El fantasma de la casa roja

The best thing about Mexican comedy/horror The Phantom of the Red House is some of the clichéd characters' goofy names: heroine Mercedes Benz, detective Diogenes Holmes, and doctor Hipocrates Piedra. Come to think of it, there's very little else about the film that I did enjoy.

In true 'old dark house' tradition, a group of people gather at a creepy house for the reading of a will, which stipulates that they must all stay there for three nights, on the last of which they will be allowed to search for the benefactor's fortune. Of course, there's a good chance that not all of them will survive to join in the hunt, for a murderous phantom dressed in wide-brimmed hat, cape and luchador mask is on the prowl.

What makes this film so intolerable is the dreadfully unsophisticated humour as exemplified by Antonio Espino Clavillazo as the moronic Holmes, who spends most of the film gurning, gesticulating wildly, and talking nonsense. If that sounds funny to you, have at it, but I found it difficult to endure. Alma Rosa Aguirre as Mercedes is almost as annoying and unfunny, perpetually frightened and screaming at just about everything. As if the awful comedy wasn't bad enough, the film regularly cuts to the nightclub inherited by Mercedes where we are subjected to insipid songs by a moustachioed crooner and a guitar-playing mariachi trio, all of which is totally pointless filler.

2/10.