deliciously sly rib-tickling work by actor Guillermo Toledo. One of the funniest films I have ever seen and Toledo's Rafael is one for the all-time comic record books. In any case a perfect madcap comedy with a side splitter every other minute. All supporting roles uniformly brilliant, notably Monica Cervera as the unwanted blackmailing bride. A black comedic masterpiece. Ten stars and no complaints.

This film has a lot of comments, so I'll confine mine to the character of Lourdes.The first time we see Lourdes on the escalator we can tell she is going to blossom. She watches Rafael until she sees her opportunity, then blackmails him into loving her. This seems unworkable and indeed it is. How can you blackmail someone and love them at the same time? Sometimes Lourdes seems genuinely in love with Rafael and wants nothing else but for him to return her affections. At other times (particularly when she gets a successful career of her own) she seems only to want to punish Rafael for ignoring her.I am having my own private Spanish film festival at the moment and it occurs to me that "machismo" is not a Spanish word for nothing. Maybe pure revenge would have been too much of a moral tale. Or maybe it would just not have been Spanish (I can't help thinking of *Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown* when I think of Lourdes unwisely falling for Rafael).Three things I liked about this film: 1. Rafael is very aware of how shallow he is, but talks of how he will pursue hedonism nevertheless. 2. I loved Lourdes commanding her troops. They were supposed to look ugly but the way Lourdes strode, and high-fived her soldiers lent them a seductive power. 3. Don Antonio's eternally smouldering hair.

It's hilarious. It's poignant. It's artistic. It's even philosophical at times. I can't imagine anyone not liking this film. "Crimen ferpecto" is a great surrealistic comedy along the lines of "Being John Malkovich", "One Night at McCools" or even the masterpiece "Brazil".The plot begins bizarre, and from there it gets ever bizarrer. Set in a department store (the perfect metaphor for the human condition!), this film brilliantly weaves the themes of glamorous/plastic life versus the mundane/real. Trapped between worlds and desperately trying to achieve the former is our hero Rafael, a man whose entire life exists within the ladies' clothing department. Somehow he gets wrapped up in murder, blackmail and ectoplasmic visitations from lovable corpses. Yeah, I told you it gets bizarre.But despite the zany plot, there's a very poignant & sober message that runs just below the surface. It's subtle, but it comes to fruition during the magnificent climax when we realize exactly what this whole wacky movie is about. If you've paid attention to symbolism, metaphor, allegory and all that intellectual jazz, you'll get it, and you'll see how everything fits into place. If not, fine, you'll enjoy the picture anyway because it's just plain funny. The beauty is that you can take it at your own pace. Great film. Damn near perfect. Er... ferpect.

De la Iglesia has come up with a pastiche of good ideas from pre-existing, classic movies, and stuck them together into "El crimen ferpecto". The gaudy sets and primary colors are a dead ringer for Almodovar movies, the cops with their mannerisms are pure Hitchcock, and the ending is a straight rip-off from Fellini's "8 1/2"---the only missing thing there is Nino Rota's score, although they substituted that by something equivalent.The result is a movie that you will have a good time watching, but about which you'll forget all 2 days later.On the positive side, it's a funny dark comedy. On the negative side, it loses *a lot* of steam in the second half, and the numerous imitations of other directors yield a disjointed end result---like expecting to get a working animal if you grab one part (even the best part) from many others and then put them together haphazardly.