La casa de las palomas: the tragic ending of the pigeon inquisition

Title: La casa de las palomas

Year:  1972

Director:  Claudio Guerín

Running time: 90 min.

Country: Spain

A film entitled La casa de las palomas (The house of the pigeons) looks promising in terms of pigeon activity. After watching it, I have to confess that it was much more than I had expected. There are pigeons everywhere, outdoors, indoors, on the characters' heads an even within their minds. We are facing a pigeon-intensive film with feathered appearances of great symbolism and even horror.

This film presents a bizarre love triangle (between humans) in which we aren't particularly interested initially, given that we focus, as usual, on the pigeon appearances. However, in this film, the sexual conducts of the humans has a strong impact on the future (and tragic) actions related to the pigeons.

From my perspective, this film has some parallelism with Requiem for a dream. What at the beginning looks like a romantic film (in this context, with pigeons involved), later turns into a drama that leads to a pigeon apocalypse with several gory scenes (with pigeons as the tragic protagonists). Let's start from the beginning. Note: the following contains several spoilers about the film plot.

There is a man, that has a mistress who is the daughter of his would-be lover. They conduct their affair secretly in a house that belongs to a lady, who happens to be a pigeon fancier.

The lady pigeon fancier that lives in the house with one of the animals. Based on the subsequent actions taken by the birds, Torquemada (a famous Spanish inquisitor) could be a good name for the dove.

The pigeon lofts are in the roof of the house. It is interesting to highlight that all of them are doves. These animals, known for their purist symbolism really do turn out to be puritanical creatures that do not approve of the immoral relationship that is taking place in their abode (with the approval of their keeper).

It looks like a innocent dove, but do not be fooled, we are looking at a feathered inquisitor.

So, the doves decide to act, with all the possible enforcement measures that this creature is capable of. They focus on the mistress, maybe because she was weaker than the man, maybe because she was the female (in this case, we are also be talking about sexist birds).  Consequently, the first punishment action occurs in the pigeon loft, when the girl comes to visit the birds. Several doves attack her and she has to escape, just a little scared (of course, we are talking about doves, not Hitchcock's crows).

The mistress being attacked by the doves when she was visiting their loft.

The thing is that the doves and pigeons in this film are magical, and have the ability to appear supernaturally in the house. Knowing the intention of the birds, it doesn't bode well.

Doves and pigeons magically appear in the living room looking to deliver punishment.

Then, one an amazing sequence is displayed. We can see an eye-to-eye stare-off between the girl and the inquisitors. With a little  imagination we can see the look of judgement in the pigeon's glare.

Eye-to-eye stare-off between the protagonist and the inquisitor pigeons.

The punishment process continues. The girl faints and the the birds enter her mind by means of dreadful nightmares. The girl sees herself dead, surrounded by the doves.

Representation of a dead girl surrounded by the pigeons. At least in dreams, they have reached their goal.

Fortunately for the protagonist, there is an unexpected turn in the plot when a fan that was activated in the room got rid of the pigeons by cutting them with the blades. Amazingly, this romantic film turns into a gory massacre for the pigeons.

When the girl's lover comes in the room he finds a dead pigeon next to the door. He surprisingly finds all the doves dead and the girl saved. This is the end of the story: all the birds have been killed by the fan and the lovers reunite.

Tragic shot of a dead pigeon next to the room's door. 

The lovers finally reunite in a room filled with dead birds and avian blood everywhere. 

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: La casa de las palomas. Starring moment: many of them, 0:41:37, 0:49:43, 1:26:00
• Pigeon activity: There is plenty of pigeon activity. In this film we can find normal pigeons in many locations: in the loft, rooms, on furniture, even on the characters. They exhibit an aggressive behaviour against the girl. The doves in the film look lovely, but they are actually evil and full of resentment. They are even worse than the Pigeons from Hell. 
• Symbolism: Very high. The film uses doves to reflect a pure (or puritan) moral opposed to the liberal conduct of the film's protagonist. In a different way from the conventional symbol of pigeons (peace, fraternity, ...) these indignant animal decide to take action and punish and kill the protagonist. 
• Relevance: Very high. Pigeons are responsible for tormenting the protagonist in many ways, including physical action and physiological torture that almost took the life of the protagonist.  
• Training level: Very high. The doves act very well in this film. There are no special effects, thus all the performances are real and feel very realistic taking into account the complexity of the storyline. 

Pigeons from Hell: the dark side of the pigeons

Title: Thriller. Pigeons from Hell

Year:  1961

Director:  John Newland

Running time: 30 min.

Country: United States

In previous posts I affirmed that pigeons are peaceful and innocent creatures whose major fault is not being aware where to poo or to nest. Now, after watching this episode of Pigeons from Hell, I realised that I was wrong because pigeons are not as innocent as they are supposed to be.

In this episode pigeons are souls that leave Hell during night and roam around a deserted plantation mansion. This is quite perturbing, but when we discover that they just not leaving Hell for a short excursion, but they actually enjoy causing suffering to humans, we realise that we are facing a dreadful horror situation.

The sign on the left warns us about the undesirable side effects of feeding pigeons. The author probably tried to be polite by avoiding mentioning nasty pigeon actions. However, if we re-read it in the context of this episode, we realise that these things include actions like murdering or zombification (by means of voodoo). Dreadful. The following pictures correspond to an artist's conception about the contrast between angelic and evil pigeons.

Artist's conception of the contrast between pigeon angels and an evil pigeon from hell.

Regarding Pigeons from Hell, the original story was written in 1934 by Robert E. Howard, and first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1938. Later, in the 60s, it was made it into an episode of the Thriller horror TV series. At the beginning of the episode, the narrator (Boris Karloff) warns about the evil nature of the pigeons. The video can be seen here. This is a fragment of his tale:

The swamp is alive. Crawling with creatures of death. Creatures that lurk, camouflaged in the undergrowth waiting patiently for an unsuspecting victim. And our young friend was alarmed by a flight of pigeons. Harmless, you say? Well, you'll see that he has good cause for alarm. For those were no ordinary pigeons. They were the pigeons from Hell. That is both the title and the substance of our story. Spirits come back from the dead to guard their ancestral home against intruders. Spirits that in life fed on evil, and now in death, return to feed upon the living

I think that it is a creepy presentation that doesn't prophesy good human-pigeon relationships. Pigeons appear at the very beginning of the episode. John Branner and his friend Tim Griswell are traveling by car and it breaks down close to a deserted plantation mansion. John decides to explore the area and when he approaches to the building he finds a flock of pigeons that mysteriously attack him.

John approaching the old plantation house. We can see the flock of pigeons in front.

John is scared by the pigeons.

When Tim reaches John, he asks him about what happend and John says:

John: There were  pigeons  all of  a sudden…they came right at  me, right at my face!
Tim: Pigeons! You sounded as if somebody were trying to kill you!
John: That’s just it! … It was like they were attacking me!

Due to low budget and old recording technology, this film doesn't have good special effects and the pigeons don't look very scary. However, there is some very good sound engineering work that makes the pigeon's cooing sound dreadful. The best example is when John wakes up, apparently under hypnosis and he goes upstairs to face his death. At this time, the pigeon sound is really horrific. John seems to be a nice boy, but after the pigeon's influence he transforms into a murderer zombie. This sequence can be seen here. I spent many years close to pigeons. More specifically, they were on the roof above me. I know what it's like to wake up by loud pigeon noises (probably mating songs). But the noise in this episode is different, it's a dreadful definitive sound... coming from the hell.  

In this film there is another important pigeon performance. When Tim returns to the mansion with the Sheriff, they found his car completely populated by these evil creatures. In the pictures below, you can appreciate the sheriff's face full of suspicion. 

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: Thriller. Pigeons from hell. Starring moment: 0:02:35 and 0:41:15
• Pigeon activity: They are evil and they try to cause pain and suffering to humans.
• Symbolism: The symbolism is very important. They represent evil souls that roam around.
• Relevance: High. Pigeons are one of the key elements of the plot.
• Training level: Low. It is difficult to feature pigeons as evil-deadly creatures and it was even more complex in the 60s, without computer-aided special effects and a low budget. This is why the pigeons don't really seem scary. Actually, they usually seem to be more scared than the characters themselves.

Special thanks to Skelton Knaggs from The Classic Horror Film Board for this suggestion.