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.

Grave Robbers (1989)

Original title: Ladrones de tumbas

Centuries ago. The inquisition (heroes for once, if only in a movie!) just barely manage to thwart the plan of one of their own executioners (Agustín Bernal) to beget the Anti-Christ via the icky ways of ritual and virgin rape. On the torture rack, just after he has cursed everyone involved and prophesied his eventual return, he is dispatched via his own axe in his chest. 

Today, well, the late 80s. A group of teenage grave robbers – one of whom apparently finds their targets through a psychic gold finding sense – really appear to hit it big this time around. They find their way into a secret crypt below a grave, where a lot of very old corpses wear a lot of jewellery. Alas, dire warnings by Psychic Gal notwithstanding, they get too greedy and open the coffin of the executioner, and remove the axe from his chest. Obviously, this wakes the angry dead guy up but good, and soon the local lethality rate by decapitation, face pressed through lattice, and axeings rises to Halloween Kills levels. Campers are particularly under threat.

Eventually, the dead guy will certainly also try to revive his old rapey plans, if the local cop Captain López (Fernanda Almada) doesn’t find a way to fight him off. Since the cop’s daughter (Edna Bolkan) will turn out to be the killer’s preferred virgin, he is at least highly motivated.

I have to admit, I didn’t really expect terribly much going into Rubén Galindo Jr’s mix of supernatural slasher and religious horror. Most of the little I’ve seen of Mexican horror of the 80s does tend to the cheap, boring and not terribly interesting to look at. The two last problems really do not apply to the film at hand, though, for once his film gets into its groove, it provides so much gloopy fun and so many bizarre ideas and films them so pretty damn attractively, you could probably make two normal movies out of them.

The beginning of the film is a mite slow, but once the executioner is walking around again, heads and extremities start to fly left and right, Almada’s cop beats up teenagers and wastes ammunition like a good action hero, and stranger things dawn on the horizon.

All of this is most probably inspired by Italian 80s horror. At the very least, Galindo seems to like the same mix of blueish light, indoor fog and specific camera angles as his European colleagues. That’s not a complaint, and perfectly keeping in the tradition of Mexican horror, which also was rather good at taking European or North American influences and given them a very individual turn.

The mood of the film is strange and a bit dream-like early on, partially thanks to the camerawork but also because the way the characters go about their business doesn’t exactly make sense (unless most grave robbers are teens with their own psychic), the way the locations are supposed to be connected never quite comes together as anything you’d call a believable picture – even if you ignore the executioner’s Satan-given ability to teleport. This sort of thing will of course be a bit of a weakness if you like things logical and plausible, but here, it seems rather consciously used as a way to create a mood of the outré.

And things do get rather out there in the final half hour, when the slasher we’ve been watching suddenly adds things like a murderous hand coming out of a guy’s belly, a hand which then suddenly comes – plaster colour and all out of a wall to strangle another character. Then, a priest is attacked by a flying dagger he can’t pray away, and Captain López really gets into dynamite in the action movie plus horror plus what the hell climax. All of this is realized via pretty wonderful practical effects, shot attractively, and staged – apart from a couple of bizarrely wayward reaction shots in the finale – very effectively.

Ladrones de tumbas is a wonderful example of all that is good and right about fun 80s horror, and, because Mexican horror unfairly never made it terribly big outside of Spanish language audiences, probably a new old example of the form for many a potential viewer.

Past Misdeeds: 357 Magnum (1979)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

(Don't be like an IMDB reviewer and confuse this with any of the other movies of this or a slightly different name!)

The members of the improbably named "Brigade 357 Magnum" of the police are disturbing the work of a syndicate of weapons and drug dealers only known as The Organization with a half successful raid on an arms deal with a Communist revolutionary group from a Central American country (whose boss, as we'll later see, goes for classic Castro chic). The Organization is not pleased at all, so the whole gang - boss, favourite moll and all - stuff themselves into two cars and shoot Tony Murillo, the leading cop of the operation, his wife and his little daughter.

The Brigade's boss Heller decides to invite Tony's brothers (Mario & Fernando Almada), who were once working for him, to resume their duties as cops and hunt down their brother's killers. The Murillo's agree and begin - quite to the surprise and dismay of the obviously not very bright Heller - to torture and kill their way through the lower echelons of the Organization.

Unfortunately, dead men don't tell you who exactly murdered your brother, so the Murillos decide they need to do some actual investigating for once. Nope, sorry, I was only joking - brother Danny Murillo convinces his girlfriend Barbara (Ursula Prats) to charm the Organization’s boss and go undercover for him. Barbara makes for quite a successful spy, as it turns out. The first thing she does once she's won the bad guy's heart by talking about golf balls with him is to deliver a list with the names of all of Tony's killers to the brothers as a vigilante to-do list. This is not the last good tip Barbara has for our cold-blooded murderers, I mean "heroes", but the action movie genre of course demands that her spying luck will run out sooner or later and the Murillos will have to rescue her between their killing sprees.

As far as cheap and stupid late 70s action movies from Mexico go, Ruben Galindo's 357 Magnum is a winner. Quite unlike the general tone and style of bored disinterest in themselves or the people putting down money to see them Mexican genre movies usually took on at this point in time, this one seems out to actually entertain its audience instead of emptying a production company's library of random filler material. There's not a single musical number nor a dancing sequence - with or without importance for the plot - in sight, and the film goes along at a somewhat sprightly pace. Galindo's direction might be a bit stiff (pretty much like the Almadas are), but at least he realizes that people go into a film called 357 Magnum looking for people shooting each other, and provides what his audience wants. Plus an Almada brother spitting in a goon's eyes and then hitting the blinded man (I imagine an Almada spits acid) in the stomach. That's all I could ever ask of a movie in this genre. Well, that and the inclusion of awesome library prog jazz funk on the soundtrack. Again, Galindo's film provides, unless in those scenes dominated by random, decidedly less awesome easy listening (that's what's playing in the villain's lair, ironically) or the library orchestra.

I'm really quite impressed by 357 Magnum's sporting spirit: where other ultra-cheap action movies are proud to show off the helicopter they can afford for a scene or three, this one only gets as far as featuring a very short guest appearance of an excavator and renting a golf cart for a day when it comes to the inclusion of vehicles more exciting than beat-up looking cars and boats. But by Gawd, a golf cart is a wonderful vehicle, and it's going to be used to full effect, and then used again! I'm only a little disappointed there's not a golf cart chase in the film. Now that I think about it, Galindo seems to have a bit of a thing for golf; that's at least my explanation for a film that includes hot golf cart action and sexual innuendo circling around golf balls. And believe me, sexy golf ball talk is still more erotic than the scenes of a track-suited Almada having the Hot Sexy Times with his decidedly younger, bikini-clad, hip-grinding girlfriend.

For the uninitiated (aka people who have seen less low budget movies from Mexico than I have, and therefore don't know the preferred hero type of the country at this point in time), the Almada Brothers are the most unlikely of action heroes: two short, physically unassuming, moustachioed guys at the end of their respective middle age; usually stuffed into grey partner-look suits here, they remind me of nothing so much as of a couple of used car dealers who have seen better days and on whose success in a fight I wouldn't want to bet. Thankfully, movie magic (just look at those punches never hitting anyone yet still knocking people out!), .357 magnums and dramatic staring into the camera are the big equalizers of action cinema.


Usually, this would be the point where I bitch and moan about the film's love of vigilantism and hatred of civil rights, but to do that I'd have to take it a lot more seriously than I'm able to. This is after all a film in which the Almada Brothers are unconquerable action heroes not unlike a combination of Stallone and Schwarzenegger, but in suits and way too cool to sweat and grunt like the Americans do. The film's so deep in the realm of ridiculous fantasy that it's quite impossible for me to want to analyse or criticize its politics. It's not as if Galindo seems interested in that aspect of his movie anyway; like the melodramatic scenes, the "boo-boo we poor cops have to respect the law" screeds are short and perfunctory and probably only in there at all because the genre demands it and there was no money for more than one golf cart in the budget.

On WTF: 357 Magnum (1979)

If there's one thing the world needs more of, it's middle-aged-car-salesman-look-alike-action films. It was 1979, and director Rubén Galindo agreed completely with that sentiment, so he grabbed exploitation veteran actor duo the Almada Brothers, and made a vigilante cop movie with them.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, take a look at my weekly write-up on WTF-Film.

 

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