(1980)
Dir - Alfredo B. Crevenna/Claudia Becker
Overall: MEH
Though it was released in 1980 and is a Mexican production from top to bottom, Dynasty of Dracula, (La dinastía de Dracula), strictly adheres to early 70s, Gothic Euro-horror motifs with a plot that heavily borrows bullet points from Bram Stoker's Dracula without it being a direct adaptation. In fact, the script by Jorge Patiño throws in the ole "condemned for blasphemous dealings with Satan" prologue as well, where a vampire/witch/whatever vows revenge centuries later; revenge that must be taken out on a specific day at a specific hour involving genetic decedents and whatnot. In other words, this is an unabashed cliche fest and not just where the narrative is concerned. Roberto Nelson's head vampire dons the high-collared cape and suave mannerisms as he plays it all off as being just another aristocrat from a superstitious, foreign country. The undead rules are the commonly established ones where they are vulnerable to a barrage of things while also having the ability to turn into animals and mist, which they only sometimes do at highly opportune times. Oodles of camera zooms, predictably blaring musical cues, drunk editing, and a hilariously pathetic looking rubber bat round out the cheap aesthetics, but the whole thing is also way too talky and lifeless despite its handful of quirky, unintentionally silly elements.
(1984)
Dir - Juan López Moctezuma
Overall: MEH
Juan López Moctezuma's first of only two films made in the 1980s, To Kill a Stranger, (Secuestrada), is a stark departure from the goofy mental illness romp The Mansion of Madness, the sluggish vampire slasher Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary, and the gonzo blasphemy of Alucarda. Unfortunately, it is a borderline terrible departure as well. Both Dean Stockwell and Donald Pleasence are on board with the former sounding as if he was dubbed by another actor and the later making a pivotal cameo doing a silly foreigner accent. All production aspects are awkard at best, with deafening music playing at inopportune times while characters are trying to deliver their dialog, an asinine plot, tonal inconsistencies, and unintentionally off-putting ADR readings. Pleasence's scene is virtually the only one that is overtly violent, but it is just one of many haphazard things that happen with no warning or satisfying explanation throughout the film. What seals the deal though is the arduous pacing. It becomes difficult to both understand or care about what is even going on as an American journalist, his wife, a police inspector, and the military junta do everything in their power to not move things along in an enticingly dramatic fashion. Clearly Moctezuma needed more lesbian Satanists and batshit crazy lunatics posing as doctors to liven things up here.
(1987)
Dir - René Cardona Jr.
Overall: WOOF
A wretched knock-off of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Beaks: The Movie, (El ataque de los pájaros, The Attack of the Birds, Birds of Prey, Beaks: The Birds 2, Evil Birds), only occasionally springs to life with a few gory set pieces. One of many low-budget works from Mexican filmmaker René Cardona Jr., it is typically D-rent and unintentionally humorous due to its aggressive lack of plotting, unlikable characters, idiotic dialog, non-existent production values, lousy performances, and eyeball gouging scenes. There is a pathetically vague "nature vs man" angle thrown in where the airborne assailants decide to attack humans out of possible revenge, (an opening sequence where a guy is shooting pigeons for sport and some shots of rotisserie chickens are about all that we have to go on to prove such a theory). The story stops dead in its tracks less than halfway through where we follow several groups of annoying characters who get real live birds thrown at them in violent fashion, which is a more horrific display of animal cruelty than anything else. Say what you want about the shoestring budget being glaringly obvious throughout, but there are no special effects afforded here; just good ole putting real live actors in real live danger by also putting real live animals in real live danger.
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