Mexican horror

[slayrrr666]

Got one more knocked off, Fangs of Fury (Colmillos de Furia) which unfortunately I didn't find a lot of positives in.

The main things that really appealed to me was just a few small scenes, the female vampires' walk through of the Gothic graveyard and prepares the ceremony to raise the master from the grave, the brawl in the parking garage and finally the training montages where both Cristobal and Arturo go trough the house with the different hallucinations popping up at them. Those were pretty much the other things I really liked about it.

What really got me with that one was just how dull and talky it was. Everyone seemed to go into a monologue at every convenient opportunity what just made it all the more difficult for me since I couldn't really understand what was going on. I've managed to pick up some of the words due to the fact I've seen over a dozen in Spanish now so there's some words I've heard several times and I can figure out roughly what's going on, but if you're trying to translate a whole movie in a different language from only a few key words while enjoying the movie at the same time, it's not really all that much fun, and even more to the point, it really lowers the action quotient that keeps things interesting. By not having anything to really keep it fun and what was there to understand about it I couldn't, I didn't really enjoy this one.

The list now reads:

1. Grave Robbers
2. Cemetery of Terror
3. Fangs of the Werewolf
4. Don't Panic
5. The Vampires of Coyoacan
6. The Beast is Alive
7. Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and The Wolfman
8. Night of the Bloody Apes
9. Killer Bees
10. Hell's Trap
11. Angel of Light
12. Tintorera!
13. The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
14. Fangs of Fury
15. The Mansion of Madness
16. The Man and the Beast
17. Santa Sangre

[slayrrr666]

Just got through one more over the weekend, The Vengeance of the Vampire Women (or Santo en la Venganza de los Mujeres Vampiro) which was a quite unexpected surprise to see.

Frankly, as my first solo Santo feature (despite already seeing him team up with Blue Demon already) that this one managed to be quite enjoyable despite having one major flaw to it: among those I've seen which were broadcast in Spanish (or pretty much all but Don't Panic, The Mansion of Madness, The Robot vs The Aztec Mummy and Tintorera!), all of the Mexican horror I've seen has been taped and re-watched while having closed-captioning on at the same time, so as I mentioned earlier several times, I've been able to catch some Spanish to pretty much guess what's been going on. This, though, was the first time I've seen one of these films live as it was broadcast on TV without the aid of closed-captioning, so if I have found any flaws at all, it was the near impossibility of understanding what happened in the film. I don't know the true plot of the film, the motives of anyone or even what was said during the investigation, making the fact that the rather loud soundtrack masked off most of the dialog even more of a challenge in understanding it since I could never rewind the tape to see if I could get it a second time. Really the only flaw I found.

The rest of the film was spectacular, a fabulous mix of Gothic grandeur and Mexican wrestling. With the opening staking of the woman vampire in her coffin, followed by the gangster's torchlight-lit walk through the underground caves, the dizzying nature of the location and the resemblance to so many classic Horrors from earlier in time made it a grand opening that really got me hooked, the Frankenstein-ish resurrection scene where the girl's blood is drained into the vampire and is resurrected to her normal self, all the way to Santo and the girl's investigation of the caves and finding the graveyard of defeated wrestlers in the cobwebbed coffins being a superb touch and effective scare. The small dose of lesbianism in the seduction of the women to form her cult definitely worked pretty well, but the main fact that appealed to me was the fact that this featured by far the best wrestling match in these films yet, with Santo's great 2/3 Falls match in the middle one of the most exciting and enjoyable ones I've seen, each of them booked logically and made for a really rousing time, and by mixing in several other brawls amongst the running time, it was a really engaging experience.

Just, pretty much like I said earlier, the first-time-ever utter and complete lack of closed-captioning help was the main flaw to this one. The Santo/Blue Demon team-up I like a little more for it's pure cheese value, but I'm still putting this one in the top-10.

The list now reads:

1. Grave Robbers
2. Cemetery of Terror
3. Fangs of the Werewolf
4. Don't Panic
5. The Vampires of Coyoacan
6. The Beast is Alive
7. Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and The Wolfman
8. The Vengeance of the Vampire Women
9. Night of the Bloody Apes
10. Killer Bees
11. Hell's Trap
12. Angel of Light
13. Tintorera!
14. The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
15. Fangs of Fury
16. The Mansion of Madness
17. The Man and the Beast
18. Santa Sangre

[slayrrr666]

Well, as I'll mention in the Just Watched thread, there was a documentary I watched yesterday where it covered vampire films around the world, and during the discussion of the original Dracula, it was mentioned about the tactic of incorporating a Spanish version of the same film for Mexican screens which began a small segment on Mexican vampire films, but rather than show clips or anything, all they did was show the original Mexican release poster (or at least I think they were), so if you could help me out with the true version of these films, it'd be a huge help for me:

La Maldicion del Vampiro
El Gigante de Otro Mundo
Amor de Vampiro
La Endemoniada
Atacan los Vampiros
El Mundo de los Vampiros
El Exterminio de los Dracula
El Hombre Vampiro

I've been able to translate them into English, but unfortunately when I went to look them up on IMDb, I couldn't find any of these at all. If you could help at all with that, I'd really appreciate it.

[Fenril]

Let's see:

- El mundo de los vampiros (1961). www.imdb.com/title/tt0054484/

- La endemoniada (1968). lamansiondelterror.blogspot.com/2010/05/la-endemoniada-1968.html Not to be confused with the Spanish witchcraft movie of the same name. The link I put here is in spanish, but it has the basic information (cast, director, etc.), which might help you look this movie up.

- El exterminio de los Drácula (1973). This is the mexican title of a Spanish film, La saga de los Drácula: www.cinefania.com/movie.php/136844/ Again, the site is in spanish, but it has the basic info.

I still couldn't find anything about the rest of the list:

La Maldicion del Vampiro
El Gigante de Otro Mundo
Amor de Vampiro
Atacan los Vampiros
El Hombre Vampiro

The fourth one sounds very familiar, however. It's probably a lucha libre film with another official title. I'll let you know if I can find out antything else.

[Fenril]

All I could find about El gigante de otro mundo is that it's the mexican title for a US movie, "Giant from the unknown" (1958) www.cinefania.com/movie.php/23381/ Nothing about the synopsis suggests that this has anything to do with vampires, however...

[Fenril]

...I just noticed the trend here; Amor de vampiro, is, yet againg, the local title of a movie from another country. In this case, the German "Beiss mich, liebling" (1970): www.cinefania.com/movie.php/28844/

I think I know what's going on here: in the 50's through the 80´s, Mexican film posters were notoriously lurid (there are entire books about these, you might want to look one of them up, there's some amazing art here and there), and in some cases they became more famous than the movie itself.

A similar thing happens with Polish movie posters; ever seen their poster for "The birds"? (seriously, look it up)

So I think this doccumentary screened a few posters without bothering to check if the movie in question was actually Mexican or not.

Happens a lot; I kept looking for a movie called "Mariposas negras" because it showed up on a Mx horror film book, and later found out it's actually an Argentinian film called "El balaustrada Isabel llega a media tarde" (it was a great movie, btw).

[Fenril]

Yep, "El hombre vampiro" is actually a US production, "The vampire" (no relation to the actual Mx production with Germán Robles): www.cinefania.com/movie.php/136931/

That still leaves two more titles. I think "La maldición del vampiro" might be an alternative title for "La maldición de Nostradamus", which is part of a well-liked vampire series: www.cinefania.com/movie.php/137307/. I could be wrong about this one, however.

[slayrrr666]

Wow, this is much more than I thought would happen. Thanks so much for this, it's of great help to me as I'm trying to reorganize my movie collection so all of this helps me out tremendously, and it happens to make my thoughts on the original documentary all the more truthful, that it was just a slap-dash effort to capitalize on the genre's popularity and that it needs to be redone in a much more complete and cohesive manner. Just, thank you so much for this. I guess there's a lot of changes I need to make, now.

[Fenril]

Feb 24, 2011 11:09:28 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

Wow, this is much more than I thought would happen. Thanks so much for this, it's of great help to me as I'm trying to reorganize my movie collection so all of this helps me out tremendously, and it happens to make my thoughts on the original documentary all the more truthful, that it was just a slap-dash effort to capitalize on the genre's popularity and that it needs to be redone in a much more complete and cohesive manner. Just, thank you so much for this. I guess there's a lot of changes I need to make, now.

You're welcome, good luck finding any of these titles.

[slayrrr666]

Well, I'm on the lookout for them, they sound really interesting from what I've read that you linked in here. I know that La saga de los Dracula is available on DVD over here, and weirdly, now that I know which film El hombre Vampiro actually is, I've already seen it and it's sequel, The Return of Dracula which are both highly enjoyable. The Mexican version with that title still eludes me, but I've got the US one which is pretty good.

[slayrrr666]

Coincidentally tracked another one down last night, and it was one we discussed here, La Endemoniada, or A Woman Possessed.

Now, since I have picked up some Spanish based on all of these viewings I've done as well as doing some direct translations of titles as I'm redoing my movie book, I did pick up the plot to this one which leads me to the most important comment here, in that the plot for this one is considerably wacky and original yet completely goes against the true origins of the vampire. Trying to reanimate his former lover, he hypnotizes her descendent and sends her out to kill off her family members to capture the blood required to bring her back to life, yet by doing so he totally removes himself from the film and only appears in several scenes to threaten the descendants from catching on or to get his assistant, leaving her to do the majority of the work herself. Original, yes, but it really demystifies the vampire and makes him a lot less threatening in that he doesn't do anything other than cast some glares and bare his fangs, which look really weak and small for a master vampire. This, to me, was the biggest flaw in here.

It did have some good stuff though, mainly in a fantastic Gothic opening in a basement where she gets captured and encrusted with a spiked mask in a total rip of Black Sunday but it still works well. The finale, where they're battling the possessed woman and manage to do harm to the reanimated version before it starts a big burning-down-the-house set-up is a pretty nifty touch, the sleaze is pretty nice and the gore, for the time period, is pretty decent and worthwhile despite it mainly consisting of stabbings that really aren't that gruesome, but again, for the time period I'll allow it, and it did have a pretty nice atmosphere that works pretty well. Really just wish it could've gotten the main vampire into action a little more often.

The list now reads:

1. Grave Robbers
2. Cemetery of Terror
3. Fangs of the Werewolf
4. Don't Panic
5. The Vampires of Coyoacan
6. The Beast is Alive
7. Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and The Wolfman
8. The Vengeance of the Vampire Women
9. Night of the Bloody Apes
10. Killer Bees
11. Hell's Trap
12. Angel of Light
13. Tintorera!
14. The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
15. A Woman Possessed
16. Fangs of Fury
17. The Mansion of Madness
18. The Man and the Beast
19. Santa Sangre

[slayrrr666]

Went crazy and had a marathon of Mexican horror over the weekend, I added five titles to the collection:

Started off with Nostradamus and the Monster Destroyer.

Not all that bad of an entry, but seeing as how this belongs to a series of films of which this is the second entry makes the story a little weird to follow, as it both starts off in the middle of an action scene and ends with a cliffhanger to set up the next one, so it's a bit confusing to make sense of it all what with his motivations being somewhat clouded (or maybe that's just the Spanish language) and the film centering more on everyone talking about trying to stop him rather than springing to action so it's a bit of a lag in the middle segments. Even still, the Gothic castle where he hides out is really atmospheric, it allows for some nice suspenseful stalking scenes as a hunchback chases the escaping kids through the catacombs of the basement and the scenes in the morgue with the reviving victim are pretty chilling. All in all, it's not a bad entry.

I know that it belongs to a series known as La Maledicion de Nostradamus, which I think we covered here earlier when I asked for help on the Mexican vampire help, and the title I gave here is the translation of the on-screen title when the film starts yet it was hyped by the channel as "La Maledicion de Nostradamus 2," hence why it's the second film in the series.

After that came Marina: On the Other Side of Time.

Frankly, this is the one film in the entire marathon I'm a little unsure about since it was the only one I saw without closed-captioning, which the others supplied so I think I missed a lot of what's going on in here, so the story above might be somewhat off from what's actually going on yet it's the best I can offer based on the limited amount of Spanish I've been picking up from watching these films. Even with the story problems, the age of the heroine and the action contained within make it out to be a kid's horror film and it clearly shows it, with the bad CGI for the ghosts not moving at all yet floating within the scene, the disembodied voices and lack of anything gory or bloody clearly have this one intended for the younger audiences, so with the lack of help from the story I really can't say much more about it.

I also managed to catch up with Night of a 1000 Cats, which I missed earlier in another Mexican horror marathon but who's repeat airing inspired this whole marathon to happen.

Superb Mexican exploitation effort, filled with lots of nudity, some what-should-be arrogant speeches from the main guy about getting away with it all and just the general nature of the storyline, about the tactics he uses and the toys he plays with in order to do everything he does around the city, so despite the lack of real action since it's pretty slow-going, it's still a good bit of fun. The castle is again a grand Gothic masterpiece, filled with the cramped rooms, candle-lit walkways and brick architecture that's always featured in these films, and with the cats coming into play more in the second half, it adds an extra bit of spice into the proceedings what with them getting loose and chasing after the victims causing a suspenseful chase to get out. Needed a bit more action during the second half when he's trying to lure the women back, but it's not all that bad at all.

Then came Capulina Against the Mummies (The Terror of Guanajuato).

Not nearly as madly funny as the previous Capulina effort I've seen, even though this one manages to get a bit more serious in offering a horror tone to compensate even though it's still got some good solid laughs to it. I get the feeling it's more about wordplay and one-liners than the slapstick which is where the level of humor is balanced, so most is lost in translation, yet again the horror elements brought forth are really nice in that the mummies look really cool, the incorporation of the mad scientist subplot allows for some fun and it's not really a boring effort, leaving this one slightly lower yet still highly enjoyable.

Lastly, The Resuscitated Monster, which was pretty fun.

A really great Frankenstein adaptation that manages to get a lot right while also having very few things wrong with it. The most obvious flaw is the storyline, which is just plain odd and doesn't really offer much to make it make sense so it tends to ramble along without really being realistic or coherent, and the copying of several foreign horrors at the time are a little obvious, yet this is still a lot of fun. From the low-budget, since the deformed scientist is so ludicrous looking it's almost laughable throughout his scenes despite trying to appear threatening, the foggy landscapes that surround everything and the inclusion of some nice action scenes throughout, it's quite enjoyable when it wants to be.

The list now reads:

1. Grave Robbers
2. Cemetery of Terror
3. Fangs of the Werewolf
4. Don't Panic
5. The Vampires of Coyoacan
6. The Beast is Alive
7. Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and The Wolfman
8. The Vengeance of the Vampire Women
9. Capulina Against the Mummies (The Terror of Guanajuato)
10. Nostradamus and the Monster Destroyer
11. Night of the Bloody Apes
12. Killer Bees
13. The Resuscitated Monster
14. Hell's Trap
15. Angel of Light
16. Night of a 1000 Cats
17. Tintorera!
18. Marina: On the Other Side of Time
19. The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
20. A Woman Possessed
21. Fangs of Fury
22. The Mansion of Madness
23. The Man and the Beast
24. Santa Sangre

[Fenril]

Between those 24 titles, you've seen a good amount of Rene Cardona's productions (all three Cardonas, even), and seem to usually enjoy them.

They are, more or less, the masters of mexican schlock, so maybe you'll want to seek the rest of their productions (the horror ones, that is, each has also dabbled in pretty much all other film genres)?

[slayrrr666]

Well, if they're considered the top-of-the-line, I've got some good stuff coming up in the unwatched list since they've been mightily enjoyable. I'm really interested in their Vacations of Terror films, those just sound so good from what I've heard about them so far.

I've actually seen several of Rene Sr.'s other movies, his Santo films as I've gotten three of them out of the way and were Action/Spy movies which were unmentioned here since they're not horror films but I have given them a look and they're not all that bad. I've kinda gotten used to them, and they're cheesy side makes them perfect for my viewing.

Plus, on another note, as I was updating my book with the IMDb's help, I've made a couple impressive remarks about the Mexican horror genre as a whole:

They note that there's about 520 Horror films with Mexico as a country of origin, counting co-productions and so-forth. About 100 of them are merely short films, 20-30 minutes long and not really full, feature-length efforts, so I figure I've seen 24 out of 400, not a bad total at all considering this started not even a year ago and most of those I've seen made it to the US in any format as of yet. A couple have, but I've seen more that haven't gotten US distribution, so no dubbed or subtitled versions exist, and I'd like to think it's an impressive feat made all the more remarkable with the fact that the films I've seen were so good.

[slayrrr666]

Managed to catch up with two last night, and it'll be nice for you to know it kicks off a whole week of similar viewing of Mexican horror efforts: Santo vs. Frankenstein's Daughter and The Return of the Monster. A brief note before I go into them: the marathon isn't going to be Mexican Frankenstein rip-offs, just Mexican horror in general. That they're both similar in design is coincidental, though they do mixed well together with Frankenstein 1970 that I viewed on Monday.

Santo vs. Frankenstein's Daughter (Santo contra la hija de Frankenstein), which is now I believe the second solo Santo Horror effort I've seen, as I've gotten several of his non-horror roles as well as a team-up with Blue Demon, this one turned out to be pretty enjoyable. With a solid atmosphere built around the classic mad-scientist movies of the past, as the underground lair looks incredible with it's cobwebbed corpses, flying bats and general low-budget nature, a lab with all the usual trappings and off-course the pens for the monster cages, makes for some rather comforting areas in a Mexican horror movie, as well as the rather typical storyline (which I'm guessing at, it seems right but again, no closed-captioning so I don't feel 100% like I usually do here) but it allows for a lot of brawling with the henchmen (some don't, most do. The multi-man assault in the graveyard, the two-on-one in the lab and the finale with the mutated monster are among the highlights, the one-on-one with the guard who's defeated with the chain being whipped repeatedly isn't) and with a bit of bloodshed, somewhat decent wrestling matches (I'm still not as sold on him in that regard, I still prefer Blue Demon to Santo though that I feel might be exposure rather than technique since I've seen BD more) and a hint of cheese makes this one a rather enjoyable effort.

The Return of the Monster (El regreso del monstruo) was almost as enjoyable with a somewhat similar premise done about ten years earlier but still manages to get off a lot of good stuff. The witch here is my personal favorite, creepy, inventive and just plain chilling, and manages to steal the entire movie despite being an articulated skeleton. The western setting is also pretty cool, and mixed well with the lifestyle of the locals and the super-technology of the villains makes for some rather fun times. A little too much singing and a rather goofy looking monster make it a little slower paced than the other one, but it's still a highly enjoyable affair anyway.

The list now reads:

1. Grave Robbers
2. Cemetery of Terror
3. Fangs of the Werewolf
4. Don't Panic
5. The Vampires of Coyoacan
6. The Beast is Alive
7. Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and The Wolfman
8. The Vengeance of the Vampire Women
9. Capulina Against the Mummies (The Terror of Guanajuato)
10. Santo vs. Frankenstein's Daughter
11. Nostradamus and the Monster Destroyer
12. Night of the Bloody Apes
13. The Return of the Monster
14. Killer Bees
15. The Resuscitated Monster
16. Hell's Trap
17. Angel of Light
18. Night of a 1000 Cats
19. Tintorera!
20. Marina: On the Other Side of Time
21. The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
22. A Woman Possessed
23. Fangs of Fury
24. The Mansion of Madness
25. The Man and the Beast
26. Santa Sangre