Filmed in Algeria, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Philippines, Morocco and Tunisia, Long Live Death! is directed and written by Fernando Arrabal, who co-founded the Panic Movement with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor.

He based much of the movie on his own experiences growing up during the Spanish Civil War. The main character is Fando (Mahdi Chaouch), whose mother (Nuria Espert) turns his father in to the authorities as a suspected communist. She tells her son that he was executed but in truth, he’s only been placed in jail. As a result, his son wonders if he’s even alive and what happened to him.

That’s a basic explanation of a movie that is a hallucination of violence with shocking moments in almost every frame. Arrabal’s father was captured by the Spanish Army, was supposed to spend thirty years in prison and then escaped after entering a mental hospital, disappearing into the snow. He was never seen again.

This movie feels like him trying to work that out. What emerges is a movie filled with real surgical footage and no shortage of animal violence. It’s near Italian in its slaughter so beware if you’re upset when that happens in movies. Humans are also destroyed in this, as a man is buried and has horses step on his exposed head, while a priest has his balls cut off and then fed to him.

Pure shock and not for shock’s sake. This is filmmaking and presents an unfiltered look at a world that no ten year old should have been put through.

The Radiance release of Viva La Muerte is the first blu ray release of the movie with English subtitles. It has a new 4K restoration of the original 35mm negative by the Cinémathèque Toulouse in collaboration with Fernando Arrabal; an audio discussion from the Projection Booth podcast featuring Mike White, Heather Drain and Jess Byard; Sur les traces de Baal, a short documentary by Abdellatif Ben Ammar in which the filmmaker followed Arrabal’s film and captured him at work on Viva la Muerte!;  VIDARRABAL, a feature-length documentary on Arrabal by Xavier Pasturel Barron capturing the life and work of this singular filmmaker, playwright, painter and essayist, featuring interviews with admirers, friends and family, including members of the Panic Movement he founded; an interview with scholar and Spanish cinema expect David Archibald; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork and a booklet featuring new writing by Sabina Stent and an archival interview with Fernando Arrabal.

You can get it from MVD.