(1962)
Overall: MEH
A slow, traditional Gothic horror work from writer/director Miguel Morayta, The Bloody Vampire, (El vampiro sangriento), at least has excellent scenery and one or two other commendable qualities to keep it from being unwatchable. Slow motion is used at various instances, always to eerie effect except when the same shot of the film's embarrassingly stupid looking rubber bat is given such a treatment and garnishes well-deserved yer unintentional chuckles. Fog, crypts, and fire-lit dwellings make for evocative and spooky visuals and cinematographer Raúl Martínez Solares at least manages to capture the right kind of macabre vibe. Unfortunately, he also never moves his camera and the staging is awful, as every single scene plays out in a static wide shot that ergo makes for little momentum the entire way through. At over an hour and a half in length, this is a detrimental issue since Morayta's story, (while tossing in some vampire mythos tweaks in a lengthy expository scene early on), quickly resorts to the usual cliches that American, British, and European B-movies of an identical variety had long exploited. Carlos Agostí's glowing eyed, wide-fanged baddie flies off to torment another day at the end, which would lead to the following year's sequel The Invasion of the Vampires.
Overall: MEH
A slow, traditional Gothic horror work from writer/director Miguel Morayta, The Bloody Vampire, (El vampiro sangriento), at least has excellent scenery and one or two other commendable qualities to keep it from being unwatchable. Slow motion is used at various instances, always to eerie effect except when the same shot of the film's embarrassingly stupid looking rubber bat is given such a treatment and garnishes well-deserved yer unintentional chuckles. Fog, crypts, and fire-lit dwellings make for evocative and spooky visuals and cinematographer Raúl Martínez Solares at least manages to capture the right kind of macabre vibe. Unfortunately, he also never moves his camera and the staging is awful, as every single scene plays out in a static wide shot that ergo makes for little momentum the entire way through. At over an hour and a half in length, this is a detrimental issue since Morayta's story, (while tossing in some vampire mythos tweaks in a lengthy expository scene early on), quickly resorts to the usual cliches that American, British, and European B-movies of an identical variety had long exploited. Carlos Agostí's glowing eyed, wide-fanged baddie flies off to torment another day at the end, which would lead to the following year's sequel The Invasion of the Vampires.
(1963)
Overall: MEH
Writer/director Miguel Morayta's follow-up to the previous year's The Bloody Vampire is a sluggish bore with several of the cast members returning, as well as similar drawbacks and positive qualities. The Invasion of the Vampires, (La invasión de los vampiros), opens in a slow and atmospheric fashion as did its predecessor, with undead minions wandering around fog-laden lands while villagers stare in pants-wetting terror. This sequence is repeated later and the accompanying soundtrack full of howling winds and ghostly wails goes on heavy rotation throughout the entire movie, providing an excellently spooky tone that many of the Gothic visuals further enhance. Unfortunately, Morayta's script is overwhelmingly talky and his direction is just as sterile as it was in the previous film. There is virtually no vampiric action throughout the entire thing besides members of the undead simply walking around or standing motionless, plus Carlos Agosti's main bad guy Count Frankenhausen utters only the most sporadic amounts of dialog, which is more than made up for by every other painfully uninteresting character chatting redundant information ad nausem. Also, the big, stupid fake bat gets even more screen time and looks like a stuffed animal rabbit, which understandably takes the wind out of the otherwise eerie aesthetic.
(1966)
Overall: MEH
Though it boasts a surprising amount of atmosphere for what is essentially a D-grade, Mexican cheapie, Dr. Satán, (not to be confused with Doctor Satan's Robot which was an American television film released the same year, itself a condensed version of the 1940 film serial Mysterious Doctor Satan), is too overwhelmingly sluggish in its pacing to work. Joaquín Cordero plays the title character with a combination of Oliver Reed and Cameron Mitchel menace; a title character who decides that it would be fun to create a legion of zombies while occasionally asking the Devil if he can own a couple of souls from his victims. The two sequences where said diabolical Doctor does in fact summon the Lord of Darkness are excellent as the abrasive, otherworldly music blares while hefty amounts of fog encircle a silhouetted, crouching, demonic figure with horns and enormous bat wings. The occult, mad scientist, and crime film mash-up is occasionally amusing, but director Miguel Morayta creates a stagnant sense of momentum where pointless scenes of characters doing incidental tasks like answering the phone, walking across rooms, delivering messages, and standing around waiting all drag everything down to a comatose-inducing stand-still.
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