Following his merciless attack on Catholicism in Viridiana, Luis Buñuel turned his attention to another of his favourite targets, the middle classes, in this searing condemnation of convention and outmoded morality. Clearly revealing his surrealist roots, this blackly comic film ingeniously uses a nightmare dinner party to make the terrifying assertion that the bourgeois lifestyle is every bit as hideous and limiting as any concentration camp regime. Brilliantly played by a cast including regulars Silvia Pinal and Claudio Brook, this is one of Buñuel's most pessimistic films, and its chilling ending will leave you dumbstruck.

After a lavish dinner party, the guests find themselves unable to depart... and, over the next few days, all of their elaborate societal pretenses and façades deteriorate as they are reduced to living like animals.