MORE VINTAGE MEXICAN HORROR FILMS

Halloween Month rolls along here at Balladeer’s Blog! In the past, I’ve examined decades-old Mexican horror films that have a certain quaint B-Movie charm to them. Here are some of those So Bad They’re Good flicks I didn’t get the chance to review before now. 

THE RESURRECTED MONSTER (1953) – Directed and co-written by the trailblazing Chano Urueta, this film is regarded as Mexico’s first sci-fi/ horror blend. A plastic surgeon named Dr. Hermann Ling (Jose Maria Linares-Rivas) has been driven mad by a lifetime of scorn over his grotesque, misshapen (yet hilarious) appearance. He has spent years working in isolation at a remote castle.

A beautiful (of course) female reporter named Nora, played by starlet Miroslava, is sent to obtain a story about the famed surgeon’s life and methods. The mad doctor falls in love with Nora and is devastated when she flees his castle after getting her story.

Our villain reanimates a handsome corpse and transplants an obedient brain into it. Hey, it’s the movies! Mad scientists are automatically masters of ALL disciplines! Ling has his hybrid creation bring Nora back to him, but it, too, has fallen for Nora and kills the doctor, and is in turn slain by Nora’s editor (Gherasimos).

THE LIVING HEAD (1963) – More black & white Bad Movie fun from south of the border. Archeologists break into the ancient tomb of Aztec military leader Acatl, whose head lies on a ceremonial platter of sorts.

It turns out that Acatl’s head is still alive, preserved by the eldritch arts of the Aztecs. Preserved in the same way were the Living Head’s companions in his tomb – Xihu, the grotesque, zombified High Priest and the Princess Xochiquati.

The Head sends the duo out to ritually kill all of the profaners of its tomb, but Xochiquati disintegrates upon contact with the air outside said tomb. That leaves Xihu to carry on alone. I have no idea why he didn’t fall apart on contact with the air. It’s that kind of movie.

Xihu stabs and carves out the hearts of each member of the archeological party one by one and presents those hearts to Acatl’s head back in the tomb before heading out for more. We get nonsensical jibber jabber about reincarnations of the princess and other ancient Aztecs and in the end Xihu and the Living Head are destroyed. 

THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE (1950) – For a change of pace, here’s a very old Mexican horror flick that was ahead of its time and pretty high in quality. Get ready for The Mask (1961) meets Psycho (1960) meets just about any giallo – except this came a decade or more before all of those films!

This movie deserves to be much better known. I want to avoid spoilers, so I’ll just cite some of the elements that make El Hombre sin Rostro so memorable.

Eerie and psychedelically surreal visuals, a sinister man with no face who kills women on the foggy nighttime streets, and a police detective still haunted by his late, domineering mother.

I wanted to throw this one gem into the mix here in hopes of getting it some greater renown.

THE MONSTER OF THE VOLCANOES (1963) – Like with The Living Head, I had only written a couple sentences about the two Mexican Yeti Monster films during my look at Mexi-Monsters long ago. This time I’m fleshing things out a bit more.   

A fluffy white Abominable Snowman/ Yeti type of monster has begun terrorizing the people near the extinct volcano that the creature calls home. Workers constructing a cable railway fall victim to the monster as do a handful of men trying to help a shady villain who believes the volcano holds the treasure of the Aztecs.

Our title creature possesses hypnotic abilities and it uses them to lure Lupe, the beautiful (of course) daughter of a professor who is descended from Montezuma himself! The monster of the volcanoes wants to add Lupe to the collection of enthralled women that he keeps in little niches around his lair.

This movie and its sequel have had a cult following for decades among us fans of Psychotronic cinema.

THE TERRIBLE GIANT OF THE SNOW (1963) – Mere months after the previous flick the sequel was released. Bizarrely, even for a rush job it’s like an effort was put forth to make this follow-up film as dull as the first one was fun.

Things drag like hell, and we don’t even get a glimpse of the monster that we already saw in the earlier movie until well past the halfway point. Further enjoyment is stripped away by having this monster just be a guy in a costume who was trying to hoax people.

The Terrible Giant of the Snow wasn’t fun-bad, it was just boring-bad, unfortunately. 

*** THREE MORE BAD MOVIES FROM SPAIN’S KING OF HORROR, PAUL NASCHY – WEREWOLF VS THE YETI, THE HUNCHBACK OF THE RUE MORGUE AND DR. JEKYLL VS THE WOLFMAN ARE HERE.

*** In 2010 I reviewed Naschy’s film Assignment: Terror, in which his recurring wolfman character clashed with aliens, a mummy, a vampire and a Frankenstein-type monster. Click HERE.