1960's "The World of the Vampires" (El Mundo de los Vampiros) was another collaboration between Mexican producer Abel Salazar and screenwriter brother Alfredo, this time for director Alfonso Corona Blake, soon to kick off the El Santo series. Here the cape is worn by the unimposing Guillermo Murray, his clean cut pretty boy looks lacking any menace when it comes to sporting his oversized fangs, more rubber bats adding to the silliness yet with variations that almost make it worthwhile, such as musical notes producing vibrations that can either summon or weaken the undead. A full 16 minutes are devoted to the opening in the crypt of Count Sergio Subotai, leader of an army of creatures who serve by the sound of a pipe organ adorned with skulls and femurs, a pair of unlucky travelers becoming his latest victims on the altar, men feted to be transformed into hairy werewolves, the women at his lucky pleasure. Every vampire must have an ultimate goal, and like German Robles as Nostradamus this one has a score to settle with the Colman family who staked out his ancestors, now reduced to one old patriarch (Jose Baviera) with two lovely daughters, eternally screaming Mirta (Sylvia Fournier) and all too willing Leonor (Erna Martha Bauman). The only other major character is their guest, Rodolfo Sabre (Mauricio Garces), whose expertise in tinkling the ivories makes him the Van Helsing equivalent, one passage luring the Count to make a rare appearance in the Colman home, the next designed to repel vampires, to which he reacts violently. Leonor swiftly joins the cult of darkness, subsequently putting the bite on a sleeping Rodolfo, who awakens with a serious case of 5 o'clock shadow on his left hand (only the males become werewolves). Since both Colman and Leonor have gone missing, Rodolfo and Mirta call at the Count's cobwebbed abode, meet resistance from his mute, Renfield-like manservant, and stumble below into the world of the vampires, only called out by night to serve their master. Why any self respecting vampire would build a pit full of wooden stakes goes unexplained, while Rodolfo's slow transition includes a more acute sense of hearing exemplified by a large spider walking upon the dusty stones. The cult itself wears immobile masks with large ears, but the most fascinating vision is seeing Leonor in rubber bat form, her tiny head superimposed on top for a truly bizarre apparition. In fact, beauty queen Erna Martha Bauman easily steals the proceedings away from the nominal lead, her indelible fanged image earning two related roles in Miguel Morayta's "The Bloody Vampire" and "The Invasion of the Vampires." With such a small cast, the pace simply drags without much happening, the climax adding another round of fisticuffs for a far too easy victory, poor Leonor proving herself down for the Count once he is reduced to a skeleton. Those who encounter these Mexican entries as a youth will be more forgiving of their low budget faults, others may not be so inclined.
