MEXICAN MOVIE MONSTERS I’D LOVE TO SEE GET NEW FILMS

Halloween Month at Balladeer’s Blog continues with this look at Mexican horror figures who haven’t had a truly striking movie in decades. Well, outside of La Llorona, who still gets featured every few years.

Instead of doing nothing but sequels and remakes for the same handful of American slasher stories over and over again, how about 2020s treatments of these south-of-the-border monsters that people like me love almost as much as the classic Universal Monsters? 

DOCTOR M

First Appearance: The Black Pit of Dr. M (1958)

Lore: Dr. Masali, a less than ethical psychiatrist at a Mexican insane asylum in the early 1900s, gets a visit from the ghost of his late colleague Dr. Aldama. The spirit explains to Dr. M the unholy procedure for returning from the afterlife in a different body, which has been Masali’s obsession for years.

The ghost then warns Dr. M not to ever use the process. However, after being hanged for a murder he didn’t commit, Dr. M does indeed return to the flesh. As Heavenly punishment for violating God’s Will his soul is trapped in the body of his asylum’s hideously deformed and homicidally violent resident, Elmer.

The image of the returned Dr. M in his hideous new body playing a mournful tune on a violin to prove his identity to a friend is a scene worthy of the greatest Gothic horror films. Even better would have been a scene of him later playing the same tune over his own grave.

At any rate, the mad doctor’s attempts to further defy God’s Will by transferring his soul to another body are frustrated by a vicious twist that drives him over the edge. Still trapped in Elmer’s monstrous body the vile Dr. M may make every patient and staff member in the madhouse suffer for his own sins.   

FOR MY FULL REVIEW OF THE 1958 ORIGINAL CLICK HERE.         

LA LOBA

First Appearance: La Loba (1964)

Lore: A beautiful Mexican woman inherits the family curse of lycanthropy. And she doesn’t just get the cheap “only her head and hands get hairy” treatment. When she transforms, she bursts out of her clothing entirely, revealing her full-body furriness with her long hair concealing her naughty bits.

La Loba uses her ancestors’ secret passage from the mansion to the family cemetery to leave and return by. That passage opens up at a fake coffin in that graveyard, adding another great visual as our monstress emerges. This She-Wolf kills with abandon and can leap great distances, like Linda Carter on the old Wonder Woman show. 

FOR MY FULL REVIEW OF THE BLACK & WHITE 1964 ORIGINAL CLICK HERE.

THE AZTEC MUMMY POPOCA

First Appearance: The Aztec Mummy (1957)

Lore: He’s really an Aztec ZOMBIE but such figures are almost always called Aztec mummies in Mexico. The ancient warrior Popoca was sacrificed in a ritual to the god Tezcatlipoca and brought back to life as a shambling, unspeaking zombie to guard over a lost Aztec treasure in a sprawling royal tomb.  

Popoca is in a state of partial decay and stinks of death, but his heart is in the right place and he proves highly successful at protecting the lost treasure. The undead warrior uses lethal force against intrepid tomb robbers and curious scholars alike, but the daughter of one of them resembles his lost love (yes, we get THAT angle, which was already old by the 1950s).

This particular Aztec “mummy” got a trilogy of films in which he killed off evil treasure seekers but protected his reborn lady love and her colleagues from harm. Aztec mummies with different names were featured in other films going forward as they clashed with the Wrestling Women, Mil Mascaras and others.

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE 1950s AND 1960s ORIGINAL TRILOGY CLICK HERE.

THE DOLL PEOPLE

First Appearance: Curse of the Doll People (1961)

Lore: Zandor, a demonic priest who worships Dark Entities, rules over a monster and a group of child-sized dolls that he uses to terrorize and kill anyone who crosses him and his fellow worshippers. When the dolls kill a new victim, that person’s soul animates the next doll created by Zandor and its face becomes a caricature of the late victim’s face.

A female occult expert named Karina comes to the aid of Zandor’s victims. The murderous dolls in this film are the creepiest ever seen in any horror film by virtue of the fact that they are just midgets in doll masks.

That may make them rather tall for dolls but it enhances the chill factor a hundredfold because the “dolls’” movements are perfectly natural, not special effects of the stop motion or any other kind.

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE BLACK & WHITE 1961 ORIGINAL CLICK HERE.

THE CRYING WOMAN

First Appearance of This Version of La Llorona: The Curse of the Crying Woman (1961)

Lore: I would love to see a 2020s updated version of this exact version of La Llorona. To me she is what I picture every time I hear references to this monster. 

The eyeless sockets from which tears flow, her pack of spectral hounds, and her mournful cry make this my favorite out of the many, many versions of the Crying Woman that have hit the big screen.

She is the undeniable queen of Mexi-Monsters. Her lore has become as well-known as Dracula’s and Frankenstein’s at this point, so I’ll just give a brief summary.

After drowning (or otherwise killing) the children she had out of wedlock (or to a husband who cruelly abandoned her), La Llorona was denied entry to Heaven until she could account for her children. For centuries her ghostly form and her ghostly dogs have been roaming Mexico in search of her dead children.

She and her hounds often kill children or adults who cross her path at night. Some film versions make it so that the Crying Woman wants reunited with her bodily remains, wherever they were buried, so that she can return to life.

FOR MY FULL REVIEW OF THE 1961 BLACK & WHITE MOVIE CLICK HERE.

MAGNO

First Appearance: The Man and the Monster (1958)

Lore: Samuel Magno was a classical concert pianist who made a deal with Satan to increase his talent and ensure his domination of the classical music scene. We all know how deals with the Devil turn out in fiction and Magno gets his desire but there’s a catch, of course.

That catch? Whenever Magno plays his favorite, irresistible piece of music on the piano he transforms into a bestial ape-like monster. Each time, he must kill at least one victim in order to return to his human form.

Magno eventually gets a beautiful female protege and becomes lustful toward her AND jealous of her skill at piano playing. Everything ultimately ends with our main character being exposed as the simian creature at a public performance featuring himself and his protege.

The film’s setting in the world of classical music adds a nice timelessness to the tale.

FOR MY FULL REVIEW OF THE BLACK & WHITE 1958 ORIGINAL CLICK HERE.

SARA THE WITCH

First Appearance: The Witch’s Mirror (1960)

Lore: Sara works as a live-in housekeeper for her goddaughter Elena and her surgeon husband. She uses her Witch’s Mirror, that can see anything, anywhere, anytime to show her goddaughter that her cheating spouse plans to kill her.

Elena ignores it and is murdered by hubby and his mistress, who marries the widower and moves into the household with unseemly haste. Casting various spells, the witch turns the doctor’s mansion (where she still works as his housekeeper) into a veritable haunted house full of eerie occurrences, her powers spinning a macabre web around her intended victims before she mercilessly avenges Elena’s murder in one potent night of horror.

One memorable scene features Sara calling forth the late Elena’s vengeful spirit from within her mirror.

FOR MY FULL REVIEW OF THE BLACK & WHITE 1960 ORIGINAL CLICK HERE.

*** CLICK HERE FOR MY LOOK AT ADDITIONAL MEXI-MONSTER FLICKS FROM THE 1950s AND 1960s, INCLUDING:

THE BRAINIAC, SWAMP OF THE LOST MONSTER, BEYOND INSANE, THE VOLCANO MONSTERS, LA BRUJA, THE LIVING HEAD, RESURRECTION OF THE LIVING SKELETON AND MORE.