The Exquisite Cadaver AKA: The Cruel Ones is a 1969 Spanish film noir psychological thriller film directed by Vicente Aranda, based on the short story Bailando Para Parker written by Gonzalo Suárez. The plot follows a well-to-do publisher and family man who begins to receive severed body parts in the mail two years after his mistress committed suicide. Along with one of these bloody parcels is a letter of blackmail from the dead woman's former lesbian lover, who seeks vengeance.

Plot

A girl is seen slowly and deliberately laying her head down on railroad tracks as an oncoming train approaches. Two years later, Carlos, a well-to-do family man and publisher of pulp horror novels receives an anonymous yellow package containing a severed human hand. He buries it in a nearby park. The next yellow package he receives is left unopened on a bench in the city. However, when he arrives home the package is awaiting him. This one contains a torn-up dress and a photograph of a girl. His beautiful wife reads him a telegram asking if he would like a forearm. He feebly attempts to lie about the contents with a work-related explanation to his wife. Now suspicious, Carlos's wife follows her husband and spots a mysterious woman in black following him as well.