La casa del terror

Mexican comedian, Tin-Tan, made a number of spoofs of Hollywood genre movies including La Casa del Terror (1960) and El Fantasma de la Opereta (1960). (Both are available on excellent DVD discs). The House of Terror is generally the one that fans go for, because it co-stars none other than Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Mummy who turns into a Werewolf! Lon could not speak Spanish, so he was given no dialogue, but he does seem to be doing his own panting and growling. And he has quite a lot of action footage, although it is Tin-Tan of course who romances the pretty girl (in this case, the lovely Yolanda Varela, whose career, alas, was drawing to a close. She married this film's producer, Fernando de Fuentes, Jr., and virtually retired). Director and co-writer Gilberto Martinez Solares, in collaboration with his brother photographer, Raul Martinez Solares, has brought off some nice action and tingling atmospheric effects, but Tin-Tan's material is somewhat below par. He spends half the film asleep – though these scenes are ten times funnier than some of his boring "comedy" routines, particularly an elongated sequence with a stammering Consuelo Guerrero de Luna.

Lon Chaney Jr. must have been at a low point when he agreed to appear as a "mummified werewolf" in this Mexican-made movie. Since he didn't speak Spanish, he doesn't even have lines! The main star is a comic named Tin Tan. The version I watched on YouTube had an English subtitle option but the words used to translate the Spanish made no sense so I mostly ignored them. Truth to tell, there was nothing funny nor scary here making this a complete waste of time for me. But, despite that, I'm next gonna see and review Face of the Screaming Werewolf which has scenes from both this and another Mexican-made movie called La momia azteca dubbed in English...

By 1960 the films starring both Germán Valdés "Tin Tan" and Lon Chaney, Jr. were far from their better work. Valdés, a very good comedian, singer and dancer, had reached his peak during the late 1940s with comedies as "Calabacitas tiernas" and "El rey del barrio", both directed by Gilberto Martínez Solares. Chaney, as all the fans of fantastic cinema know, had been one of the stars of Universal classic horror films, and had proved his dramatic skills in "Of Mice and Men" and "High Noon." Reunited, they try to inject a bit of life to this vehicle but the results are rather below average. Playing a watchman who is constantly drowsy, an aging Tin Tan spends most of the projection time dozing; and Chaney (with evident signs of illness and the effects of alcohol abuse, at 54) tiredly reprises the acrobatics of the werewolf, and fills the gaps evoking the torment of Lawrence Talbot. He first appears as the ancient mummy of a ruthless Egyptian ruler who was cursed by one of his victims, and turned into a werewolf whenever the moon was full. The mummy is stolen by a mad scientist who fronts his experiments to bring the dead back to life, with the wax museum where Casimiro (Tin Tan) snoozes. Then the film turns into a rehash of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", while Paquita, the female lead (Yolanda Varela, who spends the whole movie literally working, as a waitress and a receptionist), the scientist and his two assistants almost play it straight. There is a feeble attempt at absurd comedy, with the character of a crazy psychologist (in whose clinic Casimiro and Paquita work in the afternoons) and one of his patients, played by Oscar Ortiz de Pinedo and Consuelo Guerrero de Luna as a stuttering patient (a part that strangely was not given to Vitola, a regular in the Tin Tan/Martínez Solares comedies.) Presumably Fernando Méndez (director of the classic "Ladrón de cadáveres", "El vampiro" and "Misterios de ultratumba") contributed to the script of the film, produced by his son. But there is nothing new here: as have been said, a bit of "King Kong", and a bit of "Safety Last" in the last reel, when one might be as sleepy as Casimiro.

To be fair, this review is based on a Spanish language version of this Mexican horror-comedy film, without dubbing or English subtitles -- and I don't understand Spanish. But in a way, it's a credit to the movie that I still consider it an "okay" time-killer for a monster movie, despite not being able to comprehend a word of dialogue.

The main interest in viewing this is for a chance to see Lon Chaney in the parts of a werewolf and a mummy for one last time in a feature film. He doesn't have any lines anyway, so you're not missing anything there. Though this is supposed to be a comedy (and may very well be if I could register the jokes), it also plays pretty well as a straight-ahead horror feature. There's a comical character played by Mexican comic Tin Tan, who seems to hang out in a museum full of wax figures. Then later on, a really bloated mummy (Chaney) is featured on display but gets stolen by a team of scientists. Back at their laboratory they un-bandage the carcass and he turns out to be a regular guy who resembles an over-fed version of Larry Talbot from the old Universal Wolf Man pictures ... even wearing his same dark shirt and pants. When the full moon rises, Chaney is at his old stuff again, transforming into a werewolf and causing mayhem. Considering this had to be made on a low budget, it's not too badly shot. The Chaney werewolf scenes are the main reason to watch this, and Lon looks good and fierce during his initial transformation, even adding a pretty terrifying growl. Luckily there is a lot of wolf man time on display, though once he's up and stalking around it is debatable whether it's all a stunt man or sometimes a mix, with Chaney alternating in the makeup.

There's more history to this movie. Later on, hack director Jerry Warren tried his hand at Americanizing this by cutting out all the comedy, slicing the running time by about 20 minutes, dubbing it into English, and adding different scenes from some other foreign mummy movie, which made no sense and dragged on. That version can be seen under the title THE FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF, but most fans (including myself) would recommend LA CASA DEL TERROR as the more desirable of the two. It would be nice though if an English dub or subtitled version would be made available one day. Might even boost the rating by a half star. ** out of ****

House of Terror (1959)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mexican horror film has a group of thieves stealing a mummy (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and handing it over to a weird scientist. The scientist removes the mummy's bandages, which causes it to turn into a werewolf (also played by Chaney). This is the complete, unedited Spanish film but clips of this were used in Jerry Warren's American film Face of the Screaming Werewolf. This version I had to view without subtitles so I'm sure I missed some of the jokes going on inside the museum but even with the lack of subs the film wasn't too bad, although I prefer the American version due to how crazy it is.