(1961)
Dir - Federico Curiel/Stillman Segar
Overall: MEH
The first of four Nostradamus films released in rapid succession over the course of about a year, The Curse of Nostradamus, (La maldición de Nostradamus), is nearly unwatchably repetitive and boring. Believed to have been edited together from a television serial, it contains one of the most abrupt endings in cinema history and an enormously tedious structure where the title bad guy spends the entire movie asking a professor to speak highly of his infamous ancestor, only for said professor to refuse, only then for Nostradamus Jr. to go on killing more people. It is no exaggeration to say that this virtually verbatim dialog exchange plays out almost on continuous repeat and it makes for a horrendously dull viewing experience long before the whole thing wraps up as if the film stock simply ran out. In the diabolical lead, Germán Robles plays another Béla Lugosi stand-in as he also had done in a handful of vampire films released in the late 1950s, but he engages in very little textbook undead activity here besides being afraid of a cross. One or two of the deaths are gruesome and the cinematography is appropriately macabre, but those are the only positive attributes one can find.
(1962)
Dir - Federico Curiel
Overall: MEH
Round two in the Nostradamus series Nostradamus y el destructor de monstruos, (Nostradamus and the Destroyer of Monsters), is an even more dull and actionless one, picking up where the previous installment left off with two kids inadvertently unearthing the buried body of the title vamp who goes right back to his humdrum shtick. In fact Germán Robles deserves ninth billing at most, disappearing for the entire second act and barely showing up anywhere else except to spout some more general warnings and quickly disappear whenever anyone attempts to cause him physical harm. There is a detour involving a convicted criminal and two college students who wish to operate on his brain and this actually provides the film with one of its only set pieces that is not just characters sitting in rooms and discussing the existence of vampires. This introduced Euro-horror mainstay Jack Taylor as the bloodsucker hunter Igor, who would briefly continue his portrayal in the following Nostradamus, The Genie of Darkness. Similar to Robles though, Taylor only appears near the end, but he does have a smoking cauldron that can apparently show flashbacks detailing the history of the undead, for whatever that is worth.
(1962)
Dir - Federico Curiel
Overall: MEH
More of the same with the third Nostradamus film Nostradamus, The Genie of Darkness, (Nostradamus, el Genio de las Tinieblas, Genii of Darkness), which sees most of the same ole characters doing nothing besides talking in rooms about other things that they should be doing to thwart Germán Robles' diabolical, title blood-sucker. Three movies in and it is alarming at this point what the hold up is on both the good and evil sides, as so little action transpires that is is a huge wonder why neither has claimed victory yet. Actually defeating each other would clearly take far too much time away from talking about defeating each other instead. In any event, Jack Taylor is done away with early on, which is a shame since he possessed a mad glare to his eye that made it actually borderline exciting to watch when he finally came face to face with Robles' penetrating stare. Once he is out of the picture though, it is right back to tortuously dull talking sequences one after the other. That said, Nostradamus does burn a woman alive after hypnotizing her into laughing through it, but otherwise this is just another boring ordeal whose saga still regrettably had a whole other film left to wrap the whole thing up.
(1962)
Dir - Federico Curiel
Overall: MEH
At an hour and forty-three minutes in length, the final installment in the Nostradamus series feels even more like a chore to get through than the previous three which were each nearly a half hour shorter and ergo more forgiving. The Blood of Nostradamus, (La sangre de Nostradamus), continues the tale of almost nothing happening where Germán Robles's title vampire tries to convince Domingo Soler's insultingly boring professor to take his father's, (or grandfather's?), legacy seriously, lest more victims fall by the wayside. Viewed as a complete saga, (which is not advisable unless you can play them all at double the speed as to get on with your life), these are some of the most talky and least engaging low-budget horror films that Mexico ever produced during the 1960's, which was the country's most prolific decade in genre cinema up until that point. Quasi-interesting moments come after tremendous stretches of the exact opposite, (Robles showing off his fangs and actually biting a woman, his dim-witted servant falling to his death from a bell tower, and Soler's electromagnetic contraption causing wild bouts of spastic pain for the undead fiend), but obviously these are hardly redeemable enough to make the entire affair anything less than something that should remain in relative obscurity.
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