"The fourth and best film by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, The Heart of the Forest is a difficult yet surprisingly mature work which will incite its viewers to bet all their money on him as the Spanish director of the eighties. His performance here is as daring as it is brilliant: he uses a classically realistic context-the adventures and misadventures of clandestine partisans in the Asturian mountains during the 1942-1952 period-to sketch out an ingenious reflection on the 'partisan myth,' which he presents as a black fairy tale. The 'ogre' in this case is a veteran and apparently indestructible guerrilla leader, no longer a freedom fighter but a slave who robs to survive, a character as sinister and elusive as Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, upon which this film is loosely based. Its castle is the forest, filmed with great sensitivity as if it were another human character, and in fact it is the real protagonist of the film. The captured princess is the sister of one of his captured companions of yesteryear, Juan, who plays a part in the fairy tale similar to Marlowe's in Conrad's original. Their lonely adventure, which recreates long-forgotten and yet delightful terrors of a child lost in the woods, is the center of this powerful and haunting film." Jose Luis Guarner, International Film Guide 1981