Santa Sangre

SANTA SANGRE
(1989)
Dir - Alejandro Jodorowsky
Overall: GREAT
 
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a filmmaker unlike other filmmakers.  In fact, he does not consider himself a filmmaker in the commercial sense, instead labeling himself an artist who happens to make movies when he has something to make.  He has stated that he puts his entire soul, his entire being into his films and feels depleted afterwards, at which point he needs to experience life more to find whatever ideas are out there to put on celluloid again.  Jodorowsky has also stated that he does not make movies from his intellect but from his unconscious, opening himself up to the moment and following the muse into whatever wild avenues it takes him.  He is a filmmaker, (or, we should say, an ARTIST), that is in tune with a type of boundless imagination that makes his work singular and stimulating.  No one makes movies like him, no one makes art like him, and because of that, we have a film like Santa Sangre that no one else could have delivered.

 

It is interesting to note that as textbook Jodorowsky as Santa Sangre is, he did not birth the script for it initially.  It was in fact brought to him by producer Claudio Argento who developed the story with screenwriter Roberto Leoni, the latter inspired by his time spent working in the library of a psychiatric hospital where he had first hand contact with those suffering from debilitating mental illness.  This may seem like a place of tragedy for such a concept to emerge, but Leoni discovered something unexpected and uplifting in his time spent there, coming across people who had violent thoughts yet were able to suppress them.  When Argento and Leoni then contacted and met with Jodorowsky, (who both wisely considered to be the best man for the job), something serendipitous occurred.  While working as a cartoonist from his long downtime between projects, (Santa Sangre would be his first movie in nearly a decade), Jodorowsky has claimed to have met the infamous Mexican serial killer Gregorio Cárdenas Hernández by chance, learning that the former murderer had become fully rehabilitated and was living as a free man with a family and a law degree.  Thus a spark was fired, and Jodorowsky was able to contribute his own concepts to Leoni's story, concepts which ran parallel in taking a sympathetic approach to someone committing heinous acts.

 

Jodorowsky: A man inspired.

Having worked with his famous brother Dario consistently, Argento was sticking with what he knew, wanting to make a movie where a lot of women were brutally murdered on screen.  He settled for only two, as well as a musclebound man in drag, but more on that later.  Despite Argento having more of an exploitative agenda, Leoni and Jodorowsky's collaborative finished screenplay offered up something that steered clear of mere misogynistic violence.  It instead went into psychological terrain while humanizing the perpetrator of such violence, which was ideally suited to Jodorowsky's penchant for exploring the unconscious and putting an endless stream of wacky and, (if need be), controversial images on screen.

 

In Santa Sangre, we get a Folk Catholic cult who worships an armless girl that was raped and murdered while baptizing themselves in a pool of sacred blood.  We get an elaborate funeral procession for an elephant which is ritualistically dumped into a quarry where hundreds of local scavengers excitingly rip apart the carcass for its meat.  We get an overweight, drunkard, adulterer, hypnotist knife-thrower who gets sulfuric acid poured on his genitals by his wife when caught in the act with a fully tattooed woman, at which point he slices off the arms of said wife before slitting his throat in full view of his now permanently traumatized son.  We get a handful of people with down syndrome who snort cocaine, dance with cross-dressing prostitutes, and then party with an overweight prostitute.  We get our main character providing the arms for his now armless mother, slipping into her wardrobe behind her and doing everything from performing, to crocheting, to playing the piano, to eating breakfast, to murdering women.  We get our main character dressing up as the Invisible Man in his thwarted attempts to create a potion to actually turn into the Invisible Man.  We get our main character burying his victims while delicately covering them with white paint.  We get our main character luring a male wrestler with fake tits who is supposed to be a woman into a solo performance before attacking him/her.  We get clowns and a dwarf who spontaneously show up whenever our main character manifests them.  We get a giant python that emerges out of our main character's pants when he is aroused.

 

We also get Axel Cristóbal Jodorowsky doing whatever the hell he is doing here.

As one could gather from such an assortment of head-scratching set pieces, there are even more to be found in Santa Sangre.  This is Jodorowsky's M.O. after all, his former cult films Fando y Lis, El Topo, and The Holy Mountain each littered with unforgettable images that are equal parts provocative, absurd, off-color, disturbing, insane, and hilarious.  Yet comparatively, Santa Sangre is a more straightforward movie in Jodorowsky's oeuvre up until this point, not counting his 1980 film Tusk which was made for children and had a noticeable lack of castration, blasphemy, gender ambiguous characters, murder, and nudity.  Narratively, we can easily follow Jodorowsky and Leoni's script and even guess the twist ending since the allusions to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and the improbability of many instances are readily apparent throughout.  In other words, it utilizes the "unreliable narrator" trope, almost exclusively showing us what our disturbed protagonist Fénix sees and experiences as opposed to what everyone that he actually encounters is experiencing.

 

As far as that disturbed protagonist is concerned, Fénix is portrayed by Jodorowsky's son Axel, the director's other sons Adán and Teo also appearing.  While Teo merely has a minor role as a pimp, Adán gets significant screen time as Fénix as a child, and both brothers look nearly identical to each other.  As opposed to almost every film which does not have the luxury of casting siblings as younger and older versions of the same character, Santa Sangre does, and it provides the movie with an eerie sense of believably that clashes wonderfully with how otherwise surreal and expressive the rest of it is.  Outrageous stuff may be happening in nearly every scene, but the casting makes it seem as if Jodorowsky was able to shoot the first act at one point in time, and then was able to wait about twenty years to shoot the rest.  Yet also consider that other characters from both timelines appear and seem to have not aged, which signifies to the audience that they may or many not exist in the "real" world and instead only in the tortured world of Fénix', something that proves to be all too true by the end.

 

A (bizarre) family affair.

This is a crucial element to psychological horror in general, providing images and scenes that disrupt the audience's expectations about how tangible reality works, throwing into question everything that we are seeing.  It is a surrealist tactic of course, and Jodorowsky being a surrealist knows how to offset the viewer as good if not better than most.  In Santa Sangre, he does this while treating his subjects with a level of compassion, and not just because it is his own offspring that we are seeing on screen.  Fénix is a tragic character across the board, one who was brought up in the circus life and treated brutally by both of his parents, (Guy Stockwell and Blanca Guerra, respectively), one who murdered the other before murdering himself all within eye-site of the young magician.  He is largely neglected by parents, painfully tattooed by his father in order to graduate and "become a man" and then beaten and made to worship the armless girl by his mother, a mother who has an open disdain for the father of her child and seems to only be sticking around due to said father's ability to hypnotize her.  Most of these dysfunctional family dynamics are deliberately left vague as the first act is more concerned with providing us with mere crucial plot points to get to the insinuating tragedy that sets Fénix off on his harrowing arc as a young man.

 

Providing some details is important, but providing ALL of the details as to how Fénix comes to such a fate is not a necessity.  After all, this is a feature-length movie, not a novel or a twelve-part miniseries.  Yet answering all of the "whys" is not something that Jodorowsky is interested in in the first place.  In the commentary track for Santa Sangre, journalist Alan Jones repeatedly tries to get the artist to open up in order to provide some rhyme and reason for any number of moments within the film.  Paraphrasing, Jodorowsky hilariously starts to fire back at him after awhile, saying things like "Why why why. Why?  Because I like it" or "Because that's what it is".  One could say that Jones should know better than in asking a surrealist to explain themselves, but he takes it in stride and after all, Jodorowsky himself went into considerable detail on his earlier commentary tracks for his other films, cluing us in on the specific symbolism that he utilized.  So it is not that ridiculous for Jones to question him as to the, well, ridiculousness of the work.  Of course sometimes though, the "whys" are not important, and in fact having the artist provide all of the justifications for things only robs the viewer of doing the work themselves.

 

And one has their work cut out for themselves here.

Also and as stated, Santa Sangre is a different experience than Fando y Lis, El Topo, and The Holy Mountain.  Jodorowsky said that up until this point, he had never dealt with human emotions in his films, thus Santa Sangre was his attempt to explore such things.  His earlier movies were more like challenging and symbolic acid trips, done, (by Jodorowsky's own admission), by a man who was ambitious with his own pretensions.  Various Eastern philosophical influences were at the crust of Fando y Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, each movie dealing with spiritual enlightenment as their character's arcs had a forward momentum towards ascension.  We were not made to feel so much for the people on screen in these films; they instead served more of a symbolic purpose for the overall agenda to defy conventions and expand minds.

 

One must also remember that Jodorowsky is an absurdist as much as he is anything.  For almost a century now he has made it a point to say and do outrageous things to get people talking about him and his projects, and he does this while being a kooky goofball, no matter how eyebrow raising his statements are or how eyebrow raising his work is.  “Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles," “I was raping Frank Herbert but with love," “God does not exist, God is not good. All that awaits us is the cat who will urinate on our grave," etc.  There is such an absurdist stream running through Santa Sangre that is unmistakable, which is to say that the movie is not accidentally funny simply because of its eccentric nature.  The moments that are impossible NOT to chuckle at are there by design.  This aligns it with Jodorowsky's agenda to explore human emotions, since laughter is one of the most pleasurable and universal emotions that we all experience.  “Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together," another of his quotes that sums this up accordingly.

 

Comedy and tragedy, together indeed.

One can take a cynical look at the man and just write him off as a wacky eccentric, but there are way more quotes from him that affirm his optimism, his ambition, his belief in the power of art to change people and in effect change the world.  “Have a dream. Fight to do a dream. Don’t ask if it is possible to do something or if not possible. Try to do it!”, “Words don’t heal. Art heals!”, “Art gives to you a new conception of reality, opens your mind, opens your heart, opens your desire of action.”, etc.  So along with all of the absurdity is an agenda to create something uplifting, and in the case of Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky does this by presenting a scenario where a killer can be redeemed, where a killer can evoke sympathy even more than his victims, where a killer's tragedy can be alchemized into something beautiful.

 

Fénix is possessed by his mother's all-consuming spirit, broken off from reality and living in his own warped version of it where anything that arouses him and therefor challenges her must be brutally slain.  He provides his mother's hands, reaping her revenge or reaping what he perceives to be her revenge based on what he witnessed when he was a wee lad.  It is only through the one innocent person from his past entering his life again that he is able to break free.  The mute Alma is that person, portrayed as an adult by the actual hearing-impaired actor Sabrina Dennison.  She has likewise lived a troubled existence post her and Fénix's circus upbringing, being prostituted by her mother, the tattooed lady from all those years ago who provided the straw that broke the camel's back between Fénix' parent's dysfunction.  Once Alma is freed from her mother by Fénix murdering her in his possessed state, the two are eventually reunited, their union shattering the spell that his mother has had on him the whole time.

 

Whole lotta bird symbolism up in this movie.

 

After so much chaos and so much craziness, Santa Sangre ends as a lovely allegory of atonement.  When Fénix and Alma emerge from him being able to finally "kill" the influence of his mother and regain his own sense of self for the first time in his life, the police are waiting there to apprehend him.  Fénix will be captured and he will be punished for his crimes, a sense of justice will be attained.  Yet what does Fénix do when he is told to put up his hands in surrender?  He slowly looks at them in comprehension that at long last, yes, they are indeed HIS hands and not his mothers.  He smiles as he begins to lift them, content, at peace, and optimistic.  The story is over, the camera pulls back, the credits roll, and the audience is left dealing with a barrage of emotions, human emotions just as Jodorowsky intended to examine.

 

It is one thing to just make a film where a bunch of insane things happen that run the gamut between shocking, sickening, strange, and silly.  There can be no rhyme or reason to such things and one can still get a reaction out of an audience by using them.  With Jodorowsky though, there is always a reason.  Whether it is with the endless tarot references in The Holy Mountain or the Judeo-Christian arc in El Topo, Jodorowsky is exploring the human experience and reaching for something grand.  He does it with shock tactics to be sure since his small filmography is loaded with more unforgettable, unusual, and taboo-breaking images than most movie-makers would deliver with dozens more works under their belts.  Yet when Jodorowsky finally does get around to making a film, he does not fuck around.  Santa Sangre hits us on a handful of levels, presenting a full journey of one man overcoming the trauma of his childhood.  The road to get there is full of abnormalities, full of images from a warped mind, (both Jodorowsky's warped mind and that of his protagonist Fénix), full of moments so ridiculous that we can giggle in perverse enjoyment over them.  The film is a thing of beauty though, a masterwork from a French-Chilean renaissance man with ambition to change the world, an ambition that we can all applaud.

 

No matter who's hands are applauding.

1940s Foreign Horror Part Four

LE CORBEAU

(1943)

Dir - Henri-Georges Clouzot

Overall: GOOD

 

His final work for the Nazi-run production company Continental Films, Le Corbeau, (The Raven), is renowned director Henri-Georges Clouzot's examination of French society's complex feelings towards the German occupation and the ensuing fear mongering and paranoia that goes along with it.  Set in a nondescript village that is deliberately labeled as "anywhere", poison pen letters become the talk of the town, all of which either directly target or eventually lead to Pierre Fresnay's emotionally detached doctor who engages in an affair or two while also performing maybe abortions on the down-low.  Though we eventually get an answer as to who the culprit is, Clouzot and co-screenwriter Louis Chavance's script is not structured or preoccupied merely with whodunit motifs.  It is a tale about what happens to people who are susceptible to gossip when such scandalous hearsay can push everyone to a point where few can be trusted and all can be suspected.  After the war, the movie garnished Clouzot a temporary ban from his home country due to his compliance with the German-controlled French film company, not to mention the anti-French slant that can be read into the material where compliance breeds turmoil.  Clouzot nevertheless proves himself here as a stylized expert in suspense, sly humor, and symbolism.

 

LA HERENCIA DE LA LLORONA

(1947)

Dir - Mauricio Magdaleno

Overall: WOOF

 

Writer/director Mauricio Magdaleno's Le herencia de la Llorona, (The Heritage of the Crying Woman), is easily one of the weakest takes on the La Llorona legend, but even calling this a "take" on it would be misleading.  Instead, we have a drab melodrama involving family squabbles, with one quasi-supernatural sequence occurring midway through.  Most Mexican genre film from the period were equipped with a comic relief character, and such a role is handled by Agustín Isunza who of course does nothing funny, yet he does come off as a coward in his small handful of scenes.  The film was likely done on a minuscule budget due to it all taking place at a single location, having no special effect shots of any kind, and Magdaleno maintaining a torturous pace that plays out almost entirely in wide shots where everyone either gets all of their uninteresting dialog out of the way or creeps around slowly while the stock music hints at something sinister going on.  No one on screen comes off as annoying, but the story is dull in every last one of its attributes, toiling around a patriarch dying, an asshole inheriting her estate, two people who want to get married and are then not allowed to get married after they were allowed to get married, and some other people trying to help solve a mystery that is fittingly anticlimactic.

 

NIJIOTOKO

(1949)

Dir - Kiyohiko Ushihara

Overall: MEH

 

A Western-styled sci-fi/old dark house hybrid, Nijiotoko, (The Rainbow Man), was the last movie from director Kiyohiko Ushihara who switched careers to become a film teacher for several decades following.  We have rivaling reporters of different sexes, a weird family headed by a mad scientist who studies rainbows because sure why not, an also mad son who is a painter, a mysterious house fire, the police suspecting the wrong person, and of course a guy going around with rainbow powers after an experiment went awry.  Even though there is no supernatural ingredients and it follows a standard murder mystery trajectory, it is all gothic spookiness as far as the atmosphere goes, largely taking place in a big ole house with faulty railings and wailing winds outside.  The pacing is dreadful and the odd elements like a family being cursed by rainbows and not even being allowed to talk about them are played straight, giving the film little intrigue to keep things going during larges sections where either nothing is happening or nothing of interest is happening.  Coming from Japan, it is a unique mix of Poverty Row tropes from across the Pacific, but it should be approached for historical curiosity only.

1990s Mexican Horror Part Three

EL TEATRO DEL HORROR

(1991)

Dir - Pedro Galindo III
Overall: WOOF

Another in a string of terrible genre excursions from filmmaker Pedro Galindo III, El teatro del horror, (Theater of Horror), bypasses the slasher formula for a more convoluted and monotonous tale about two college students who try to rid a theater of a curse, only to have that go awry and end up causing their professor to become a walking corpse with a decapitated head.  Some other characters eventually show up who are about as funny as wet asparagus, and Rafael Sánchez Navarro's scenery chewing must be seen to be believed.  The first act is atrociously paced, but things do not get much better from there, only more loud and stupid.  Set almost exclusively at the crumbling Teatro Colonial in Mexico City, Galindo III loads it up with fog and cheap synth music to create a macabre atmosphere, but the tone is more ridiculous than creepy.  It eventually settles into lots of yelling, running around, talking, walking around, and repetitive dialog that advances nothing until lots of stuff catches on fire.  Besides Navarro mugging it up with a detached head, no other supernatural set pieces occur, and the piss pour budget wears itself embarrassingly on its sleeve.

PERSECUCIÓN INFERNAL

(1992)

Dir - Paco del Toro

Overall: WOOF

The obscure relic Persecución infernal, (Infernal Persecution), from Mexican director Paco del Toro is in line with most of the genre fare stemming from the country around the era as far as non-existent production values are concerned, but it is a more curious watch since it comes off like a cross between an embarrassing horror film and a Christian public service announcement.  Because it is noticeably so low on budget, (the laughably cheap title font, pedestrian cinematography, most scenes playing out in continuous takes to insure maximum boredom, etc), the movie is loaded with dialog in place of action, and a significant portion of that dialog is dedicated to characters explaining the glory of Jesus and how it is all that that is required to defeat evil.  We even get a sequence where someone plays "Stairway to Heaven" backwards to sincerely suggest that ole wives tale that it contains a hidden demonic message.  Such Satanic panic nonsense is adorably dated, and little information exists as to the origins or intentions of such a film, but it seems more like poorly executed exploitation with a half-assed religious moral undercurrent than something that was sanctioned by any church organization.  In any event, this is talky, lifeless, and dull stuff made with no flare whatsoever, so unless you are simply hankering for some early 90s mullets and lots of scenes of people in acting class, stay away.

EL CHUPACABRAS

(1996)

Dir - Gilberto de Anda

Overall: WOOF

A non-union Mexican equivalent X-Files done with Telemundo production values. El chupacabras would be hilariously wretched if not for how insultingly boring it is.  The problem here stems from the obvious piss-pour finances that were at the disposal of prolific director Gilberto de Anda and his crew.  Which is to say that the title monsters are merely talked about instead of shown, and boy are they talked about.  Sprawling three different countries and just as many pairs of characters, everyone in this universe starts investigating the mysterious goings-ons of the folklore creatures, and it all leads them to a cave where we finally get a few quick glimpses of them hanging back in the shadows within the last five minutes of the running time before our macho heroes blow the cave up and run away from it in slow motion, as one does when dynamite is ignited.  There is no humor, no clever dialog, no enticing kill scenes, no atmospheric cinematography, and this cannot be stressed enough, no goddamn chupacabras until their aforementioned "blink and you'll miss them" appearance at the very end.  Instead, we have big strong burly men with mustaches, women flirting with them, and everyone talking about stuff that either has nothing to do with anything or would be far more exciting to actually see on screen.

1980s American Horror Part One-Hundred and Nineteen

THE HEARSE

(1980)

Dir - George Bowers
Overall: MEH

 

Actor Trish Van Devere and her aggressive mom hair appeared in two supernatural horror films back to back in 1980, The Changeling and The Hearse, and the latter easily ending up being the less impressive one.  The directorial debut from editor George Bowers, this is mostly just a cliche fest, be it a well-intended one.  Van Devere inherits her creepy aunt's old country house, the locals are rude to her, she falls in love with a guy who is clearly a ghost even though it takes her about an hour's worth of running time to figure that out, a priest yells Bible things at the house while trying to exorcise it, none of the supernatural events can be verified by anyone ergo Van Devere just looks crazy, etc.  Bowers goes for a Southern Gothic aesthetic, but the movie ends up with a bland presentation that is better suited for the small screen than something theatrically released, let alone something that could compete with the era's more gore-ridden slasher crud rocks.  The horror elements leave much to be desired, the plot is predictable, the ending is lackluster, and the horns on the soundtrack sound ridiculous, but at least Joseph Cotten got to play a smug and crotchety asshole.

 

FRANKENSTEIN'S GREAT AUNT TILLIE

(1984)

Dir - Myron J. Gold

Overall: WOOF

Along with slasher movies and boner comedies, the 1980s had a particular liking for horror nyuck fests, and Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie is a nonsensical, sterile, and obnoxious one for the books.  A British/American co-production that was shot in Mexico (which is code for "shot cheaply"), this was the last film to be directed by screenwriter/producer Myron J. Gold.  Donald Pleasence was never offered a paycheck that he would not accept and he knows the assignment well enough here, but unfortunately the assignment is a thankless one that requires him to embarrass himself in every one of his frames.  He mumbles, eats, sings, wears a dress, and wears a toupee while mugging as much as possible because all of these things equal "comedy" of course.  Minor scream queen Yvonne Furneaux and former Playmate June Wilkinson and her gigantic boobs join Pleasence in such hogwash and neither one of them comes off any better, but blaming the film's terribleness on the performers is like blaming it on the film stock.  Gold's script is asinine if not borderline incoherent and despite its consistently juvenile tone, not an inkling of humor lands.  Yes there is a Karloff-inspired Monster, but even the most dedicated of Frankenstein fans would be well-advised to flee to the hills instead of partaking.

CURFEW

(1989)

Dir - Gary Winick

Overall: MEH

Frequently embarrassing and persistently mean-spirited, Curfew is the debut from director Gary Winick and it can be boiled down to "What if Cape Fear had two Robert Mitchums and also sucked".  A pair of scumbag sociopaths who also happen to be brothers escape from prison and go on a brief vengeance spree before house-crashing a district attorney that they blame for their incarceration.  Frank Miller, (no not THAT Frank Miller), is said district attorney who keeps his teenage daughter on a tight leash, telling her to obey her early curfew when she goes out with another scumbag on the high school football team.  Everyone eventually ends up at the same abode, most of them die, all of them are stupid, and Christopher Knight also collects a paycheck as a bumbling police officer whose basis of operations seems to be a roadside dinner that he rarely leaves.  Whether it is the bad guys torturing people or hollering like obnoxious assholes, Winick stages things in a clumsy manner that gives the whole thing a schlocky tone despite its attempts at being a disturbing home invasion movie.  The musical score by Cengiz Yaltkaya is one of the worst in any genre work from the decade; loud, cheap, persistent, and distracting, it makes an already dopey bit of exploitation that much more irritating.

1980s American Horror Part One-Hundred and Twelve

THE FOREST

(1982)

Dir - Don Jones

Overall: WOOF

 

Director Don Jones' small filmography touches upon a few different genres, The Forest being his uninspired cash-in on the slasher boom.  Shot in Sequoia National Park, California, the first act is spent with each of our four characters constantly complaining to each other, saying variations of "Are you sure about this?" and "C'mon, it'll be fine", plus bitching about the traffic, how much a mechanic charges to fix a truck, the weather, male chauvinism, why there are not more people at their camping site, how late it is getting, whose idea this all was, etc.  One can either be generous and consider such bickering as adorable and intentionally humorous, or find it annoying and stupid, but annoying and stupid is where the rest of the film spends its time.  The plot is asinine, (a guy killed his adulterating wife and now lives in the woods, eats people, and the ghosts of his family members occasionally show up), but the presentation is top-to-bottom embarrassing.  Awkward performances, dead air in between repetitive dialog exchanges, lame kill scenes, and bizarre choices like switching to black and white at irregular intervals and the ghost kids having echo on their voices.  Every other aspect is stock at best, but some viewers may find it to be a clumsy trainwreck that is worth laughing at.

AMITYVILLE 3-D

(1983)

Dir - Richard Fleischer

Overall: MEH

From the onset, the Amityville series was running on goofy schlock if it was running on anything, so after a straight adaptation of Jay Anson's huckster novel and an icky and mean-spirited follow-up, jumping on the 3-D bandwagon seemed a logical next move.  Shot in both Mexico and utilizing the same New Jersey exteriors as the previous installments, Amityville 3-D, (Amityville III: The Demon), was the stupidest entry thus far, (oh, but what was still to come), yet it also suffers from being the most dull.  The infamous lakeside house is still plagued by evil forces that the screenwriters are making up as they go along, this time involving a journalist who uncovers some seance con artists using the place and then decides to go ahead and buy it at a steal since he is going through a divorce and needs a new abode anyway.  We still have buzzing insects, the house being on top of an Indian burial ground, and people dying when they are not inside of it because who cares, but the new additions include a basement well that is both a gateway to hell and a swimming pool with a demon puppet inside of it, plus Lori Loughlin's wet ghost makes an appearance from beyond the grave.  An asinine story along with melodramatic acting and a few 3-D shots may provide something to laugh at, but the majority of the movie twiddles its thumbs and lulls one to sleep in the process.

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
(1989)
Dir - Raphael Nussbaum
Overall: MEH

This televangelist horror spoof Speak of the Devil, (The Ungodly), arrives at long last from co-writer/director Raphel Nussbaum and it serves as the German filmmaker's final movie before his death four years later.  The first issue is that the story focuses on unlikable con-artists, ensuring that the audience feels no sympathy for their persistent hardships, all of which they recklessly bring on themselves.  This would be fine if the script was full of clever gags and/or if Thomas McGowan and Jean Carol were charismatic villains.  Well to be fair, Carol hams it up appropriately as a scumbag televangelist wife, especially once her and McGowan go full Satan worship in their new haunted house.  The film lays on the wicked cliches, (pentagrams, money-hungry preachers, altars, reckless animal sacrifices, orgies, Los Angeles high life temptations run amok, etc), but some of the silly bits warrant a chuckle or two.  Most of them are sloppy and awkward though, coupled with a lousy story that is full of idiots and seems to be making it up as it goes along.  The one-hundred minute running time is also an issue since it drags to a conclusion that is void of surprises, but at least there is some fun, blasphemous window dressing to appreciate.

1980s Mexican Horror Part Five

EL MALEFICICO 2: LOS ENVIADOS DEL INFERNO

(1986)
Dir - Raúl Araiza
Overall: MEH

A feature-length continuation of writer/director Raúl Araiza's supernatural soap opera El maleficio, El maleficio 2: Los enviados del infierno, (The Hex 2: Messengers of Hell), takes its cue from Dan Curtis' The House of Dark Shadows, which retooled plot points from its daytime program for the movie version.T  he story here focuses on one of the series' main bad guys, Ernesto Alonso who portrays a practitioner of the black arts that is on a quest to find his Bael-worshiping successor.  Unfortunately for him, the young chosen one is a teenager that is in love with his own sister and because Alonso also has the hots for said woman, things do not go according to plan. Arbitrary telekinetic powers, The Omen-styled "accidental" death sequences, a continuously ominous musical score, and two different paintings that seem to omit unholy power, there are a number of fun genre elements thrown into the mix.  As far as Araiza's presentation though, the word "fun" is not as fitting as one would hope since it plays its cards too seriously to lean into any of its inherent silliness or exploitative value.  Humorless and dour, it gets points for sticking to its macabre tone, but it also feels its length and only delivers in fits and starts.

THE INFERNAL RAPIST
(1988)
Dir - Damián Acosta Esparza
Overall: WOOF

Arguably the sleaziest film to ever come out of Mexico, The Infernal Rapist, (El violador infernal), lives up to its apt title.  This is the type of gutter trash that one can skip over large portions of, (if not the entire movie), while also ignoring subtitles since it follows a rinse and repeat framework for eighty-three minutes that consists of nothing more than some guy chatting up his victims, giving them drugs, raping them, and then killing them.  Said hopeless romantic is played by Noé Murayama, who has all of the charisma of your creepy uncle that should be kept away from children.  His title character is a convicted murderer that is left alone in his electric chair immediately after getting fried, only for three fabulously dressed female demons to show up and grant him immortality, drugs, and pleasure so long as he continuously rapes, murders, and carves "666" into the flesh of his conquests.  He definitely does this and the entire ordeal is sporadically broken up with hot-headed police officers who rough up "fags" and make the usual complaints that the media is laughing at them and blah, blah, blah.  How a dead man waltzed out of jail and roams around freely on a murder spree for so long is left hilariously unexplained, but anyone coming to this expecting narrative coherence is watching the wrong movie.  It is cheap, boring, painfully moronic, and pathetically offensive, but for those who are in the mood for garbage, you cannot do worse than this.

 

HELL'S TRAP

(1989)

Dir - Pedro Galindo III

Overall: WOOF

Slasher movies suck for a number of reasons and one of the primary ones is that it is impossible to give a shit about characters who are A) all idiots and B) exist in a universe that runs on arbitrary logic.  Pedro Galindo III's Hell's Trap, (Trampa Infernal), pits its cast of morons against a Vietnam vet who went loco in the woods; woods that everyone ventures into on a dare as to which group of friends/enemies can kill a bear first.  The flimsy jumping-off point is made worse by a drawn-out sense of pacing that will lose most viewers long before the first kill happens at about thirty minutes in.  Once these dumb-dumbs realize that they are being picked off, instead of fleeing their isolated location in their properly working automobiles, they insist on staying put because the killer has traps everywhere, (traps that in no way hindered their arrival on road), thus we settle into a mind-numbingly boring and unimaginative "picking everyone off one-by-one" framework.  On paper, mixing First Blood with your typical masked slasher piece of garbage might sound like a fun bit of stupid to indulge in, but all of the existing problems render this a forgettable and insulting waste of time.  So in other words, it is just another 80s slasher movie.

1970s American Horror Part Eighty-Six

OCTAMAN
(1971)
Dir - Harry Essex
Overall: WOOF

Writer/director Harry Essex penned a few notable B-movie screenplays before he directed the Mexican/American co-production Octaman, which is a crap-fisted riff on his own Creature from the Black Lagoon.  On the plus side, the movie gets right to the good terrible stuff by showing us baby octopus toys wiggling around on the ground via strings and then lots of shots of the title monster which is a humanoid octopus creature that walks on its hind legs, is usually shot in broad daylight, and occasionally slaps some people to death with its stupid rubber arms.  The thing looks ridiculous and for unintentional comedic purposes, it is the star of the show since Essex knew that to keep it off of the screen for too long would likely result in drive-in walk-outs.  That said, he still is powerless to keep the film from being an insufferable bore, especially once the second act settles into a handful of people talking, capturing the creature, losing the creature, looking for the creature, and then finding it again at which point they just shoot it with guns until it flops back into the water.  Rick Baker worked on the monster which is something that he is probably not proud of, so maybe this can be viewed as historically significant as well as ideal fodder for bad movie night.

THE BERMUDA DEPTHS
(1978)
Dir - Tsugunobu Kotani
Overall: MEH

The second of three giant monster collaborations between Rankin/Bass and Tsuburaya Productions, (all of which were directed by Tsugunobu Kotani and initially aired on ABC in the States before getting picked up theatrically in Japan), The Bermuda Depths has wicked awesome and completely misleading poster art, plus Carl Weathers shooting a harpoon bazooka.  Combining sea sirens, a Faustian pact, the mysterious death of Leigh McCloskey's father, and a giant turtle creature, the script by William Overgard and Arthur Rankin Jr. at least deserves points for its hodgepodge of ideas.  Unfortunately it is a painfully dull watch, spinning its wheels with characters relaying irrelevant and/or repetitive information and taking over an hour to show the big-shelled reptile on screen.  Things still dilly-dally along once Weather and McCloskey are hunting the elusive new species at sea in the third act, lingering in a languid pace even when things technically get going.  The film is also peppered with inconsistent performances that bounce between the actors looking bored out of their minds and exploding in an emotional flurry at unintentionally funny intervals.

WOLFMAN
(1979)
Dir - Worth Keeter
Overall: MEH

Dull and cliche-ridden, Wolfman is the unassuming debut from writer/director Worth Keeter, who would go on to do a number of Power Rangers episodes, amongst other things.  This was one of several regional caca-fests from North Carolina-based producer Earl Owensby who casts himself in the title role as a zero-charisma schlub that inherits his father's money, only to find out that a wacky local priest has put a curse on his family because the script needed such a thing.  As bland as water-flavored ice cream, the movie goes for a period-set Gothic vibe with nightmare sequences, fog-drenched cemeteries, and eventually Owensby in cheap werewolf makeup that barely gets any screen time or close-ups.  Judging by the shoddiness of the production though, it is likely that the funds were lacking to do anything more with the paint-by-numbers material, but it somehow steers clear of being an unwatchable embarrassment.  That said, more unintentionally goofy moments could have elevated it to proper bad movie terrain.  Instead, it is played sincerely and the lousy acting, lousy script, unhurried pacing, and lack of fun set pieces just makes it as instantly forgettable as any werewolf movie has ever been.

1960s Mexican Horror Part Twelve

HOUSE OF TERROR
(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.

LA MARCA DEL MUERTO
(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.

 

EL MONSTRUO DE LOS VOLCANES
(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.

1960s Mexican Horror Part Eleven - (Benito Alazraki Edition)

THE CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE
(1961)
Overall: MEH
 
A dopey and heavily talky witchcraft export from director Benito Alazraki, The Curse of the Doll People, (Muñecos infernales, Infernal Dolls, The Devil Doll Men), tosses together its horror cliches in a silly manner.  Seeing dwarf-sized actors in dead-eyed rubber masks stumbling around dark rooms with pointy needles is both viscerally unsettling and weirdly humorous, plus there are thankfully several such moments scattered about as a vengeful witch doctor gets his revenge against scientists who disrespect his particular brand of voodoo.  This inadvertently leads to a monotonous structure where everyone gets picked off one by one and each character keeps having the same conversation throughout the whole movie as to whether or not supernatural activity is afoot.  Everyone on screen is a cardboard cutout with zero personality, save for Quintin Bulnes who spouts hilariously arrogant dialog while raising his eyebrows in a cartoon bad guy manner.  The finale is both abrupt and ridiculous where he easily hypnotizes his pursuers, only to allow them to show a cross at him in his hubris.  This forces him to cower so that his puppet minions can stab him, naturally leaving him no alternative than to torch his own hideout while his would-be victims easily get away.  In other words, this is nothing to take seriously, but it is worth a few chuckles for those that can endure its tedious nature.

 

FRANKESTEIN EL VAMPIRO Y COMPAÑÍA
(1962)
Overall: WOOF

 

The Mexican Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Frankestein el vampiro y compañía, (Frankenstein, Vampire & Co.), sees Manuel "Loco" Valdés and José "El Ojón" Jasso standing in for the famed American comedy duo and they do a particularly not funny job with the also particularly not funny material.  Granted, Alfredo Salazar's plagiarizing script follows the plot of the Abbot and Costello classic almost to a tee and therefor should have some inherent humor to it, but with gags like a mustached man fooling everyone as a belly dancer, the "least conscious of what time of night that the full moon rises" werewolf in cinema history, Valdés bizarre penchant for hopping up and down and making seal noises for no reason, and much more stupidity all sink the ship.  Director Benito Alazraki keeps the tone juvenile throughout and he does his best within the meager production values to make an underground laboratory give off a nostalgic Universal monsters vibe, but the constant mugging and "dumb dumb fall down" high jinks become grating right from the onset.  Also, the wolfman makeup is atrocious, the Frankenstein monster does absolutely nothing until he gets Valdés' brain in the finale and busts out the whole obnoxious jumping seal thing, plus Quintín Bulnes hardly makes for a menacing Count Dracula when he can be thwarted by such bumbling antics.

 

ESPIRITISMO
(1962)
Overall: MEH

 

Director Benito Alazraki's Espiritismo, (Spiritism), bears as little resemblance as possible to his dreadful Frankestein el vampiro y compañía from the same year.  A somber cautionary tale of evil forces being utilized in dire situations when conventional Christian faith fails to do the trick, Alazraki lets zero humor into the proceedings, instead creating a heavy melodrama where a family loses everything and it all ultimately points the way of religious redemption.  Arriving in the early 1960s before George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead helped usher in more nihilistic outcomes for horror movies, this one bypasses a fully miserable conclusion, but it comes awfully close by slamming home a level of despair that low-budget Mexican genre exports were less often to get away with.  A tragedy then first and foremost, it is unfortunately burdened by a repetitive plot and padded dialog that crawls to a foreseeable conclusion that introduces the age old "Monkey's Paw" concept in its final act.  When the film is not stuck in the muck with characters repeating mere variations of the same information over and over again with its cumbersome process to get all of everyone on board with the fact that in this universe, spiritualism is all too legit, there are intense performances and some spooky set pieces to appreciate.

1960s Mexican Horror Part Ten - (Federico Curiel Edition)

NEUTRON VS. THE DEATH ROBOTS

(1962)
Overall: MEH

An immediate sequel to 1960's Neutron, el Enmascarado Negro that was shot in conjunction with it, Neutron vs. the Death Robots, (Los autómatas de la muerte), ignores the previous film's ending and simply sets up a whole new cockamamie scheme for luchador super villain Dr. Caronte to embark on.  This time, the masked bad guy raises an army of zombie slaves that he bakes in stone ovens, (or something), plus he also needs gallons of blood to harvest the brains of scientists in order to learn bomb secrets, (or something).  He also still has his trusty, baby-voiced pipsqueak, dwarf-sized sidekick Nick who he treats more like a pet monkey than a human and because of the whole blood thing, authorities refer to his exploits as being vampiric in nature.  It certainly ups the weirdness and horror elements from its predecessor film and even with some dragging musical interludes, director Federico Curiel comparatively keeps the pace up at least by cutting right to the chase and loading it with more action than chatty set pieces.

 

NEUTRÓN CONTRA EL DR. CARONTE

(1963)

Overall: WOOF

 

The luchador extravaganza Neutrón contra el Dr. Caronte, (Neurtron vs. the Amazing Dr. Caronte), continues the saga of its title characters, pitting the two wrestlers against each other in ridiculous and boring "mad scientist doing mad scientist shit" fashion.  A less wacky, equally stupid, yet more sluggish follow-up to the previous year's Neutron vs. the Death Robots, the plot line is as moronic as the dialog, with the crazy masked doctor controlling an army of useless stumbling monsters in cheap Halloween masks as Wolf Ruvinskis' hero, (also in lucha libre attire), tries and stops him by mostly standing in rooms while talking.  Both men are in love with the same woman, (Rosita Arenas from The Aztec Mummy "fame"), which complicates things along with idiotic police officers and the dwarf-sized assistant Nick who sounds like Yoda for some reason.  At one point, Jack Taylor's professor proclaims that there is no hope of escaping their captors, only for the very next sentence out of his mouth to be "There is still hope...".  Federico Curiel's direction is lackluster due to the likely rushed shooting schedule and no money that he had to work with, so it is the usual deal of character's regurgitating information between themselves instead of doing anything remotely exciting. 

 

THE EMPIRE OF DRACULA

(1967)

Overall: MEH

 

Above average in some respects, The Empire of Dracula, (El imperio de Drácula), was one of a small number of Mexican vampire films from the 1960s.  Director Federico Curiel was no stranger to the horror genre, having done a handful of Santo vs "fill in the monster" movies as well as the Nostradamus ones, plus he would continue to churn out more macabreness throughout the 70s.  Speaking of macabre, the atmosphere here is well-maintained for something that was clearly made with minimal funds.  Gustavo César Carrión's musical score could not be better, utilizing off-key organ, minimal percussion reverberations, and moans that are mixed with wind noises, all of which is conservatively sprinkled around instead of becoming distractedly bombastic.  There is plenty of fog, an ominous horse-drawn carriage with no driver, and a wonderful underground dungeon lair for the main baddie to resurrect himself by the Hammer method of letting some poor girl's blood get poured onto his ashes.  On that note, Eric del Castillo's Baron Draculstein is one of the most laughably inept vampires in cinema history as he only manages to acquire a single undead bride and gets his ass kicked by every unarmed schlubby man who he attempts to bite.  The plotting is ridiculously lazy and Curiel does his best with the pacing, but it still feels sluggish at regular intervals.  Still, the music and scenery go a long way.

 

HELLISH SPIDERS

(1968)

Overall: WOOF

 

Another ridiculous luchador mash-up featuring the Blue Demon, Hellish Spiders, (Arañas infernales), finds the lucha libre beefcake squaring-off against a planet of spider aliens who are on an Earth-conquering quest to harvest human brains.  Said extraterrestrial race's leader is a furry puppet arachnid with an adorable old lady voice and they control their spacecraft from their pitch-black lair with over-sized Christmas ornaments hanging from strings.  The movie frequently detours into tortuously boring wrestling matches and training sequences, yet the last of them is a hoot as the Blue Demon faces the planet Arácnea's own shirtless, mildly muscular prize fighter whose hand turns into a spider stuffed animal near the end of the match.  Such absurdity sounds more fun on paper than it is to actually watch though, as director Federico Curiel once again is unable to maintain a sense of acceptable pacing, even outside of the numerous minutes dedicated to men tossing each other around the ring; minutes that advance the plot in no way whatsoever.  Overly talky and laughably cheep, (including Ed Wood-worthy flying saucer shots, barren sets, "standing around and repeating the same dialog over and over again" scenes, and recycled musical cues), there are at least frequent moments to make fun of, if one is in the right "bad movie night" spirit.

LA SOMBRA DEL MURCIÉLAGO

(1968)

Overall: MEH

More Blue Demon-stared silliness with La sombr del Murciélago, (The Shadow of the Bat), which is more or less a luchador version of Phantom of the Opera except cheaper and catastrophically more boring.  The usual handicaps are in place; Blue Demon and other characters with zero personality stand in rooms while discussing details of crimes being committed in stagnant medium shots, several wrestling matches slow everything down, several musical numbers slow everything down further, everyone repeats the same dialog whenever they are given the chance, and the camera lingers on scenes far longer than is necessary.  That said, the whole wrestling angle is actually integral to the plot where Fernando Osés' megalomaniacal, organ-playing former lucha libre champion kidnaps both women and fellow fighting athletes in order to humor himself and reclaim his former glory.  Still, the production is so lackluster and the film so poorly shot that even its would-be exciting bash-em-up scenes are rendered anticlimactic.  As a genre hybrid, some of it is goofy enough to endure, plus it is no better or worse than the gallons of other movies featuring either the Blue Demon or any other lucha libre hero battling some kind of alien, supernatural, or criminal force.

1960s Mexican Horror Part Nine - (Rafael Baledón Edition)

THE HELL OF FRANKENSTEIN

(1960)

Overall: MEH

 

Actor-turned-director Rafael Baledón had as prolific of a career behind the screen as he did in front of it and his Universal monster throwback The Hell of Frankenstein, (Orlak, El Infierno de Frankenstein, Orlak, the Hell of Frankenstein, El monstruo infernal), is better than one would expect despite its occasionally repetitive shortcomings.  Presented as four chapters more like a television serial, such a tactic is narratively unnecessary as the breaks come at arbitrary times and were presumably done to ward off censors that were more strict with theatrically released products.  In any event, the story concerning a vengeful criminal and a mad scientist baring the Frankenstein name, (both teaming up for logically flimsy reasons), plays out predictably with cockamamie "science" that allows for the monster to be controlled first by remote control and then by telepathic reading glasses.  Said monster is a doppelgänger of said criminal for some reason, which allows him to murder all of those that he feels had wrongfully accused him while simultaneously having the perfect alibi by actually being somewhere else at the time.  Armando Calvo makes both a solid, slimy villain and a dead-faced killing machine, plus many of the plot points are silly enough to enjoy, even with Baledón handling the whole affair in a deadly serious manner.

 

THE CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN

(1961)

Overall: MEH

 

Though atmospheric and well sprinkled with an acceptable amount of macabre visuals, (a woman with swollen blackened eyes, vicious dog attacks, a creepy mansion, a deformed prisoner, a vampiress staked to a wheel), unfortunately the spooky and gruesome window dressing is the only thing The Curse of the Crying Woman, (La maldición de la llorona), has to offer.  It is amazing that a film spending so many scenes repetitively explaining its own lore ends up making so little sense.  Cliched things happen like a family curse that only works as such when the script needs it to and of course the castle collapsing upon itself for the finale since it was practically impossible to get a Gothic horror movie green-lit at the time without that being part of your ending.  Characters do and say things, (usually the exact same things over and over again), just to do and say them and while this is all fine and silly, it is a shame that the movie is so mind-numbingly tedious.  The atmospherics are in proper tow and José Ortiz Ramos' cinematography is fitting for the sinister material, but the drab pacing only hinders matters as it reaches its climactic finish.

 

MUSEO DEL HORROR

(1964)

Overall: MEH

A Mexican House of Wax, Museo del horror, (Museum of Horror), features some striking cinematography courtesy of Raúl Martínez Solares and fans of south of the border genre offerings will appreciate Joaquín Cordero playing the mad, murderous wax sculptor.  Sadly, these are the only elements here that are worth the price of admission as the film is slow on its feet and horrendously boring in the process.  First of all, it centers around a typical scenario where the police are trying to track down several disappearances, yet the audience is fully aware of exactly who is committing said body snatching so that there is no mystery to be invested in.  Watching Cordero, (or presumably a stunt double), run around in a black trench-coat and with a mummified face as a disguise is fun up until a point, but his grand scheme of pouring boiling hot wax on his victims and then displaying them for the public so that they can be easily identified is only half as stupid as the fact that no one does identify them for so long.  Also, a Burke and Hare-styled subplot proves pointless as it only seems to be there to excuse a couple of fog-lit cemetery scenes, but at least these moments and several shots of barren streets at night convey the right type of sinister atmosphere.

 

THE SHE-WOLF

(1965)

Overall: MEH

 

La Loba, (The She-Wolf), is a charming bet it flawed, super low-budget offering from actor/producer/director Rafael Baledón.  Throwing mad scientists, musclebound mute servants, and werewolves all into the mix with insufficient production funds to achieve any convincing cinematic effects, it is easy to laugh at a movie like this while still being able to enjoy how seriously everyone is taking it.  The day for night scenes are some of the "best" examples of how NOT to do them, hardly any character behaves rationally, and the werewolf design looks more like a hippy crossed with a caveman vampire.  The opening scene where a wolf lady crawls out of a tomb and leaps around murdering several people and the ending where nearly every character is brutally mangled to death are fun though.  Likewise, the addition of a mysterious werewolf hunter and his faithful dog is a nice touch even if said character does not end up accomplishing much of anything.  As strange as Mexican horror could be from the country's golden period, there is enough here to make it watchable, even if it is still technically poorly done.

LA MUÑECA PERVERSA

(1969)

Overall: MEH

Director Rafael Baledón's last film of the 1960s as well as his final work in the horror genre, La muñeca perversa, (The Perverse Doll), is an old dark house thriller that is centered on a dysfunctional wealthy family who shack up uneasily on the eve of their mother's funeral.  There are poisonings, stabbings, drownings, an annoying kid being tormented, a house being burned down, and double-crosses committed because why would there not be?  Norma Lazareno is quickly proved to be behind such unwholesome shenanigans so that there is no mystery to be solved.  Because of this, (and despite its demented plot points and macabre tone), the script by Baledón and Ramón Obón meanders more than it chills and the pacing lags in the process.  Baledón and cinematographer Fernando Colin at least visually get the most out of the proceedings though with some flashy camerawork and atmospheric lighting when the situation calls for such things.  Besides Lazareno who was in Carlos Enrique Taboada's The Book of Stone and Even the Wind is Afraid amongst others, the cast has other familiar genre faces, most notably Dr. Satán himself Joaquín Cordero whose filmography is over two-hundred titles deep.