(1960)
Dir - Gilberto Martínez Solares
Overall: MEH
Allegedly hard up for cash enough to make a south of the border trip for a pay day, Lon Chaney Jr. puts on the werewolf makeup for one of the last times in co-writer/director Gilberto Martínez Solares' House of Terror, (La Casa del Terror). Joining forces with Germán "Tin-Tan" Valdés, it is about as lackluster and not-humorous as any other Mexican horror comedy from the era, with plenty of goofy mugging, cartoon sound effects, an arbitrary musical number, and Valdés jumping at his own shadow like a buffoon. Watching Chaney pathetically howl, slowly prance around a busy highway, awkwardly remove a lock from a prison cell door, and stand unflatteringly in full mummy garb for closeups while a mannequin that is noticeably half his size is used in the wide shots all amounts to an embarrassing ordeal for the man who was delegated to such lowly parts at this point in his career. Solares and his cinematographer brother Raúl Martínez pull-off some atmospheric shots here or there when the movie is not exclusively concerned with an aggressively juvenile sense of humor, but it is also too dull and sluggish as a genre hodgepodge to recommend.
(1961)
Dir - Fernando Cortés
Overall: MEH
Later reworked for American audiences by Jerry Warren as Creature of the Walking Dead, La marca del muerto, (Mark of the Dead Man), is one of countless movies where a lunatic scientist justifies killing young woman in a ridiculous, pseudo-science scheme of attaining immortality. Fernando Casanova stars in a dual role, both said mad doctor and also his descendant who of course looks exactly like him to the point where the villainous version easily dupes people into thinking that he is the good one. Also because of course, the eternal youth blood transfusions only work for a limited amount of time, forcing more victims to pile up while simultaneously allowing for bad "monster" makeup when Casanova's Dr. Malthus needs his fix. There are a handful of talky set pieces that slow things down to a standstill with characters regurgitated redundant dialog, though this is still a quicker paced affair than would be expected. Director/co-writer Fernando Cortés builds suspense with some sinister stalking and lab experiment scenes, plus the set design and location work is not without its macabre charm. The story is cliche-ridden, cockamamie nonsense that even a three year old would find illogical, but it at least not insulting in its presentation.
(1963)
Dir - Jaime Salvador
Overall: WOOF
More of a yawn-inducing, contemporary, Western-adjacent crime movie than a Mexican yeti one, El monstruo de los volcanes, (The Monster of the Volcano), comes from prolific director Jaime Salvador who is unfortunately powerless to elevate the material towards anything close to watchable. Federico Curiel and Alfredo Ruanova's script deserves points for effort at least in trying to sandwich two clashing ideas together as we have a band of henchman or something trying to get a medallion, an ancient monster who is guarding a treasure in a volcanic region, and a love interest who gets caught up between everything. Said abominable not-snowman looks like a cross between an albino version of Billy Bob from the Rockafire Explosion and a Teletubby, which is to say a tall actor wearing a fluffy rug that comes off about as menacing as it sounds. Not that we see much of him anyway since this is another clear example of a rushed B-movie that can only afford to have a series of actors standing in rooms while talking to each other. At one point, several of them are having an aggressively uninteresting conversation in one room, only for one of them to proclaim that they should continue their conversation in the next room, which they then promptly do. Such edge-of-your-seat set pieces are all that we get here and still at only seventy-six minutes, it cannot end fast enough.
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