Sitges loves its dogs. The pups were out in force this year, sprawling on cafe terraces or getting their poop scooped by conscientious owners, but all of them (happily) were less threatening than the killer mutts on screen at the 58th edition of the International Fantastic film festival of Catalonia, just 25 miles down the coast from Barcelona.
Canine carnage provides the shocking climax to The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, a slow-burn Carrie-esque coming-of-age yarn set amid the economic turmoil of 2001 Argentina. In Todos los Males, set in 1950s Chile, a small boy finds the German half of his family harbours dark secrets (quelle surprise!), one of them involving flesh-ripping hounds. In Shelby Oaks, a woman investigating the disappearance of her sister makes the rookie error of exploring an abandoned prison at night, and finds … vicious dogs! And in the most obviously metaphorical of all, Ion De Sosa’s beguilingly Buñuelian fable Balearic, working-class teenagers are trapped in a swimming pool by a trio of malevolent Belgian malinois dogs while, further up the hill, champagne-swigging poshos fail to notice a forest fire creeping ever nearer.
