El jinete sin cabeza

The 1956 Headless Rider feature JINETE SIN CABEZA (THE HEADLESS RIDER aka THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN)proved a particularly effective blending of the crime, western and horror genres. The action opens in 1931 with a starkly lit, traveling shot of a line of skull masked "monks" proceeding openly through a darkened town. This bizarre scene mimics the painstaking use of atmospheric lighting that has proved a strong point of the Euro horror film from Dreyer to Franco, and instantly imbues the film with a distinct aura.

The grim figures proceed to a secret tribunal where, presided over by a disembodied hand, they pass judgment against a terrified victim. The hand continues to pop up throughout the film, repeatedly emerging from a narrow drawer, creeping through the shadows and even swarming over a door, which it manages to slam in the hero's invisible face.

Another weird touch involves a corpse (Crox Alvarado) found concealed within a wall in the heroine's hacienda. After briefly lying in state, the body is duly removed for burial. This, however, is by no means the end of the deceased man's participation in the action. As a peon rather desultorily seals the dead man's corpse into its crypt, the body unexpectedly appears in the heroine's home. It subsequently reappears before her at the local church and returns yet again at the end of the film, to help vanquish the skull-faced legion.

The Headless Rider appears, and begins ferreting out the sinister hooded brotherhood. It quickly becomes evident that the eerie avenger is a mortal man dressed in light colored clothing, with his face swathed in a tight fitting black hood that makes it "invisible" in the dark of night. However, many of the scenes incorporating the hero are carefully framed to place his head and shoulders against a black background. Other shots simply focus on the approaching Rider's legs or other parts of his body.

These simple gambits work surprisingly well and, coupled with the fact that the Rider remains mute throughout much of his early screen time, invest the mysterious champion with a distinctly supernatural feel which makes him one of the more interesting Mexican mystery heroes.

The creeping hand is also used effectively throughout the film. Particularly jarring is an early scene in which a mysterious package is delivered to the dead man's home. While the local doctor and the dead man's niece inspect the nearby opening through which the corpse had been removed, local lawman Don Fernando (Jaime Fernández) begins to unwrap the padlocked box.

His hesitation in opening the strongbox makes it obvious that something is about to happen. Still, a quick cut to the others discussing the discovery of the corpse acts to partially diffuse the tension. The camera shifts back to Don Fernando as the case's lid springs open and the hand catapults up like some macabre jack-in-the-box. This brief shift of focus serves to imbue the scene's predictable payoff with an extra punch.

In another nicely conceived scene, the cloaked villains remove a coffin from its sealed tomb, in order to retrieve a clue to the location of a treasure, which has been concealed on the enclosed body. They laboriously remove the casket, only to discover the Rider waiting inside.

As in the earlier scene in which the dead man unexpectedly appears in the bedroom, the casket has been clearly established as being sealed into its crypt, so the emergence of the waiting enmascarado comes as a complete surprise.

The Headless Rider returned in CABEZA DE PANCHO VILLA (THE HEAD OF PANCHO VILLA) and LA MARCA DE SATANAS (THE MARK OF Satan), also released in 1956.

Although it's set in 1956 (April, to be exact), the only modes of transportation in THE HEADLESS RIDER were horses and a stage coach but that's not the only head-scratcher in what's basically a bad Mexican western loaded with horror movie tropes. A secret brotherhood of monk- robed, skull-masked assassins kill any rancher who tries to sell his land and only one thing stands in their way -a Zorro-esque phantom in a white suit and black ski mask that makes him look headless in some shots. By day he's a sombrero-wearing cross between Clark Gable and Cantinflas and there's an illogical explanation for all the other supernatural goings-ons, from a disembodied hand to a reanimated corpse. The four songs are as out-of-place silly as everything else but they did remind me I have a Bollywood horror movie coming up soon.

The second in the series, THE MARK OF Satan, opens with a song before getting down to business with an executioner's ax that flies through the night, a family curse, and an inheritance scheme that was too convoluted for me to follow. No matter- enter "the Headless Rider" and his roly-poly sidekick to sort things out. There were five musical interruptions, er, interludes this time but at least a couple of the supernatural happenings were just that and there's even a little gore, too.

The third film in the trilogy, THE HEAD OF PANCHO VILLA, is a three- episode serial with very little horror trope outside of bats and skeletons and this time there's only three songs. Six comrades who fought with Pancho Villa and were saved from an ambush by "The Headless Rider" need his help again when a secret sect in black Ku Klux Klan robes kidnap and electrocute them one by one to get their hands on a mysterious black box the men are protecting. What's in it is not what you'd think from the film's title, oddly enough- the box contains an ancient Aztec secret that enabled Pancho Villa to win the Revolution and whoever possesses it can do the same. Patterned on the Saturday afternoon serials from their uber-influential neighbors to the north, there's a cliffhanger at the end of each episode and the fourth wall is broken so's "The Headless Rider" or his sidekick can speak directly to the audience and keep us up to snuff.

There's something for everyone in this "super hero" trilogy: music, romance, comedy relief, and lots of cheesy Churubusco chills for the kiddies but the crazy thing is, that's not who these films were intended for.