The Vampires of Coyoacán (1974)

Original title: Los vampiros de Coyoacán

Warning: there will be some third act spoilers!

A horrifying elderly luchador known as El Espectro (Nathanael León aka Franquestain) kills his opponents in the ring, despite moving as slow as an old man, um, zombie. Apparently, making a habit of this sort of thing is okay per Mexican law as of 1974 as long as it happens in the ring.

While the elderly threat is hanging in the background, lucha heroes Mil Máscaras (Mil Máscaras) and, alas, Superzan (Superzan) are called in by one Dr Thomas (Carlos López Moctezuma) to help him out with a little family problem: his daughter Nora (Sasha Montenegro) is suffering from a strange illness. How strange? The good doctor is utterly convinced she is being targeted by a vampire, who regularly visits her to slowly suck her dry. Mil and Superzan are easier convinced of the supernatural threat than the more sceptical El Santo or Blue Demon would have been, so they are soon staking out creepy mansions, watching a group of little people vampires carrying a coffin through the darkness and wrestling said little people vampires (because this is an Agrasánchez production), as well as hipster vampires. They are ably assisted by paranormal investigator Dr Wells (Germán Robles, cast as a vampire hunter instead of a vampire, probably to confuse us).

And what of El Espectro? He is obviously part of the vampire problem.

If you are into the joyfully cartoonish side of lucha cinema – or like me, into all of its sides, except the one featuring mostly filler or comedians whose shticks don’t translate – Arturo Martínez’ Vampires of Coyoacán is a rather wonderful experience. That is, unless you’re wrestles into submission by its beginning, which features a fifteen minutes lucha sequence with no importance to the film’s plot at all, shortly followed by another one, that at least kicks off the El Espectro subplot. Though it has to be said that the cut-able lucha sequence is dynamically choreographed enough not to put one to sleep, which isn’t always that way in Agrasánchez films.

Following that, it’s all acid rock driven joy: rubber bats, cheap but cheerful Mexican 70s gothic production design lit in all the colours of horror as instituted into law by Maestro Bava in Italy, shot by Martínez with surprising enthusiasm, borrowings from Dracula as well as from Doctor Mabuse, the usual luchadores versus vampires battles, little people that are indeed vampires this time around, luchadores versus younger more gothy/hipsterish vampires (who are even somewhat creepy) business. Whatever you can ask of this sort of thing, the film offers it in spades, all driven by a huge amount of pulpy energy that isn’t always a given at this developmental stage of the lucha genre.

It does of course help that Mil and his funky wardrobe are among the liveliest presences in lucha cinema – that man can dress as well as move – so much so even the dreaded Superzan doesn’t manage to annoy me.

From time to time, the film even makes clear that it is indeed a product of the more downbeat 70s, so you also get elements of a decidedly unhappy ending, where a young vampire woman first murders here father and then, realizing what she’s done, sets herself on fire and dies screaming. Which is quite the thing in a silly movie about luchadores fighting vampires.

Doctor of Doom (1963)

Original title: Las luchadoras contra el médico asesino

Mexico City is in a panic: young women are kidnapped, only to be found dead days later with curious head injuries.

As we the audience learn early on, a masked and mysterious mad scientist and his helpers are responsible for the dastardly deeds. They’re not actually out to kill these women, but “only” need them as subjects for their brain transplant experiments. Alas, or so the mad scientist explains, normal human bodies are just too weak to withstand the awesome power of this kind of science, therefore the dead women. But unwilling sacrifices need to be made, right?

There only survivor (Gerardo Zepeda) of earlier experiments is slowly devolving into an ape-man, but is at least useful when it comes to fighting off the police. Not that those guys are of much use, mind you.

Somewhat fortunately, the villains’ latest victim is the sister of luchadora Gloria Venus (Lorena Velázquez), who, together with her new partner, US import Golden Rubi (Elizabeth Campbell), will involve herself in the investigation with rather more success than the cops.

For an early 60s lucha monster movie, René Cardona’s Doctor of Doom is rather surprisingly explicitly feminist in form and function, treating the female wrestlers as the same kind of hero you’d expect of their male colleagues, just having to present more glamorously while going about their business of fighting mad science and mad science’s products.

Though, again to my surprise, Cardona also portrays the kind of nonsense women have to go through El Santo never had to put up with, like having to romance mostly incompetent cops that talk as if they were solving the case while the luchadoras do all the work. There are some delightful reversions of lucha tropes here as well, like when romantic lead cop number one gifts one of those genre-typical radio watches to Gloria so she can call him when she needs help, only to be the one needing to use it to call her and Rubi to get him and his comic relief colleague out of a death trap. Also delightful is how sarcastically Campbell flirts with said comic relief colleague (while towering over him) – where the script might mean this as serious flirtation, the actress clearly doesn’t.

Apart from this inspiring and, again, delightful, feminist content, Doctor is the full load of everything awesome about lucha cinema, made at a time when the budgets where comparatively high, and really moody black and white photography was possible. Expect every joy of pop and pulp cinema you can imagine, treated with verve, a smile, and more than one good mad scientist rant, and delight as Velázquez and Campbell project a sense of fun not all of their masked brothers got, while also having much bigger hair.

Night Falls (1952)

Original title: La noche avanza

Jai-alai (google that one, kids) player Marcos (Pedro Armendáriz) is quite the piece of work. Convinced by his past and present successes to be the same kind of Nietzschean superman as his later Brazilian brother in spirit Coffin Joe, he lords his superiority about everyone he encounters in life, pushing men in the shittiest macho ways he can come up with (and he has the imagination to go with it), and seducing women left and right, to then mistreat them to his heart’s content.

He’s getting away with it, too, or rather, he has been getting away with it until he impregnates good bourgeois daughter Sara (Anita Blanch) and drops her in the most underhanded way possible. Turns out he isn’t quite as great as he thinks he is, and even his impressive talent for weaselling out of trouble will not keep him away from what’s coming for him forever.

I tend to be somewhat sceptical about movies whose main goal appears to be showing horrible people being horrible, and then detailing their eventual karmic (or otherwise) punishment, mostly because spending time with assholes isn’t typically my idea of a good time, and I only have a limited degree of sadism inside me to really enjoy watching cruel but just punishments.

However, Roberto Gavaldón’s highly melodramatic noir is a clear exception to that rule. Armendáriz is delightfully hissable a villain, so smug, so full of the kind of shitty pseudo-philosophy you’ll find in today’s manosphere, it does indeed become a joy to witness his eventual fall. Gavaldón never attempts to make the man likeable or give him even the tiniest redeeming quality (unless you believe “is good at sports” to be one, but the director clearly doesn’t). Marcos is simply the living embodiment of what’s worst in all of us, or at least us men, using and abusing his position, the perks his gender provides him with, and other people’s inability to believe anybody could be a scumbag of quite his dimensions.

Even once Marcos gets in trouble, the suspense here isn’t built on seeing him finding increasingly desperate methods to get away, but in the hopes for witnessing his eventual punishment. Though, the film even doesn’t leave him in peace even once he’s dead: the final scene shows a placard with Marcos’s name blown into the dirt on a streetcorner, a dog urinating on it (!), and a garbage collector carrying the whole mess off.

Gavaldón shoots all this in the all the black and white colours of the true noir, where heightened intensity is the norm, and suspense scenes happen to everyone.

Hellish Spiders (1968)

Original title: Arañas infernales

The planet Arachnea appears to be suffering from something of a food shortage, particular when it comes to the proper feeding of its Supreme Ruler, a queen who just happens to be a giant spider with the voice of an old woman. Fortunately, the Arachneans’ intrepid explorers have found a nice space pantry - a planet its supposedly sentient population likes to call Earth.

Turns out the inhabitants of that insignificant little planet have exactly the kind of food the Arachneans need: human brains. By now, Earth, or rather, its cultural centre, Mexico, has been secretly invaded by the aliens, walking around in human form and making a list of the most nutritious human, to be kidnapped and eaten shortly, without even checking twice.

Fortunately for brains in Mexico and the rest of the world, wrestler and all-around champion of justice and not-eating-brains Blue Demon (Blue Demon) begins thwarting the spider aliens’ plans. He’s such a superior example of humanity, the spider queen even forbids her people to kill him with their death ray – he’s just too good to waste. Thus, the usual tricks of lucha villainy – paralysation rays, the kidnapping of sidekicks, smuggling the Arachnean champion Arak (of course Fernando Osés) into the lucha ring to fight Blue – have to suffice.

This, directed by the sometimes inspired, sometimes not, Federico Curiel, is the pure stuff, a great example of the joys of lucha cinema, and proof that Blue Demon is just as glorious as El Santo.

This doesn’t just have everything you may want from a lucha movie, but also very little of those things you’d rather avoid: there’s no comic relief character! Only mildly boring ring fights! And musical numbers are kept over there where El Santo sleeps!

Which leaves much space in the film for the good stuff: Blue giving a scientific explanation for the phenomenon of Spontaneous Human Combustion (“when there’s a neutrino imbalance, the thing or individual involved is ignited and it’s all over”) to his completely befuddled sidekick; Blue thwarting many an attack or kidnapping attack by wrestlers, I mean aliens, in pretty dynamic fight scenes; Blue casually solving cases for the police (as he regularly does, of course) in between wrestling matches; flying saucer effects that care not about your stupid tasty-brained human believability; curiously abstract alien base interiors that sometimes suggest you’re watching a really peculiar art film and not lucha pulp SF horror cinema; lots of brain eating; and a dude whose hand turns into a spider he then attempts to shove into Blue Demon’s face (which would be an illegal move in any wrestling match, if the referee hadn’t fled screaming).

If that’s not enough to make any friend of the adventures of heroic luchadores happy, let it also be said that Curiel may not have had much of a budget but a really good week when shooting this, so the film is actually well-paced, makes as much sense as this sort of thing needs to, and turns some sets – like that strange, strange spider alien base – into abstract-expressionist dreamscapes. It’s a genuinely impressive effort.

Also impressive, and pretty uncommon for the genre, is how much of the dialogue hits my personal sweet spot for the kind of pulp dialogue that nearly becomes a sort of unschooled poetry – there’s quite a bit of talk about humanity’s insignificance in the cosmos, and a lot of high-toned speechifying among the Arachneans who may not want to explain their plans to us humans, but surely have a great love for gloriously pompous announcements among each other. And who’d ever forget Blue Demon’s science lectures?

The Invasion of the Vampires (1963)

Original title: La invasión de los vampiros

Dr Ulises Albarrán (Rafael del Río), comes to small town somewhere in the Mexican countryside. He’s not a doctor of medicine, mind you, but of the occult arts, and he has been sent here by his master Cagliostro. Cagliostro (whom we, alas, never meet on screen), has had dreams about vampires and this particular place, and has sent his student to do some good as well as to do some practical research on vampires.

He’s got his work cut out for him, for the town is already haunted by regular vampire attacks that began with the disappearance of one Count Frankenhausen (Carlos Agostí) and the mysterious death of his wife. The only member of the family left alive is the couple’s daughter Brunhilda (Erna Martha Bauman). She now lives in the creepy Frankenhausen manor with her grandfather on her mother’s side, the delightfully named Marqués Gonzalo Guzmán de la Serna (Tito Junco) and his not the least bit suspicious housekeeper Frau Hildegarda (Bertha Moss). Frau Hildegarda is very loyal to her master, you understand – and if not, she’ll tell you, in her absolutely not suspicious manner.

Brunhilda is suffering from bouts of illness that may very well be more in the wheelhouse of a doctor of occultism like Albarrán than a proper man of medicine. She’s also clearly the heroine to romance here for him. That is, whenever the good doctor isn’t involved in making boric acid (a very important weapon against vampires), staking corpses, investigating the vampire business with the town’s mayor, or trying to not get obstructed by the very unhelpful town priest who’s rather quick with threatening excommunication and making people anathema for a parish priest.

Ah, Mexican Gothic horror, how much do I love you. Miguel Morayta’s Invasion of the Vampires splits the difference between the pulpier side of the Mexican version of the genre and the darkly atmospheric, jumping between wonderfully and outlandish action and name-dropping of occult matter of the sort that would not have felt out of place in a Weird Tales story of the less reputable sort (Jules de Grandin versus Count Frankenhausen would certainly have been a possibility) and scenes of moodily lit – or rather shadowed – crypts, foggy landscapes and decaying opulence set to a score of highly variable weirdness.

The contrast between these two modes of the Gothic gives parts of the film the whiplash quality of one of one’s more vigorous dreams, a uncertainty in tone that fits at least this particular tale of the supernatural rather well. This is the kind of movie having a character called Frankenhausen is not the most outlandishly psychotronic element but rather par for the course.

Speaking of the psychotronic, the final act features a delightful fight between our occultist hero and a huge, fuzzy vampire bat just a couple of minutes before a genuinely eerie sequence during which an already staked horde of vampires rises from their graves to surround the manor and attempt to call characters to their doom – there’s even a visual hint of Romero’s zombies here, though those gentlethings typically lack the handy stakes and the sirens’ voices of your dead loved ones.

Other delights are the incredibly overdone performance by Moss, who makes most Renfield performances in cinematic history look restrained without having to eat a single spider, and the complicated vampire lore that has vampirism as a family curse, as a supernatural disease and as a dubious way to world domination (tariffs are apparently the way to go in the real world).

I’m sure Cagliostro approves as much of all this as I do.

The Vampire (1957)

Original title: El Vampiro

Called back home to the Sycamores, the country estate where she grew up, to help care for her sick aunt María Teresa, young Marta (Ariadna Welter) steps into a more sinister situation then caregiving. It’s never a good sign when the local villagers don’t dare go out at night, and when the only vehicle willing to take one home is a cart carrying imported Eastern European soil.

On the plus side, Marta meets strapping, stupid and cowardly Enrique (Abel Salazar) just after she steps off the train carrying her to Gothic Mexico, and he is her contractually mandated romantic lead (as well as the obligatory odious comic relief), so there’s that. In fact, we will later learn that Enrique has already been involved in the business of Marta’s family before they meet, for he is secretly a doctor of medicine, called in by Marta’s uncle Emilio (José Luis Jiménez).

Once Marta and Enrique arrive at the Sycamores, they learn María Teresa died two days ago and has already been buried. Marta’s other aunt Eloísa (Carmen Montejo) has changed a bit since our heroine last saw her. She looks rather young for an old lady and has gotten into the habit of glaring sinisterly. Of course she’s wearing a cape now. The servants and uncle Emilio are clearly disturbed by more than María Teresa’s death, something that may very well have to do with their new neighbour, Count Duval (Germán Robles), a cape-wearing gentleman we the audience have already witnessed sucking the blood of a child. Duval has plans for the estate, the family, and Marta, many of them involving further bloodsucking, both literally and metaphorically. Worse still, Marta slips into gothic heroine mode rather quickly and become utterly useless, so all that stands between her and vampirism is Dr. Enrique.

El Vampiro is the movie that really put gothic horror as a mainstay on the map of Mexican cinema, seeing as it combined a smidgen of the modern age, Mexican cultural concepts concerning the supernatural, much of Universal horror with even more expressionist shadows and made a box office hit out of it. The country’s cinema would take a couple of decades of eventually pretty threadbare productions to cure itself of the macabre on screen for a while, but before that, it was one of the great countries of gothic horror together with Italy and Great Britain (one might argue Japan’s kaidan movies belong here as well, and glance longingly at Corman’s Poe cycle).

While not a perfect film, Fernando Méndez’s vampire movie hits so many of the pleasure points of gothic horror it is difficult not to swoon as often as Marta does. The whole mood of the film is lovely, how everything is drenched in shadows, every inch of screen estate looks and feels decrepit and decaying (art director Gunther Gerszo’s work is breath-taking), and even the silliest rubber bat with the most visible strings can’t change that.

Of course, silly rubber bats are a gothic mainstay as well, as are madwomen (Alicia Montoya) hidden away somewhere, premature burials, poison rings, superstitious villagers, smug vampires and their hatred of consense in relationships, cobwebs so thick, they might catch a bat, dramatic climaxes in burning rooms and so on, and so forth. Whatever you might wish for in this kind of production, Méndez and co. have probably found a place for it, and most certainly one that makes it look incredibly good.

Along the way, the film does things differently from time to time: romantic lead and comic relief are typically not united in the same character, nor does the romantic lead usually come over as quite as much as an idiot as Enrique does. This isn’t the only mix of two usually distinct character types in one role here: eventually, the film’s hidden madwoman character will also turn out to be its Van Helsing, and frankly, the actual hero of the piece. Which is a very satisfying development.

As satisfying as is all of El Vampiro – it’s no surprise that it made a lot of money and awoke the gothic instincts of Mexican cinema again.

Santo vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter (1972)

Original title: Santo vs. la hija de Frankestein

Dr Freda Frankenstein (Gina Romand), the daughter of the original “It’s alive!” Frankenstein, has gone into the family business as a mad scientist. She has a lot going for her: a swanky – if somewhat cold – looking lair in the countryside, a trusted partner in Dr Yanco (Roberto Cañedo), and a bunch of goons in matching outfits to rob graves, kidnap women and whatever else needs doing around the home. Mad scientific success, however, isn’t guaranteed.

Her attempt to inject one of her minions with gorilla blood to achieve, um, who knows what, has turned him into Truxon, a guy in a gorilla mask (Gerardo Zepeda) she has to keep locked up and can only control with her considerable powers of hypnotism. Repeating the experiments of her father has proven somewhat more successful, and she is just on the cusp of creating her own Monster, whom she’ll dub Ursus (also Gerardo Zepeda, but in a different mask of dubious quality).

Frankenstein has also managed to develop a serum that not only stops aging but has a rejuvenating effect as well. This hasn’t just kept her and Yanco ship-shape, but is also a useful tool to recruit old losers into her goon squad and soften them up as victims for her love for controlling sadism and domination. Unfortunately, the serum is beginning to lose its power for the good doctor, and instead of the three months typically going between injections, she has now weeks at best – and the effects decrease ever quicker.

Our mad scientist has a plan, however. She just needs the blood of a very special person to create a more potent formula. Yes, of course it is the blood of Santo (Santo!), idol of the masses, friend of children, and so on and so forth. Santo’s blood, Frankenstein has found out, contains a much higher concentration of whatever stops aging, keeping him youthful, fit, and an all-around perfect physical specimen.

Just asking Santo for some of his blood wouldn’t probably not be kinky enough, and kidnapping him would prove difficult and inconvenient, so instead, Frankenstein sends her minions to kidnap Norma (Anel), Santo’s girlfriend. This, and a helpful blackmail letter, should bring the luchador right to her doorstep, which indeed it does, accompanied not by Blue Demon or Mil Mascaras, but by Norma’s sister Elsa (Sonia Fuentes). Various games of catch and release, monster mashes against Truxon and Ursus, and other shenanigans ensue. Also appearing: Chekhov's lair self-destruct lever.

At this stage of Santo’s film career, budgets were clearly pretty low, but there’s a willingness to make much out of comparably little and a pop cinema energy to Miguel M. Delgado’s Santo vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter the great man’s cinematic outings would increasingly lose. This is even one of those Santo movies where somebody even seems to have been committed to actual production design, so there’s a sense of visual coherence you don’t always get in lucha cinema. That the very early 70s fashion and colours pop very nicely on the print I watched adds to the pleasure here.

The film is comparatively focussed as well – there’s no odious comic relief, no musical numbers, the two ring fights are short and sweet – and the second one takes place only after the plot has been resolved. In fact, there’s no filler in the movie at all.

Instead, Delgado fills those parts of the movie that don’t concern Santo doing Santo stuff, vigorously, to really draw us into the world of our female mad scientist. There’s much fun to be had with her gleefully sadistic way of controlling her minions – which Romand hams up wonderfully – and many a silly-awesome background detail to enjoy. Why, some of the minions even have character traits, and if you look closely, there are even traces of actual relationships between these pulpy characters mostly here to get beaten up by a masked wrestler.

Because these are the early Seventies, the film is on the bloodier side of the Santo cycle – Ursus near fatal wound on a big cross in the graveyard next to Frankenstein’s lair comes to mind, or the moment when Santo repeatedly strikes an already beaten Truxon with a chain – and the fantasy in Fernando Osés’s script turns toward the macabre. There’s a scene in which a grumpy, rejected-by-Santo Frankenstein hypnotizes – yes, of course a colour wheel is involved – Norma into trying to cut out Santo’s eyes, for example. Of course, this isn’t a Fulci film, so the power of love protects, while the minions meant to watch Santo during this are so squicked out by the whole thing, they have to leave the room.

Yes, the film is making a joke here, and it’s actually funny. Which, come to think of it, happens in a couple of scenes, as if, freed from the yoke of the comic relief character, humour can suddenly work and add more to a lucha movie than annoyance.

In “things we never knew about Santo”: both Norma and Frankenstein agree that an unmasked Santo has the hottest male face ever to grace our planet. Obviously, we have to take their words for it.

Thus, this particular adventure of Santo is recommended even to those among my imaginary readers who don’t go for the idol of the masses as much as Norma, Dr Freda Frankenstein or this writer do. There’s cheap but awesome production design! Two monsters – well guys in bad masks – played by a single actor! Sadomasochist subtext! Mad science! A woman who screams whenever she sees someone with a wrinkled face! What more can one ask of any movie?

The Man and the Monster (1959)

Original title: El hombre y el monstruo

Famous pianist Samuel Magno (Enrique Rambal) has retreated from the limelight for mysterious reasons, hiding away in a hacienda on the outskirts of a small Mexican village. He’s ready for some sort of comeback, though. He has arranged the big public reveal of his protégé Laura (Martha Roth), whom he believes to be the Greatest Pianist in the World (piano fans around the world are keeping records and score tables of piano duels, I assume).

Because of this coming attraction, surprisingly two-fisted music critic Ricardo Souto (Abel Salazar) comes to town for an unarranged interview. Magno, living alone with his severe and rather creepy, cat-carrying, mother (Ofelia Guilmáin) and Laura, is very reticent about any attempts of Ricardo’s to speak with him, but Laura is rather smitten by Ricardo (he is played by the writer/producer, after all).

Ricardo for his part stumbles upon Magno’s secret. It concerns the corpse of the former Greatest Pianist in the World (also Martha Roth) locked into a side-chamber, a pact with the devil, and the fact that Magno turns into a furry-faced fiend whenever he plays the piano (because the devil has a weird sense of humour).

As regular readers know, I just love Mexican horror cinema of this era. The Man and the Monster, directed by the often genuinely brilliant Rafael Baledón, is no exception to that rule.

As usual, I find myself particularly delighted by the film’s mixture of genres and tones. At its core, this is of course a contemporized gothic horror version of the Faustian pact (with shades of Mann’s Doctor Faustus, if you want to see it that way, and I certainly enjoy doing that, if only to annoy the squares), but it is also a vigorously played melodrama, as well as the kind of monster movie that includes a wild fist fight between a music journalist and a furry fiend the journalist actually wins.

As is so often the case in his movies, Baledón is a master of drenching rooms into long and deep shadows, of having his characters throw meaningful, heavy glances at the slightest provocation – though provocations here are generally not slight – and of treating the silliest, slightest moments of the script with a heaviness of emotion and expression that to me often seems at the core of what makes Gothic cinema so impressive and expressive.

Baledón is particularly honest about where the visual style of his gothic horror is actually coming from – the nods to Universal cinema and the shadows of a – typically not gothic as we non-academics understand the term – Val Lewton production are there and accounted for (lovely as ever), but there’s also that brilliant, minimalist scene in which Magno flashes back to his pact, emoting in front of a set that’s all classical movie expressionism and could be taken directly from Caligari.

On a subtextual level, this is a film curiously fitting to our times in some regards, seeing as it concerns a man of influence and power first taking control of the life of a young woman to then be able to destroy it for his own convenience. Of course, she is also saved by her two-fisted music critic instead of doing any of her saving  herself, which would not play well in a contemporary movie, but this is still a film made in 1959. And a rather wonderful one at that.

The Phantom of the Convent (1934)

Original title: El fantasma del convento

Friends Alfonso (Enrique del Campo), Eduardo (Carlos Villatoro), and Eduardo’s wife Cristina (Marta Ruel) find themselves lost in the woods at night. A rather creepy man shows them the way to a monastery they have heard curious rumours bordering on fairy tales about. The friends expect the place to be a ruin, but in actuality, it is populated with monks who have taken a vow of silence they occasionally break for exposition. Thus, the ideal place for the trio to stay the night instead of staying lost in the woods.

However, the monastery seems to have a strange influence on the visitors that brings out their repressed desires and the darkest sides of their personalities. Eduardo and Cristina have been quietly lusting after one another for quite some now, but on this night in this place, this desire turns destructive – Cristina turns into a proper femme fatale, while Eduardo just can’t help but stop lying to himself about his feelings and now believes that taking his best friend’s well-being into consideration is rather less important than getting the man out of the way.

When they are not consumed by their private drama, the visitors are spooked by various strange occurrences – monks that seem to disappear where there’s no place for them to disappear to, monks badly hiding their skeletal hands, and a door nailed shut with a cross from behind which horrifying, human cries drift.

The Phantom of the Convent is a very early example of Mexican Gothic horror, featuring motives that would reoccur in movies from the country as a matter of course during the next four decades at least. Here, director Fernando de Fuentes (also responsible for the first Mexican talkie only three years earlier in 1931, or so the Internet tells me) still seems somewhat uneasy with the truly creepy stuff in a couple of scenes, whereas others demonstrate a firm grasp on the proper use of the interplay of light and shadow to create the mood of dream-like strangeness which best occurs in dilapidated surroundings that is so important for this particular style of horror, whatever its country of origin.

There are also rather a lot of hints at one of Mexican popular cinema’s great strengths in the coming decades – the ability to use genre tropes and visual hallmarks of an international tradition and mix them productively with more local interests and ideas. Here, it’s a – to my eyes, nearly a hundred years later, on a different continent – specifically Mexican Catholicism expressing itself through typical Gothic horror monks and the mood of an old-fashioned ghost story. There are also some surprisingly unpleasant looking corpses in the film’s later stages that surprised me to find in a film from 1934, from anywhere, but that are clearly inspired by the same type of mummification process we find in the mummies of Guanajuato.

As it goes with cinema from a very different era, Phantom of the Convent pacing isn’t really to modern tastes – there’s a tendency of scenes to go on a bit too long for my contemporary (non-blockbuster mode) tastes, and the feeling of a film pulling some punches it needn’t have pulled even in 1934, but there’s also a sense of languid, Gothic beauty (a Poe idea of beauty for sure) to The Phantom of the Convent that makes up for these failings in spades.

In short: Rotting in the Sun (2023)

My end of year waltzing through films recommended as some of the best of the year by the more arthouse oriented side of film criticism sometimes leads to astonishing discoveries for me, like the films of Ryusuke Hamaguchi or Céline Sciamma, cinema that’s as mind-blowing – often in very quiet ways – as its proponents say it is.

At other times, like with this supposed satire by Sebastián Silva using some of the rules of POV filmmaking genres without ever becoming something as gauche (or entertaining) as a genre movie, I leave genuinely puzzled by what I am supposed to take away as being so damn brilliant here. What’s so great about watching a self-centred asshole portrayed by the director as a variant version of himself whining, looking away from dicks, doing drugs, sighing, reading Cioran and so on? Why am I supposed to care when he is never interesting, lacks interesting – or even just not boring -problems, does not encounter interesting people and certainly never gets up to doing anything interesting (not even when a sort of mystery plot ever so slowly crawls about after many, many scenes of observing this asshat doing nothing of import)? Who exactly is this aimed at as a satire? People who think criticising modern culture as self-centred to be really rather clever and new? Who believe showing the influencer life as empty is any kind of insight?

Visually, this goes for harsh handheld shots, much wobbling of viewpoints and the kind of consciously ugly look that in most cases screams “poser!” to me, and certainly does so here.

To be fair, this isn’t three hours of tedium, but not even two, so I can’t add “sucking away valuable time I could have spent playing videogames” to my list of complaints.

Santo vs. the Vampire Women (1962)

Original title: Santo vs. las mujeres vampiro

A couple of centuries after they have been beaten by one of those naughty warriors of light, a coven of female vampires decide that now, in these dark times of 1962, it is time for female vampiredom to rise again, and get rid of those oatmeal faces they seem to have acquired while waiting for better/darker times in their coffins.

For that rising to properly work, the vampiresses need to find a woman to replace their current Queen Zorina (Lorena Velázquez), for some occult reasons I never understood, because Zorina seems perfectly well and happy, or rather, happily evil. Vampire priestess Tundra (Ofelia Montesco), who will be the brains as well as the face of this particular operation for the film’s first two acts, already has an eye on a replacement queen. Diana Orlof (María Duval), her candidate, may be the descendant of their last would-be replacement queen. That last time, things did not work out, leading to those centuries of waiting and becoming food-faced, but there are prophecies going around that suggest evil will win out this time. So it’s only a question of waking up three male vampires who are built suspiciously like wrestlers (and one of whom is of course played by the great Fernando Osés) for the strongman parts of the job, and take the win for Evil.

However, Diana’s father, Professor Orlof (Augusto Benedico), is close enough an associate of El Santo (Santo!) to possess his own Santo videophone, so when he finds his daughter threatened by malignant forces, he calls in his famous, ultra-capable and all-around perfect friend. Who will proceed to lurk around the side-lines of the movie for its first half, because this still belongs to that phase of Santo’s movie career when studios didn’t trust him to carry a film on his own. Thus, he shares the male lead duties with the Professor, Diana’s boyfriend and a police Inspector (Jaime Fernández).

Which really is the least fun thing about Alfonso Corona Blake’s Santo vs. the Vampire Women, for less Santo is never a good thing, even if the film at hand does attempt to cast his frequent absence as part of his mystique as a masked luchador and force for Good. This does of course also mean we lose out on scenes of a masked Santo in loungewear, cosy pyjamas, or romancing the ladies.

On the plus side, there’s everything else. The film begins as a lovely pulp gothic concoction with a dramatically lit vampire priestess expositing in a lair full of spectacularly fake cobwebs, upright coffins and improbable shadows, adds rubber bats and the much beloved (by me) vampire cape walk, and never looks back from there. What follows are some pleasantly zippily shot scenes of overcomplicated vampire plots, close-ups of “hypnotic” staring committed by pretty women, and rather more chases than you’d usually get in a Santo movie. The cops and a suddenly appearing caped Santo chase cape-running, woman-stealing vampires, Santo chases vampires, vampires chase Santo, Santo in his sports car chases a lone vampire towards a cross. I get all chased-out just talking about it.

There’s also the time-honoured sequence of a vampire (using deadly karate chops, Santo informs us) pretending to be one of Santo’s ringside foes to kill the great man and a resolution that hinges not on our hero fighting off the vampires, but on him fighting them long enough for the sun to shine through the unfortunate hole in their underground crypt-temple-thingie. Afterwards, our hero sets torches to the coffins, vampiresses screeching in horror, because this is not a film for the faint of heart, even if it is as deeply, infectiously silly as a proper lucha movie is supposed to be.

The Brainiac (1962)

Original title: El barón del terror

1661. The Baron Vitelius d’Estera (Abel Salazar) is sentenced to death by the Mexican Inquisition, for crimes as varied as witchcraft, necromancy, seduction of married women and virgins and, ahem, dogmatism. Because the Inquisition is one to talk. The Baron’s ability to withstand torture while smiling mockingly doesn’t help his case, either. One Marcos Miranda (Rubén Rojo) comes forward to speak about the Baron’s character as a scientist (that one always goes over well with any inquisition) and a great guy, but all he’ll have to show for it are two hundred lashes and a still sentenced to death baron.

As is tradition, on the night of his burning, the Baron curses the judges who sentenced him, promising them that three hundred years hence, when the comet that just happens to appear in the skies right now returns, he too will come back and revenge himself on their descendants.

Mexico, three hundred years hence. The Baron does indeed return with the comet, though he has changed a bit. Now, he regularly transforms into an inexplicably bizarre and shoddy monster suit with a prehensile tongue to suck the brains of descendants and pretty women alike. The seduction part of his sentencing was apparently bang on, though his technique for seduction consists of staring creepily while an off-camera light blinks at his face. (“I feel scared when you stare at me like that. I want you to keep staring at me” are actual lines in the movie).

Given the baron’s predilections, is it any wonder he develops the monster hots for a female descendant of one of his judges? A woman who just happens to be the girlfriend of one Reynaldo Miranda (also Rubén Rojo, of course). Also involved are two terrible cops, but the less said about them, the better.

On a good day, Chano Urueta was able to make a movie like the brilliant The Witch’s Mirror; in an off-week, he made things like this bizarre gothic-influenced monster movie, a thing which recommends itself not by wonderful gothic atmosphere or a dreamlike mood, but rather its buffoonish bizarrerie, as well as its surprising number of bad hypnotized actor expressions, reaching from a bit sleepy to bug-eyed insane.

That is of course not a bad thing. I don’t think anyone who has any interest in classic low budget horror cinema from Mexico will rue watching this particular concoction. When you can’t gasp at the Baron’s toxically masculine bargain basement Lugosi shtick and every woman’s delight at being stared at creepily by this particular creep, you certainly will giggle and stare in disbelief at the monster costume, seen early, often, and repeatedly, looking like…something someone clearly has come up with for reasons inexplicable and potentially involving demonic possession, with its awkward tongue (that apparently function like a drill, though we neither see nor hear that) and its sweet tooth for brains.

Speaking of sweet tooth, the Baron tends to keep a luxurious looking bowl full of brains in his palatial living quarters at all times, typically in a chest or cupboard in a room he likes to invite the public into, so that every time he gets peckish and picks up his special long spoon to go for a bite without having to transform, he has to go through “suspense” contortions to get at the sweet, sweet brains. That this will be indeed be a plot point helping out our hero Miranda to understand that something's not right with the Baron goes without saying.

Three Films Make A Post: Still Partying Like It’s 2022

The Wonder (2022): I’ve read rather a lot of excited praise for Sebastián Lelio’s film, but I can’t say I can agree with much of it. Sure, on a technical level, this is a highly accomplished movie, but to my eyes, it is also one that doesn’t have as much substance as its form suggests. What is has to say about grief and female empowerment is rather on the trite and obvious side, its deliberate surface artfulness trying to distract from a lack of deeper thought at its core, its moments of hapless yet self-important fourth wall breaking notwithstanding.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022): In contrast, this little wonder of puppet animation by del Toro and Mark Gustafson is just as surface artful in its own way, but it also has – despite much more obvious emotionality and plotting – much more depth on any level: emotionally, politically, aesthetically and intellectually. It is also much less po-faced in its approach to the surprising number of things it talks about – from the problems of fathers and sons, over fascism, death, to the troubles of homeownership when you’re a grasshopper. This doesn’t mean it lacks seriousness in its thinking. Rather, the film treats humour and warmth as important parts of the human experience even under circumstances full of suffering and grief, not allowing itself or its viewers to lose sight of the totality of life.

Count Magnus (2022): Mark Gatiss’s newest Ghost Story for Christmas – again based on a tale by M.R. James, obviously – seems to have been the least well-regarded of the irregular series until now. Admittedly, the tale takes a bit too long to get going, with a talky beginning that’s less than ideal in a thirty minute piece. Particularly in its early stages, it looks terribly stagey and nearly aggressively digital, the BBC’s unwillingness to give Gatiss a decent budget showing to ill effect.

I found myself reconciled with the tale once it got going, though. Even though it never reaches the height of the original story – which is one my favourites of Monty’s – there are eventually some nicely creepy moments, despite the script keeping things a bit more removed from the viewer than even the James tale does, perhaps in reaction to the criticism of last year’s episode showing its monster somewhat longer.

El Vampiro Y El Sexo (1969)

aka Santo in the Treasure of Dracula

aka Santo en El tesoro de Drácula

This is based on the version of the movie with added nudity and sleaze that was long thought lost, but recovered some years ago by some heroes of our times.

Santo (El Santo), idol of the masses, the man with the silver mask, and so on, and so forth, has taken a time-out from fighting crime and smiting evil – as well as from his wrestling career, one supposes – to follow his muse as a genius scientist. Like Doctor Doom before him, Santo has developed a method for time travel. Apparently, you only need to bombard a person with radiation in just the right way to physically throw them back into the life of a historical ancestor. Which does sound quite reasonable, of course. Curiously enough, Santo is still looking for a human test subject. He knows it would be best to use a woman there, for, Santo informs us, women’s resistance against radioactivity is four times that of men; the female sex can also cope much better with the mental strains of time travel, so suck it, incels. As luck will have it, our hero’s need for radioactive material has led to him living as a house guest in the home of nuclear physicist Dr Sepúlveda (Carlos Agostí) for a time, where Santo’s immense charm and personality have hit Luisa (Noelia Noel), the daughter of the house, so hard, the two are now engaged, to be married once Santo has the science bug worked out of his system.

Of course, Luisa volunteers to become Santo’s guinea pig. After a bit of hemming and hawing, the great man agrees to her suggestion, and irradiates her, until she dies a horrible…No, wait, until she does indeed travel back in time. For reasons of science, Santo, Luisa’s dad and unspeakable comic relief Perico (Alberto Rojas) can now watch Luisa’s adventures on a little TV screen.

Turns out Luisa’s ancestor was a renamed Mina Harker in a compacted version of Dracula. This version of the Count (Aldo Monti), likes eye-liner, female nudity and very large breasts, apparently, so the film now tells us a sleazy, shortened vampire tale that ends with Luisa’s ancestor’s and Dracula’s death, and the revelation of the existence of Dracula’s treasure.

Because we’re now just at the half-way mark of our movie, Santo has forgotten to invent the video tape while he was at it, and is now in desperate need of physical evidence for the things he and the gang saw happening in the past. Clearly, finding the treasure of Dracula should do the trick. Because all of this isn’t far-fetched and complicated enough, an evil mastermind going be the moniker of Black Hood has gotten wind of the whole affair by judiciously spying on the greatest crime fighter in Mexico, and now puts various evil plans into play to acquire the treasure for himself. That Dracula is eventually going to be revived as well hardly needs mentioning.

Santo’s stint as – somewhat mad, if you ask me – scientist certainly isn’t one of the most straightforward lucha movies, seeing as it contains the narrative of at least two normal lucha movies as well as a mini vampire movie in its perfectly reasonable run time. Structurally, this of course turns it into a total mess, but it’s the sort of very fun mess that keeps boredom away with the power of Santo’s mighty fists, lots of sleazy vampire business, and so much pulp energy and nonsense, there’s even only space for a single ring fight in the movie left – and that one follows the old trope of Santo honourably fighting things out against a villain to become an actual part of the plot.

The sleaze and nudity our family-friendly hero usually doesn’t encounter are kept at arm’s length from him – most probably inserted without his knowledge after the fact – and completely belong to Dracula. So expect a small army of vampire women who have exchanged the traditional flimsy nightgowns for breast-free robes, and biting scenes that contain nearly as much moaning and sexual writhing as those in a non-pornographic Jess Franco movie. All of the sexual subtext of vampirism is turned obvious and clear text in a manner that makes this version of Dracula look like even more of a creep than usual. His love for branding his brides with a little bat tattoo doesn’t improve his case there.

Because much of this is so clearly inserted into the more stodgy vampire business and the lucha adventures, there are some lovely disconnects between the sexy (well) bits and the rest of the movie. The best – and most telling moment – is after we watch Luisa in the body of her ancestress (who of course looks exactly like her) having very moan-y sex with Dracula that clearly ends with an orgasm (subtle, the film ain’t). The cut back to Santo basically has the guy shrugging his shoulders and going “huh, so vampires are real”.

Which is a lot funnier than the movie’s actual comic relief. One has to congratulate Perico for dressing as if he time-travelled into the future and learned about the Daisy Age before being thrown back to his own time by an angry mob, but otherwise, his “I’m such a comical coward” bit gets old very fast indeed. Ironically, his supposed friend Santo does seem to think so as well, and so bullies and berates him incessantly. It’s as if the film itself were agreeing about Perico’s unfunniness, but instead of getting rid of him decides to use him to make its hero look like an asshole, too.

Otherwise, the film is high lucha fun, with some very spirited vampire acting by Monti and the mysterious Black Hood, more rubber bats than you ever wanted to see, embarrassing amounts of nudity, pulpy scenarios and fights that are on the varied side for a single lucha film, and a narrative that may not make a lick of sense but certainly shows forward momentum that is for once not stopped for musical numbers and pointless wrestling. And because director René Cardona had a very good week while shooting this, it even looks pretty good. If that doesn’t recommend El Vampiro Y El Sexo (or its sleaze-free version), I don’t know what does.

El Pueblo Fantasma (1965)

aka Ghost Town

Old Mexico. A mysterious gunman calling himself Rio Kid (Fernando Luján) strikes fear in the hearts of of the best gunslingers roaming the country, for he is seeking them out and killing them one by one with shooting skills that seem to border on the supernatural. There is something truly strange about the man, though. He has been working as a killer of killers for decades now, but still looks like a young man. And the bodies of the men he kills don’t stay buried, but simply disappear.

Manuel Saldívar (Rodolfo de Anda) is searching for Rio Kid. Not like the fools who seek the man out to test their mettle at gunplay and end up dead, but to learn the truth about his father, whom Rio Kid knew decades ago. Manuel’s father, also called Manuel, was a well-known, apparently particularly murderous, bandit. He even has his own corrida damning him, so he was probably a truly special kind of villain. Manuel seems to believe that hearing what Rio Kid has to say about his father will bring him some kind of closure and help him to tolerate the very special treatment most people give the son of a well-known, dead monster; Manuel’s upright, white hat personality isn’t doing the trick.

Our young protagonist manages to find the Kid’s hometown. San José was once a prosperous place but has been taken over by an air of doom, gloom and gothic decay. Only a few people live there still; they tend to avoid their famous co-inhabitant. Manuel does get a foot in the proverbial door of the town when he helps out Don Néstor Ramírez (Carlos López Moctezuma) in the desert. Néstor is just returning from a ten year stint in jail for a crime he didn’t commit and for which he holds Rio Kid responsible. He plans on taking vengeance on the man, but clearly doesn’t have a prayer against him.

While he’s in town, Manuel discovers that the case of Rio Kid might be even stranger than it appears on first view. Not only does the man not age, he is also bulletproof, can appear and disappear without a noise or trace, and only comes out at night. He’s also as malevolent as they come, so Manuel is bound to get into trouble with him.

Despite some flaws, Alfredo B. Crevenna’s El pueblo fantasma (which translates as “The Ghost Town”) is a nice entry into the Weird Western – or Weird Ranchero – genre. There are certain parallels to the US Weird Western Curse of the Undead in the nature and some of the habits of its villain, but this does turn out to be very much its own thing.

The film’s first half is quite a bit weaker than the rest of it, mostly because Crevenna (or Alfredo Ruanova’s script) has decided to squeeze most of the film’s comic relief and musical numbers into the first couple of acts. Which keeps the more dramatic parts of the film free from this sort of thing, but also makes the narrative’s beginning somewhat slower than it needs to be. Half of the musical bits are at least relevant to the plot – Manuel’s reaction to his father’s corrida is certainly important; there are no such explanations for the supposed comedy to be had.

Once the film gets into its groove, it does show some unique ideas on how to mix its very traditional Western/ranchero elements with its horror heart: there is a late scene that takes place after Rio Kid and Manuel have officially declared their enmity where the vampire (that’s not a spoiler, right?) publicly humiliates our hero by letting a frightened blind singer weakly sing parts of the corrida that doesn’t end in the final showdown but in a truly frightened Manuel getting the local sheriff to lock him up for the night for protection. This is absolutely not how you do this sort of thing in a Western, but works incredibly well in emphasizing how much the film’s vampire breaks the rules of the film world it is moving through, transgressing against genre borders as he does against human beings.

Luján’s portrayal of the vampire gunslinger is atypical and interesting as well. He’s not going for a big, charismatic Christopher Lee approach, but instead turns Rio Kid into a quiet, soft-spoken man, whose capital-E evil nature is hidden under what at first feels like reserve, but later begins to read as the sort of distanced calm you’d expect of a corpse. This does turn our undead gunslinger into an appropriately creepy villain whose malevolent influence on the world – certainly the town he calls his home – is believably hidden in plain sight.

De Anda’s performance works surprisingly well with and against Luján’s performance. Manuel’s acquired Western programmer white hat poise and his genuine fragility make a very human contrast to Rio Kid’s inhumanity.

Crevenna was generally at least a solid director in all of the dozen or so genres he worked in during a long career in Mexican popular cinema. Here, he certainly understands both of his film’s main genres, so there’s a solid foundation of stage bound B-Western filmmaking on which he can build a gothic house of horror (sorry). The film has a couple of very atmospheric moments. An early scene where Manuel crosses the shadow-heavy town at night is a fine example, or Rio Kid’s very traditional way of exiting his sarcophagus. Once the film goes all out on being a vampire movie, things evolve even more: the Kid’s attack on the the singer Carmen (Julissa), with Néstor’s attempt to fight him off that ends in him losing his mind when the vampire doesn’t react to bullet wounds is a very fine injection of Gothic horror into Western tropes indeed.

I’d have been happy with a film about vaqueros against vampires, but I’m certainly not going to complain about El pueblo fantasma adding a degree of thoughtfulness and rather a lot of gothic atmosphere to the proceedings.

Three Films Make A Post: World War Two was just ending. World War Murphy is about to begin.

Murphy’s War (1971): When he was on, Peter Yates could be a great director; when he was off he did tend to make at the very least interesting failures. Murphy’s War, a film about an Irish airplane mechanic with an improbable accent despite being played by Peter O’Toole who makes increasingly insane attempts at taking vengeance on a German U-Boat crew right at the end of World War II, lands somewhere in the middle. There are some riveting set pieces, some excellent tender or hard character moments, but the film is also full of scenes that go on far longer than they need to or should. Worse, it never manages to convince me of Murphy’s increasing derangement, never really finds an angle to show his inner life in a way that makes sense. It doesn’t help that the ending jumps gleefully over the line between the heightened intensity and absurdity of an action movie ending and sheer, goofy nonsense.

La muerte del chacal (1984): This mixture of Mexican action cinema standards and giallo and slasher tropes directed by Pedro Galindo III and starring the dynamic facial hair of brother duo Mario and Fernando Almada is not a perfect film by far – it does tend to drag rather a lot in its first half – but it certainly has a couple of really neat ideas. Particularly the way the mid-act plot twist runs against all audience expectations is rather a thing to behold, especially in a film where you’d never expect any such thing to happen.

After this, the film turns full-on slasher, with still a bit too much feet-dragging for its own good, but also some genuinely cool suspense scenes and stylish kills, as well as an awesomely goofy scene in which one Almeda kills a Doberman with his bare hands in a manner so ridiculous, even a dog person might laugh.

Incantation (2022): I know, quite a few people go really nuts about Kevin Ko’s Taiwanese POV horror movie. It is certainly a film made with the highest competence, full of well-timed shocks, with some creepy ideas, but I also find it nearly aggressively derivative of the traditions of J-Horror and creepypasta (its big, obvious plot twist is taken directly from the latter realm). Which does not make it a bad movie, or even an unenjoyable one, but one that’s a bit too much like a clockwork made out of stolen and borrowed parts to truly do something for me.

In short: Vacations of Terror (1989)

Original title: Vacaciones de terror

Architect Fernando (Julio Alemán) has inherited a house somewhere in the loneliest parts of the Mexican countryside from an aunt he never really knew. Because he’s a bit of a go-getter, he decides to pack up his family – wife Lorena (Nuria Bages), nearly grown-up daughter Paulina (Gabriela Hassel), the twins Jaimito and Pedrito (Carlos East Jr. and Ernesto East) and little Gaby (Gianella Hassel Kus) – for the weekend and just go there. Paulina’s boyfriend, the deeply stupid but supposedly very hot Julio (Pedro Fernández), is going to come too, just half a day later. Fernando has not checked the state of the house and its surroundings beforehand, so it’s a bit of an adventure trip. No electricity, and various death traps for kids (who are told not to play too close to the house to boot) are included.

When Gaby falls into a well, survives unhurt and brings out a doll she finds there, the dangers of horrible parenting are increased by a supernatural threat: for the well was the place where the Inquisition (like in many a Mexican horror film interpreted as the Forces of Good) murdered a witch. Said witch has of course sworn vengeance on…random families that happen to drop in.

Gaby’s new doll – super power: rolling its eyes – soon takes possession of the little children, causes mild telekinetic ruckus and some hallucinations. Fortunately, Julio just happens to have acquired a witch-repellent amulet.

The most likeable thing about René Cardona III’s Vacaciones de Terror is how much of a family project it is, with a production staff full of people who are the second or third generation working in Mexican genre cinema – the film’s dedication to René Cardona I is perfectly in keeping with this.

Of course, being a family affair doesn’t make a movie good, exactly. Vacaciones isn’t much of a highlight of 80s Mexican horror. The film suffers from a lack of tension, and often feels so harmless I started thinking this was really meant to be a kids movie that got a little too frightening for that market; some of the humour would suggest that as well. Part of the problem is that Cardona III isn’t a terribly subtle director, so he really has to fall back on a handful of special effects and some very few scenes where he is allowed to go loud, and otherwise tries to keep things together and on budget with the technical basics he can afford.

It’s not a terrible movie, but then, I’d probably have enjoyed it more if it had been objectively worse.

Three Films Make A Post: She should be dead, now she wishes she was…

Urban Ghost Story (1998): I’ve seen Geneviève Jolliffe’s British low budget piece of kitchen sink horror taking place in Scottish housing estate mentioned as a hidden gem from time to time, particular in the last couple of years. I don’t see it, though. That’s mostly because the film’s attempt to pair the typical poverty tourism of British kitchen sink drama (if you want believable portrayals of poor people in their actual emotional complexity, look in a different genre) with a very low key poltergeist style haunting is always rubbing against how melodramatic the film’s plot actually is, leading to a piece that doesn’t have the tone it seems to believe it has. There are also a lot of the more embarrassing hallmarks of cheesy 90s direction on offer: particularly Jolliffe’s love for “emotional slow motion” often borders on self-parody, as does the perfectly stupid happy end following an absurdly melodramatic climax.

Hell’s Trap aka Trampa Infernal (1989): Pedro Galindo III’s Mexican slasher Hell’s Trap, that imagines a Rambo-style vet (with a surprisingly effective mask) as a slasher, while also trying to cash in on the paintball fad, does not have any such crises of identity. This is a piece of prime Mexican late 80s cheese, and it knows it. Characters are dumb and pretty – also pretty unlikable – the kills are sometimes surprisingly effective, and the series of bad jokes, broad characterisation and murder moves sprightly enough. Plus, how many other slashers do you know whose killers use a claw glove “inspired” by Freddy Krueger as well as an assault rifle?

The Whispering aka 속닥속닥 Sodak Sodak (2018): On the cusp of college, a group of teens stumble upon a cursed amusement park. Murderous ghosts hunt them down one by one.

The resulting film really is as generic as that makes it sound. If you’ve seen any other movie that sounds a little like this one, you’ve basically seen this one as well, sometimes done better, sometimes somewhat worse, I expect. From time to time, the film manages to achieve a comparatively effective set piece, but those moments are neither frequent nor creepy enough to make this memorable.

It’s not a terrible film – there are perfectly okay basic filmmaking chops on display, and the actors do what they can with the little they are given – but it’s so aggressively mediocre I rather wish it were.

The Demon Rat (1992)

Original title: Mutantes del año 2000

aka La rata maldita

In the near future, humanity’s epic struggle for the destruction of our planet is nearly won! To wit: staying outside without wearing huge filter masks is so unhealthy, even the dumbest parts of society are apparently wearing them. Many animal species, apart from insects, reptiles and everything else many people don’t like, have died out, too.

The local situation in Mexico is certainly not improved by evil industrialist Roberto Cervantes (Gerardo Albarrán) who proceeds to dump radioactive waste and whatever else godawful stuff his factories produce wherever he damn well pleases. Cheap horror movie or documentary?

Ironically, Roberto’s company isn’t quite his, but was actually owned by the father of his wife Irina (Rossana San Juan). Since the beautiful Spanish teacher has copped to quite how vile her still-husband is, she’s living separated from him. For once in a movie, a husband actually wants a divorce, but our heroine refuses because that would leave him in complete control of the company she already has no control over. In the future, law and logic work differently.

Still, Irina does have vague plans to stick it to Roberto somehow, plans that will take actual shape thanks to her new flame, beautiful biology teacher and ecologist Axel (Miguel Ángel Rodríguez), a guy who may have a doctorate, but doesn’t know what the buttons on his shirt are for, and believes string vests are the sort of thing you wear on a teaching job. Again, the future, ladies and gentlemen!

Things are further complicated by the fact that Irina’s house has become infested with rats. Or rather, as it turns out, mutated humanoid giant rats represented by guys in godawful costumes that look not at all similar to rats – or look like anything but crappy costumes.

Which isn’t to say there’s nothing to love about Rubén Galindo Jr.’s Demon Rat unless you are a lover of particularly embarrassing monster suits. In fact, I found myself rather smitten with it in many regards. At the very least, it’s a film that’s bound to teach a viewer how much certain preposterous low budget movie tropes about evil industrialists, ecological destruction and the unwillingness of the powers that be to actually make needed changes even when people have to run around with gas masks on their heads have become more than just a little plausible. Though guys like the misogynist evil industrialist shit in this particular film do still have one leg up on the real versions when it comes to actually lending a physical hand in the execution of their own evil plans.

Obviously, if you’re coming to this looking for believable character psychology or other bizarre nonsense like it, the film does not have you covered. Roberto is vile and pretty dumb and clearly fated for either ending up in the fangs of a mutated rat or a vengeful Axel, Irina is hot, hot-blooded and well-meaning but also pretty ineffectual, and Axel is a studly macho with a heart of gold, a two-fisted teacher who most certainly will not treat Irina just as badly as Roberto does now a couple of years and a lot of six-packs later. I’m not complaining, mind you, for the film presents its characters and their travails with complete earnestness. Which is also the way the actors are playing it, and probably the only way they know how to do it. Half of their time, they’re wearing masks and sun glasses while doing this. Again, I’m not complaining.

Galindo Jr. is often a rather competent director for his budget and script (of course also written by him) bracket, making effective use of the handful of locations and effects he can afford, simulating the foggy outside with dry ice and chutzpah, while also making good use of the bits and pieces of proper production design he could cobble together. So the internal air filtration systems and the masks are all used well in the film’s suspense sequences. One can certainly not blame the filmmaker for not having put any effort in.

Rata’s biggest problem, apart from the monster suits and the monkey-ish (certainly not rat-like) arm waving the actors inside them get up to, is that would should be its final act, when everyone is trapped in Irina’s roomy home – practically devoid of furniture because Roberto took that, apparently – is simply too long. I do like a good scene or four of people and monster suits fighting inside of a house, but even my patience grows a bit thin once they spend half of the damn movie doing it.

Still, while I can’t help and see this tiny structural problem, I find myself looking at La Rata Maldita rather positively as the sort of film that has taken on such curious elements of topicality and turned them into the lowest (and therefor the best) kind of art, it becomes easy to ignore a bit of a structural boo-boo.

The Shadow of the Bat (1968)

Original title: La sombra del murciélago

Retired wrestler The Bat – El murcielago – (Fernando Osés) has quite the interesting life. Disgraced and crazed after a ring accident that left him disfigured, always wearing his bat-like ring mask, he’s dwelling in an old, dilapidated mansion that rather looks a lot like…some kind of…bat…cave with his main henchman Gerardo (Gerardo Zepeda) and a couple of hench-hangers-on. Despite being lit by torches, the place does at least have a TV though. Also, the Well of Rats and the Room of Bats. Still, a mad wrestler does tend to get bored from time to time, so the Bat regularly sends out Gerardo to catch him a beefy guy to wrestle with. Alas, Gerardo’s not very good at choosing victims, so nobody seems to even cause the Bat to break into a sweat; Gerardo also has the habit of murdering the wrestler’s involuntary sparring partners instead of just dumping their unconscious bodies in the city as he is usually ordered. Excuses like “I accidentally dropped him, now he’s dead, oopsie” seem to be a regular occurrence, making the Bat rather angry but never so angry as to convince him that all that kidnapping is a bit of bad idea, nor of suggesting the idea of replacing Gerardo with someone ever so slightly less murderous.

While hanging out in front of his damp cave TV set, the Bat watches a performance – certainly not the last one we will see in full during the course of the movie - of torch singer Marta (Marta Romero). She’s obviously the love of his life, so he decides to meet her and invite her to a nice dinner. No, wait, that would be insane! Obviously, he sends out his henchpeople to kidnap her.

Marta’s not that easy to catch, though, for her boyfriend Daniel (Jaime Fernández) is perfectly capable of fending off a less dangerous party of mooks. And when the next attempt at catching the Bat a singer looks as if it were to actually work, who just happens to drive by but everyone’s third-favourite crime-fighting luchador, Blue Demon (Blue Demon)!

Driving off the bad guys in his inimitable fashion, Blue then decides to involve himself in the case, helping to protect Marta as well as lending the police a hand in solving all the Bat-caused mayhem. And yes, there will be scenes of masked, be-caped, bare-chested investigative work before the climactic face-off between Blue and the Bat.

In a good week, Federico Curiel was able to direct a very fun and silly genre movie, and Shadow of the Bat must have happened in a very good week indeed, for this is a particularly fun lucha movie, the sort of thing that’ll leave people who love this kind of thing like me pretty breathless with enthusiasm about how enjoyably Curiel builds up this corner of the lucha-verse. It is, as you might know and/or expect, not just a place where masked wrestlers tend to be the police’s best friends, and the greatest heroes imaginable (cue half of the characters telling us how admirable Blue is, as if we wouldn’t see), but are also the best at pretty much everything else (except for remembering encounters with strange plants), and usually doing it shirtless, and often wearing a cape. In fact, I don’t think Blue’s ever not bare-chested in this one. But I digress.

As a director, Curiel is a particularly good hand at filming villains’ lairs, here having a lot of fun with the Bat’s icky, shadow-drenched cabinet of weird wonders, where a shaft full of rats for the punishment of crime-fighting luchadores or incompetent henchmen makes total sense. But the action seems to be of a better level than in most other lucha movies, too, with rather more dynamic staging as well as more creative choreography than can be the case in these movies. For once, there’s little ring-side action in a lucha film (hurray) – instead the film keeps the wrestling quota up with the Bat’s wrestling hobby, which integrates the lucha side of business a lot better into the actual plot than is usually the case, and even gives these scenes a bit of dramatic heft.

Another of the film’s strength’s is how fully it buys into the comic-book-like nature of the film’s oversized characters like Blue and the Bat (hopefully somebody’s new band name), and leaves reality in the most delightful way, while keeping to a logic of its own. So, for example, when Blue needs information about a peculiar plant connected to the crimes of the Bat, he’s not going to a botanist for his clues, but steps into Gothic horror land for a scene to visit a witch (Enriqueta Reza), which provides the film the opportunity to go through a whole awesome spiel of silly witch tropes.

The film is full of details like this. Another favourite is when Marta – who does of course eventually end up kidnapped despite Daniel’s and Blue’s best efforts – withstands a long and hilariously toxic masculinity 101 monologue from the Bat, who decides to punish her for not falling for his “your female softness will make me less crazy, love me or I’ll kill you, ain’t I a catch” shtick by imprisoning her in his very own lock-up for loves of his life. Of which there seem to be at least half a dozen at this time.

Osés, an important guy in the genre, and a bit of an expert in playing lucha villains as well as a regular scripter for these films, plays up the Bat’s particular brand of craziness rather wonderfully, making the guy bathetic, pathetic and physically impressive in a way that makes his somewhat peculiar lifestyle feel perfectly logical for him. Blue is, of course, Blue.