PREVIEW: 30 MONEDAS aka 30 COINS
by Elena Anele (*)
30 COINS is a TV series directed by Alex de la Iglesia (THE DAY OF THE BEAST, Witching and Bitching,) for HBO. So far there is only news for this season 1 but maybe a new season will be shot in a near future. It is made of 8 episodes in which the curse of Judas’s 30 coins comes to a Spanish little town. It was written together with Alex de la Iglesia’s regular screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría (THE DAY OF THE BEAST, Witching and Bitching, Celda 211)
It tells the story of Father Vergara and his seminar mates in Rome and his life in the little village of Pedraza some years after. There, one of the lost coins Judas lost after betraying Jesus is found… so Evil attacks in order to get them all and conquer Good.
It is a good starting point and pitch but… when it is brought to the small screen it is not as perfect as expected. The first episodes are like a tacky TV movie in which we lost the sense of time and plot, then it turns into a kind of Satanic Da Vinci Code, here are some scenes in the Middle East I do not understand and then we move to the town again… where we witness a kind of grotesque final part that made me cringe.
Strengths: it may remind you to The Day of the Beast times – I believe this is a kind of remake o revision of that movie, it is funny sometimes, it is gory and
Weaknesses: a lot of popular faces in cameos which is distracting and unnecessary, also the cast in based on TV famous actors – who in some cases are far from good acting, seedy FX – the moment in which a baby is shown and it is clearly a reborn, final part with computer flies, last episode monster…, the messy screenplay which makes no sense at all,…
Anyways, if you are interested in Alex de la Iglesia’s cinema it may be of your interest. Good thing is that as this is an international VOD platform it can be watched worldwide.
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Elena Anele is the woman in charge of SPANISHFEAR.COM, Horror Rises from Spain and Un Fan de Paul Naschy . A literature and cinema researcher, finishing her postgraduate studies with a thesis about the mystic filmmaker José Val del Omar. She has published in different media and books as Fangoria or Hidden Horror. She has also been in charge of several translations including Javier Trujillo’s complete works, La Mano Film Fest, The Man who Saw Frankenstein Cry and many more.
