Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Charming and brutal

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

No dripping blood, No imaginary creatures. No haunted house and spooky forest. Just an ordinary morning in and ordinary town full of ordinary people.And there is no answer to the question 'why?'

THE TELEPHONE BOX is a short and suspenseful 30 minute television movie made in Spain in the early '70s that's barely been seen by anybody – apart from those lucky few who caught it on late-night television screenings back in the '70s and '80s. Despite its ultra-obscure reputation, this is actually a brilliant movie that prefigures PHONE BOOTH with a similar plot, although one that goes about it in a much more obvious way: unlike Colin Farrell, the protagonist here isn't trapped in the box by a sniper but by the simple fact that the door won't open! This is a surreal horror experience all the way through. There's barely any dialogue, just crisp photography that emphasises the heat of the Spanish sun. Our central actor, Spanish TV veteran Vazquez, must display his emotion through expressions alone and a brilliant job he makes of it too. The pacing is just right and the direction flawless, gradually moving away from the initial humour of the situation into some of the weirdest, most claustrophobic horror ever put on camera. Those who have seen this remember it from the nightmarish climax, which is one of the most effective ever filmed, and what's worse is that there's no explanation as to what's going on: this is cult, TWILIGHT ZONE stuff, where the only rule is to expect the unexpected. A real treat for fans of the obscure, this.

I first watched this short film on television many years ago and have not forgotten the ending since then. Having just watched it for a second time it had lost none of its impact.The film opens with workmen installing a new orange phone box to a town square. Soon after a man and his son walk past, once the boy has caught the bus the man enters the box to make a phone call. As he picks up the receiver the door slowly closes. The man is rather irritated when it turns out that the phone does not work, this is nothing however compared to how he feels when he can't open the door. Various passers by try to help him including children, the local strong-man, a workman, the police and finally the fire brigade. None however can open the door or even break the glass. Eventually the workman who installed the box return but instead of freeing the trapped man they take the box away on the back of a lorry. As they drive along they pass another lorry with a telephone box on and it too has a man trapped inside. Eventually the lorry enters a facility built into a mountain and the man is horrified to find himself in a large room full of identical phone boxes, each containing a dead body. The film ends with the workmen installing a new phone box in the square, leaving the door open ready to trap its next victim.This film shows that it is possible to make for horror to be genuinely disturbing without any violence or gore. No explanation for the events is given or even hinted at, neither is there any indication that the man is anything other than the first person to enter the new box, giving the viewer the feeling that if it could happen to him it could happen to anybody. Although the film is in Spanish it is possible for anybody to enjoy it as there isn't much dialogue and it is easy to get the gist of what is being said anyway. If you want to see something creepy I'd recommend watching this, just be warned you won't want to use a phone box for quite a while afterwards.

A man gets trapped in a new phone box. He becomes ever more worried as the efforts of passers by and then the emergency services fail to free him. He goes through a range of emotions from out right fear to embarrassment as passers by, alternate between helping and laughing at his plight. What at first seems like a plot fit for a comedy becomes ever more dark, culminating in the darkest of dark endings, said to be an allegory for things that happened under the fascist state set up by Franco. The film is glorious in its simplicity and plays almost like a silent film with very little dialogue, to such an extent that even subtitles aren't really required to get the gist of this fantastic film. Made for Spanish TV, La Cabina is a powerful film that can't but fail to leave its impression in the mindset of its viewers,its devastating finale being the stuff of real nightmares, it has haunted me for over 30 years without ever losing any of its effectiveness.