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. Continue reading
Welcome back to Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween!
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