Strange 70’s Mexican Film with 3 short stories

I saw this film several years ago on Galavision (Spanish cable channel), and have been trying to find it ever since; it was a strange film made in the 70’s, possibly 80’s, in Spanish but not dubbed (most likely Mexican film), and consisted of three independent short stories. It was in technicolor I believe, looked pretty dated and the clothes were definitely from the 70’s or early 80’s. It’s a strange film because there’s no music, not much dialogue at all, and every story is mentally disturbing to some degree,

I forgot what the first story was, but I think it was about drivers going up a hill during the day, guided by signs or some kids which purposely leads them over a cliff into a pile of other rusty, crashed cars that have undergone the same fate.

The second was a story about a community of people living in a condo tower, or apartment building, the setting is at night. A car alarm suddenly goes off and at first people ignore it, then after a while they start getting annoyed, soon they start getting enraged by it. They go outside and find the car in the street and start asking whose it was, but it belongs to nobody in the building. Their rage then takes over and they start destroying the car, trying to get it to stop, but it won’t. After a while the owner comes running down the street trying to get them to stop destroying his car, but in a blind fury the people grab him and beat him to death. After they kill him they realize what they have done, put his body inside the car which is still going off and push both off a cliff and ashamed, walk slowly back into their building.

The third one was the most disturbing mentally. It begins in a movie theater with the camera focusing on several people, old, a couple making out, a guy by himself, and several others. They’re watching a movie but you never see what it is. The main character is a young man in the theater. All of a sudden armed gunmen storm the theater and grab everyone inside. The gunmen are strange as they carry different weapons and some are dressed in suits, some as soldiers, and some in plain clothes. The people are taken into the lobby where they join others from different movies. There is great confusion and gunmen line the staircases going up and the front doors. Right next to the front doors is a long table and sitting at it are three official-looking older men in pressed suits with soldiers as bodyguards. They point to a random man and motion for him to come and sit down at the table. When he sits, he asks why they’re doing this but gets no reply. The men give him a sheet of paper and tell him to draw a lion. The man is confused and they reiterate their command. He draws a lion and gives it to them, to which they all look it over and tell him to go upstairs. When he is led upstairs by gunmen they call another person and ask them the same thing. One by one people are sent upstairs, but one young man in the theater is called forward. They ask him to draw a lion and he does so, to which they look it over and tell him he’s free to go. Confused, he looks around and notices his girlfriend standing in the rain waiting for him through the window and also confused about the situation. He leaves and meets up with his girlfriend and leaves while everyone is starting to yell why he gets to leave. Every other person is sent upstairs after drawing a lion until it gets down to the last person: the main character. He sits down and draws a lion, and is also sent upstairs. The camera then follows him up the stairs through his view: soldiers and armed men staring at him as he’s led to a long, dark hallway to a theater and told to find a seat in the dark room. The same film from before is playing. As he finds a seat he moves down to the middle of a row and sits down. He tries to ask the person next to him why they’re put there and what will happen but gets no response. He looks harder and notices the guy to his left has a bullet hole in his head. He looks to his right and they have a bullet hole as well. He stands up and notices that everyone in the theater has a bullet hole in their head and starts freaking out. The film ends.

It was the most mind-bending film I have ever seen and I badly want to see it again, however I forgot the name it it’s such an obscure film that I can’t find it ANYWHERE, no matter how hard I search. Can anyone help?

6 thoughts on “Strange 70’s Mexican Film with 3 short stories

    1. I just looked up the film, unfortunately that’s not it, although the first story is from there! You helped me find another movie I’ve been looking for!

  1. So moose, are you saying that you may have mixed up two different movies, and “Adrenaline” was one of them and you’re still looking for the one that contains those last two stories?

  2. Hey! Sorry about the delay, I looked up that French film Adrenaline and unfortunately its not it, and Wild Ride was make only a few years ago, this was way older. I’m pretty sure it was in Spanish, but could have been a different language. There were 3 separate stories completely unrelated. One of those was about a bunch of tenants in an apartment building who flip into a frenzy over a car whose alarm blares continuously for a while, and as they’re beating the car n breaking its windows the owner comes rushing in, to which the mob beats him to death, puts him inside the car and shoves it off a cliff. They all walk back home ashamed at what they all did together. That last story is exactly as I described – the film quality was poor (very aged), and in each story there were people dressed in 70’s style clothes and had the same hairstyles, even wearing Bell-bottoms. I knew it was three films because I pressed a button for more info and remember seeing that this film was about 3 different short stories, it would be so much easier if I could remember the language, I’m pretty sure it was Spanish, if not maybe Italian or Portuguese.

Leave a Reply to GG Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *