Alex de la Iglesia's outrageous second feature DAY OF THE BEAST comes to 4K and Blu-ray from Severin Films.

Having studied the Apocalypse of St. John for several years, theology professor Angel (Álex Angulo, PAN'S LABYRINTH) discovers that the gospel is not an allegory but a cryptogram which reveals the day on which the Antichrist will be born and that it is Christmas Day 1995. Traveling to Madrid, he resolves to become evil and sell his soul in order to trick the devil and prevent the birth of his son. Starting off with petty things like stealing a beggar's change and a tourist's baggage and moving up to refusing last rites to the victim of a car accident, Angel then looks for leads to summon the devil. Record shop clerk José María (Santiago Segura, KILLER BARBYS) points him in the direction of local death metal band Satannica, but Angel then comes across a book by television occultist and exorcist Professor Cavan (Italian singer Armando De Razza) who claims to have exorcized the devil from a young boy. Taking Cavan hostage, Angel and José Maria try to force him to summon the devil, but the man reveals himself to be a fake who believes the other two are crazy until the horned one makes an appearance to let them know "This is not a game."

Director Alex de la Iglesia's follow-up to the rough-hewn ACCIÓN MUTANTE, DAY OF THE BEAST came at a time when Spanish cinema was in a slump due to the Miró Law which narrowed the scope of Spanish cinema to prestige productions in terms of governmental funding bodies. The first of four collaborations between de la Iglesia and producer Andrés Vicente Gómez (BELLE EPOQUE) – who has similarly risen to prominence in mainstream Spanish cinema from the nineties onwards – DAY OF THE BEAST asserts its comic tone from the start and holds back its revelation of the reality of the supernatural for quite some time; as such, we first wonder if this is all a delusion on Angel's part, and then we wonder if he might be too naïve and gullible to martial forces and follow credible leads, seemingly being the cause of more widespread havoc than the devil or the right-wing terrorist group "Clean Up Madrid" who have been brutally murdering homeless people all over the city. The final shot of the film cranes away from the surviving protagonists to Madrid's Fuente del Ángel Caído statue of Lucifer that also figured prominently in Carlos Puerto's earlier SATAN'S BLOOD.

Given a brief theatrical release by Trimark Pictures, DAY OF THE BEAST then went to subtitled, cropped VHS and was one of the few Trimark foreign pictures not to make the jump to DVD. The only means of seeing the film in English-friendly form on DVD was the Spanish release from Sogepaq, but the transfer was non-anamorphic and the extras – including a de la Igelsia commentary track – were in Spanish only. A previous HD master turned up on streaming services and Blu-ray in Germany that carried over the Spanish extras along with some new interviews and featurettes, but the two-disc set did not have any English options. Severin Film's UltraHD 4K/Blu-ray combo – with the feature and trailers only on the UHD and the feature, trailers, and additional extras on the Blu-ray disc – are sourced from a brand new 4K restoration (with HDR on the UltraHD disc) of the original camera negatives. The 2160p24 HEVC and 1080p MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 presentations are sumptuous from the start, revealing the shafts of light in the church, the bold reds of the title lettering, and delineating the blues and blacks of the gritty Madrid night beautifully (with the HDR providing an enhanced sense of depth over what already looked quite nice on Blu-ray). The visual effects composite sequences are much higher in contrast than the surrounding footage, but de la Iglesia reveals in the extras that the film preceded Spanish cinema's usage of digital effects, so these scenes were shot on film, composited on video, and scanned back to film (in these cases, the HDR may marginally improve on things, but the highlights and blacks have less range than the surrounding footage). The original sync-sound Spanish Dolby Digital SR stereo surround track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 as well as the 5.1 discrete surround rechanneling created during for the DVD release. The English dub created for the film but not used for the US or UK releases is also included in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. English subtitles are provided for the Spanish tracks.

Severin has not ported over the Spanish director's commentary track or any of the earlier DVD extras, but they have made up for it with a host of new special features. First up is "Heirs of the Beast" (80:53), a 2016 documentary by Diego López and David Pizarro featuring the participation of de la Iglesia, Gomez, Segura, de Razza, and actresses Terele Pávez (THE LAST CIRCUS) who plays José Maria's hostel-owner mother and Nathalie Seseña (KILLER HOUSEWIVES) who plays the virginal Mina, along with cinematographer Flavio Martínez Labiano (THE SHALLOWS), screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría (COMMON WEALTH), and other crew members, as well as a number of de la Iglesia collaborators and filmmakers whose careers in the genre owe something to de la Iglesia's efforts in the nineties like Nacho Cerdà (AFTERMATH), Jaume Balagueró (DARKNESS), and Paco Plaza (VERÓNICA). The documentary charts de la Iglesia's beginning in shorts, including MIRINDAS ASESINAS which also starred Angulo, to ACCIÓN MUTANTE which started out a short and then was expanded into a potential television series before ending up a feature – noting the encouragement de la Iglesia received from Pedro Almadovar (MATADOR) – and the challenge of funding a more expensive follow-up feature despite the success of ACCIÓN MUTANTE.