In a Glass Cage
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In a Glass Cage (Spanish: Tras el cristal) is a 1986 Spanish horror film written and directed by Agustí Villaronga, and starring Günter Meisner, Marisa Paredes, and David Sust. Inspired by the history of Gilles de Rais, the plot follows an ex-Nazi child molester who is now paralyzed and depending on an iron lung to live. A young man claiming to be his new caretaker reveals himself as one of the Nazi's former victims, and forces him to watch while he re-enacts his tormentor's crimes.
Due to themes mixing Nazism, pedophilia, torture, and homosexuality, the film was highly controversial.
Plot
Klaus, a former Nazi doctor, practiced horrific, sadomasochistic experiments on children during World War II. After the war, he goes into exile in a remote village in Catalonia, where he continues to rape and torture young boys. He kills his latest victim with a blow to the head, taking photographs of the crime. Angelo, one of Klaus' victims, spies on him from a window, and steals incriminating writings and photographs of the doctor's crimes. Klaus tries to commit suicide by jumping from a tower. He survives, but he is left paralyzed and unable to breathe on his own, confined permanently in an iron lung to survive.
Some years later, Klaus is being taken care of by his wife Griselda and their young daughter Rena in a large gloomy house in the country. Griselda is unhappy in Spain and, overwhelmed by the task of looking after her husband, secretly wishes he would just die. Angelo appears, offering his services as a nurse to help take care of Klaus. Griselda takes an instant dislike towards Angelo and does not want to hire him, but Klaus insists that he should stay. In reality, Angelo has no actual nursing skills, which Griselda soon discovers, but even then Klaus refuses to get rid of him. Angelo's true aim is revealed to be not only to take his revenge out on Klaus, but to ultimately take his place as a torturer. Angelo reads Klaus passages from the diaries he stole in which the doctor describes, in detail, how he tortured his victims. Recreating what Klaus did to him, Angelo strips and masturbates in front of Klaus. He then calls Griselda. She tries to run away, but he kills her, hanging her from the rails of the second floor.
The next day, Angelo fires the housekeeper, taking over the house with Rena's help. Rena is not disturbed by her mother's absence, as Griselda was abusive towards her. Rena feels far more comfortable under Angelo's care. Angelo continues with the doctor's experiments, bringing young boys to Klaus in his iron lung. Angelo lures a child to the house and ties him to a chair. In front of Klaus, Angelo kills the boy by injecting him through the heart with a needle filled with gasoline. He brings in another boy, forces him to sing and kills him by cutting his throat. Fearing that Angelo will kill him and Rena, Klaus tells his daughter to run away to the near village with a message asking for help.
Angelo discovers Rena while she is trying to escape and brings her back to the house. He dominates her, assuming a perverse, violent "parental" role. Finally Angelo removes Klaus from his iron lung and lets him die of asphyxiation while emulating the scene of his own abuse, in Rena's presence. Once Klaus is dead, Angelo takes his identity totally, getting into the artificial lung, and makes Rena take his.
Cast
- Günter Meisner as Klaus
- David Sust as Angelo
- Marisa Paredes as Griselda
- Gisèle Echevarría as Rena
- Imma Colomer as the housekeeper
- Ricardo Carcelero as Angelo as a child
- Alberto Manzano as gypsy child
