Narcissistic charmer Rafael (Guillermo Toledo) is the best salesman in the women's department at Madrid's mammoth department store Yeyo's. He can talk any female customer into expensive clothes and jewelry and any female co-worker out of her clothes. After the previous floor manager keels over dead (while dressed as Santa for the holiday sale, no less), Rafael's only rival for the position is older Don Antonio Fraguas (Luis Varela) and the end of the day's sales totals will determine which one gets the job. With Don Antonio ahead, Rafael makes a $12,000 Euro fur coat sale at the last moment and celebrates his victory with Roxanne (Kira Miró) in the store after hours. The next morning, however, Rafael discovers that Don Antonio has been given the floor manager position after the fur coat sale check bounced. Don Antonio humiliates Rafael by appointing him duties that normally go to new hires like changing the mannequins. When Rafael yells at the customer whose bounced check cost him the floor manager position, Don Antonio fires him in private. When Rafael makes some remarks about rumors of Don Antonio's "handling" of customers in boyswear, the older man attacks him with a jagged coat hanger and the struggle results in Don Antonio impaled on a clothes hook in one of the fitting rooms. Looking under the door, Rafael spots the shoes of a possible witness but is unable to identify him or her. After closing, Rafael tries to dispose of the body in the furnace but it does not fit. When he returns with a massive cleaver from kitchenware, he discovers that the body is missing. Unable to find the body by opening time the next day, Rafael nearly cracks under questioning from the police (after Don Antonio's wife called to day he had not come home) but discovers that lovesick homely co-worker Lourdes (Mónica Cervera) has disposed of the body for him and wants Rafael's eternal love and devotion in return. As Lourdes insinuates her own influence into Rafael's new empire (she makes him fire all of the pretty salesgirls and replaces them with homely ones who - much to his annoyance - increase sales by 20%). As she introduces him to her family and presses their relationship, he fears getting caught less than being turned into a "normal" boring person. With a little prodding from his warped conscience in the form of Don Antonio - green-skinned with a clever in his head - to get rid of Lourdes and so begins a Hitchcockian cat and mouse game.

The purposefully mis-pelled Spanish title EL CRIMEN FERPECTO is a play on the Spanish title of Alfred Hitchcock's DIAL M FOR MURDER which was EL CRIMEN PERFECTO (also the Spanish title of the utterly awful remake with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow). Deservedly nominated for 6 Spanish Academy Award nominations, THE PERFECT CRIME is yet another wicked black comedy from Alex de la Iglesia merging the hilarious with the grotesque in the tradition of his LA COMUNIDAD and PERDITA DURANGO. Toledo's Rafael (who was born in the store while his mother was shopping and considers it his home) knows exactly what he wants - a $14,000 Euro sports car, the floor manager position, as many beautiful women as possible - and believes he will do anything to get it. His apartment is almost bare but he tells us he would rather have nothing than a house full of vulgar objects. He applies the laws of the jungle to life and work (he stalks his customers through the aisles like prey and can talk them into buying anything yet when he loses the floor manager position because of a bounced check, we see the other side of his character in a simultaneously hilarious and uncomfortable tongue-lashing scene. In giving the audience access to Rafael's racing inner thoughts, he places us in a position to actually identify with and sympathize with a fairly nasty character; also managing to make those seemingly decent people he holds in contempt look grotesque in comparison. Likewise, de la Iglesia also makes the obviously loopy Lourdes a sympathetic character (especially when you meet her family). De la Iglesia himself is quoted in the making-of as saying it's his funniest film yet and I'm inclined to agree.