On June 7th, the horror genre lost someone very important to the it, although most fans here in the states probably know very little of him. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador might not be a name most fans are familiar with, mainly because he didn’t produce a lot of work in the film genre, but what he did before that laid the grounds for the genre in Spain. According to author Antonio Lázaro-Reboll in his book Spanish Horror Film, “Narciso Ibáñez Serrador was the most culturally prominent image of horror in Spain in the late 1960s due to his horror-suspense TV series Historias para no dormir (Stories to Keep You Awake, 1966-67).” 

He grew up in the theater where both his parents were involved in, where his father Ibáñez Menta adapted horror classics for the stage. His parents divorced when he only 12, he would eventually work with his father in the late ’50s creating a TV show for Argentina’s only TV channel, adapting the works of Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson, with his father acting in them while he wrote the episodes. This was called Obras maestras del terror (Masterworks of Horror).  When he eventually came to Spain, he continued the work for television, cementing his reputation with the genre, even before making his first film. Continue reading →