El Día de la bestia follows the fortunes of a simplistic Basque priest; he's discovered the date of the arrival of the Antichrist and journeys to Madrid on a mission to do as much evil as possible in order to get to the Devil and ascertain as to where the Satan-Child will be spawned. Is that the coolest plot synopsis ever or what? Thus begins a devilishly funny farce of Biblical proportions as poor Father Ángel ambles through the film (very well-directed by Álex de la Iglesia) attempting to invoke Beelzebub and avert the oncoming apocalypse.<br /><br />As the film goes on, Father Ángel (Álex Angulo) teams up with a TV pseudo-psychic and a lardy layabout metalhead whilst committing a series of supremely comic sinful activities (pushing a mime artist down a stairwell, telling a dying man he's going to hell, etc.). The scene where the motley crew of misfits try to construct and makeshift pentacle and perform the satanic ritual is excellent. But the LSD consumed during this effort for invocation is what confuses and confounds the movie in the end. Does the plucky preacher defeat the Antichrist at the end, or is it just a hallucinatory vision brought on by the drugs he's dropped? If the latter is the true turn of events, then the movie is heartbreaking. It's open to interpretation, but the ending suggests that the ultimate assault on the Antichrist is actually an intoxicated attack on some tramps who aren't of Hellish origin.<br /><br />Regardless of climactic confusion, El Día de la bestia (The Day of the Beast in English) is dragged down through the fact it runs out of steam as it runs up to the grand finale anyway. For the most part though, the film is fantastic: a cult occult-thriller full of brilliant black comedy, delightfully dumb characters and a surreal storyline that successfully merges horror movie with social-commentary in its swipes at the sorry state of modernised Madrid and neo-Nazi thuggery. Not perfect, but definitely unusual, unique and appealing: El Día de la bestia is one hell of a film.