THE RIDER OF THE SKULLS aka El Charro de las Calaveras (1965) – Halloween is fast approaching, so here is another seasonal post from Balladeer’s Blog. Regular readers know how much I enjoy the campy, so-bad-they’re-good horror films from Mexico. I reviewed several of them HERE years ago.
El Charro de las Calaveras was written and directed by Alfredo Salazar, brother of Abel Salazar, the Brainiac himself from that 1961 horror movie. This was Alfredo’s first turn in the director’s chair but he had written many, many Mexican horror flicks, including the original Aztec Mummy trilogy, Wrestling Women movies, you name it.
This particular movie is a textbook example of a fun-bad film. The Rider of the Skulls (Dagoberto Rodriguez) is a masked gunslinging hero in Old Mexico, clad all in black including a big sombrero but with drawings of skulls on his back and on each shoulder. Well, at first. The shoulder skulls change to one on each breast in the second act.
Our hero has been fighting the forces of evil ever since his parents were slain by criminals years earlier.
El Charro arrives in a nearly deserted town with a dilapidated cemetery in which assorted skulls lie around in piles. The masked hero encounters the first of three monsters he will fight in this flick – a ridiculous looking werewolf with a headpiece so large it makes him look like the mascot of a sports team. Continue reading
Welcome back to Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween! 
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