Some call him the Colombian Ed Wood. He prefers to be called the Colombian Hitchcock. The best description of all is simply the Original Jairo Pinilla.
Pinilla was one of the first Colombian film-makers to turn his attention to horror and fantasy. Unfortunately for him, the Colombian film industry at the time expected its artists to make serious dramas, or short documentaries about poverty and social issues. Pinilla’s movies were considered an embarrassment. Even more embarrassing? The local audiences loved them: Pinilla’s first film held the box office record for a Colombian film for years.
Eventually, the Colombian film commission found a way to put him out of business in 1985*. But before that happened, he managed to put out a very unusual body of work. Funeral siniestro (1977), for all its rough patches, is still a remarkably assured first film; 27 Horas con la muerte has a story that Poe might have chuckled over (and then rejected); while Extraña regresion may very well be the film that got Pinilla the “Ed Wood” title.
* Thanks to afforable video, he’s now back making films.
#1 by Read MacGuirtose on February 1, 2010 - 5:31 pm
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Really interesting post; I’d never heard of Jairo Pinilla, but I found your account of his career and his movies fascinating (and sort of tragic). I do have one (possibly stupid) question, though… what’s the significance of the title here? I get the “Eduardo Madera” (though I’m ashamed to admit it took me a while), but I’m still at a loss as to why the “D.” is there… (Unless it’s a reference to Ed Wood’s middle initial and the fact that people in the Spanish-speaking world don’t usually have middle names but may use a second surname… but I may be stretching too hard for that interpretation…)
#2 by lyzard on February 1, 2010 - 8:15 pm
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That was fascinating, Will – thank you!
Smartypants.
#3 by The Rev. D.D. on February 1, 2010 - 8:23 pm
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Very nice reviews. I wish, as I often do with your reviews, that I could track these things down. I also echo the sentiments of Read on Jairo Pinilla. Thank you so much for bringing him to our attention!
On a completely different note, I tried to reread your La Casa 3: Ghosthouse review, but I couldn’t get past the introduction. I kept picking my answer and hitting continue, but it just reloaded the introduction. This happened on two different computers, so I don’t know what’s going on.
#4 by Read MacGuirtose on February 1, 2010 - 8:28 pm
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Huh… I just went to that review to see if the same thing would happen on my computer, and, yup, it did. So it’s not just you.
#5 by Braineater on February 1, 2010 - 8:49 pm
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Read — Ed Wood’s middle name was “Davis”, which I took for a matronymic. In Spanish-speaking countries, the tradition is to put the mother’s family name after the father’s… so, for example, we have Jairo Pinilla Téllez, or Jairo Pinilla T. (though never Jairo Téllez). I thought I’d be clever and sneak the D. onto the end of my “translation”.
Guys — I’ll fix the “Ghosthouse” form this week. My host has changed versions of PHP several times, and there’s probably some stupid syntactical thing I’ve forgotten to update. Sorry: it was a lame joke anyway.
#6 by Read MacGuirtose on February 1, 2010 - 9:15 pm
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Right, okay, that’s pretty much how I interpreted the “D.” (I knew the “second surname” was really a matronymic (I lived for two years in Spain, so I’m familiar with how Spanish names work), but I wasn’t sure how many other people here would be) — I just wasn’t sure maybe I wasn’t just overthinking it and my interpretation was too much of a stretch. But apparently I had the right interpretation after all. Huh.
#7 by Braineater on February 1, 2010 - 9:33 pm
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Strangely enough, the words “too much of a stretch” are often associated with me. I’m not sure why: I don’t even understand the meaning of the phrase…
(2 years in Spain? O lucky man! Where were you?)
#8 by Read MacGuirtose on February 1, 2010 - 10:03 pm
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Well, for the first half-year or so I was in Fuengirola, a town on the Costa del Sol; then in Chiclana de la Frontera, near Cádiz; then San Roque, near Algeciras and Gibraltar; and for the last six months in Ceuta, on the north African coast.
Don’t know how “lucky” it was, though, since I was there in a capacity that rather limited what activities I could participate in and put severe constraints on my time… I was there on a mission for the LDS church. (I was raised Mormon, although I no longer believe in it now… no offense intended to Nathan Shumate, of course, who I realize is an active Mormon…) Still, despite that, though, yeah, I’m glad I had the experience of living there for that time, though I would have preferred it had been under different circumstances…
#9 by Read MacGuirtose on February 1, 2010 - 10:05 pm
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Incidentally, by the way, if you find on a map the cities I was in, you’ll see that my itinerary involved starting on the south coast of Spain… and then somehow working my way farther south every five or six months…
#10 by Braineater on February 1, 2010 - 10:13 pm
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Apropos of nothing, I may start using “Fuengirola!” as a work-safe expletive… what a wonderful word.
#11 by lyzard on February 1, 2010 - 11:21 pm
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So we have three ex-Mormon missionaries in our midst? That is one cool statistical anomaly!
#12 by Blake on February 2, 2010 - 4:56 am
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There’s Nate and Read. Who’s the third?