Juan Carlos isn’t a great hero. He’s been infantilized by his mother and is going through therapy, which would probably a novel idea in the macho culture of Mexico, much less today. In his dreams, he can see the serial killer that has been haunting the city, quite literally The Man Without A Face that the title refers to.
A decade later, Hitchcock’s Psycho would feature a plot with similar beats to this film. In much the same way, another of director Juan Bustillo Oro’s films, Dos Monjes, predated Kurosawa’s Rashomon and features the same narrative idea of showing the same event from divergent points of view.t also features a faceless killer 14 years before Mario Bava would bring Blood and Black Lace to the screen (that said, The Blank started appearing in the Dick Tracy newspaper strip in 1937 and probably influenced the look of this film as well).
While not the fastest-paced movie you’ll ever see, this film is worth watching for its mix of three decades before David Lynch surrealism, German expressionism fog and angles, and a film noir storyline moved to Mexico. There’s not another movie that looks and feels like this one.
Rogelio A. Gonzalez directed two of the movies that I feel most strongly about when it comes to classic Mexican science fiction and horror: The Ship of Monsters and Dr. Satan vs. the Black Hand. Both of these movies refuse to play by any rules of the genre and mix humor with outright shocks. They also make frugal use of their budget to craft truly fantastic vistas that some would say were impossible to craft for the money.
This film, however, is a vehicle for Mexican comedian Antonio “Clavillazo” Espino, who plays a bumbling fix-it man who finds himself on a rocket for the moon and up against four-armed aliens that look way more frightening than this simple film would deserve.
The aliens are led by an even more intimidating creature, a large brain that floats around on its own power that would have scared the absolute pants off of me had I seen this as a kid. More of the brain! More of the aliens! Less of the hijinks!
EDITOR’S NOTE: As we dive into all things Mexican horror this week, we brought back this completely wonderful and strange film, which would be a perfect one for you to discover or watch again.
If all Juan López Moctezuma directed was Alucarda, he’d still be celebrated. Throw in the fact that he was behind the camera for El Topo and also created this little piece of strangeness and you can see that he’s someone to be celebrated.
A journalist has traveled to Dr. Maillard’s (Claudio Brook, Alucarda, The Devil’s Rain!) remote mental institution to write a story about the progressive treatment the doctor offers: patients are free to roam and fully live out their fantasies. However, when he gets there, the reporter learns from the doctor’s daughter Eugenie that he hasn’t met the real doctor, just one of the inmates that is quite literally running the asylum and randomly quoting Aleister Crowley. Even better — Susana Kamini, Justine from Alucarda, shows up as a cult priestess!
Imagine if Hammer or Amicus made a movie in Mexico, with all of the dialogue in English, and fed massive amounts of drugs to everyone involved. That’s pretty much how I imagine that this film was made. It’s also an Edgar Allan Poe story (The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether), but really, it’s also a costume drama with more powdered wigs than a British courthouse. And man, has there ever been so sensationalistic a title?
Will you like it? Not if you’re expecting a horror movie. Again, the Chilling Classicsset confounds expectations, seeming like it will only feature the worst schlock and somehow embracing Mexican art cinema. I can only imagine that there’s a basement in the Mill Creek offices where the maniac that chose the films for this set signed off on it with a feather pen and a giant flourish, exclaiming, “I hope this makes someone’s brain melt!”
Beyond watching this on the Chilling Classics box set, you can also find it on Amazon Prime. If you want a much better looking copy of this film, Mondo Macabro released it as The Mansion of Madness, complete with a brand new digital transfer and Guillermo dl Toro discussing the director.1973
Invasion of the Vampires is directed by Miguel Morayta, who also made one of my favorite strange south of the border films, Dr. Satan.
Finally, a vampire who has it all figured out. If anyone kills Count Frankenhausen, all of his dead victims rise from the grave in his place. That’s way better than the way it usually goes, with the brides of Dracula going up in smoke as soon as he gets staked.
If not for the American dubbing, this would be a pretty atmospheric throwback. So do what I do: turn off the sound, watch the subtitles and make your own soundtrack inside your brain.
Why would I spend weeks of my life preparing for this barrage of Mexican weirdness for you, dear reader? Just so I could tell you all about this movie, which is a veritable pot luck dinner of the things that both enthrall and upset me in movies.
Mexico, as horror filmmakers, rarely does subtle. And they rarely just do one thing when other horrifying elements can be layer on, like the scariest tasting seven-layer burrito ever burrito’d.
It would be enough if this movie was a ripoff of Child’s Play. But no, that’s too easy for director Roberto Guinar. No, instead, the doll shows up for a man named Lorenzo, who can’t perform sexually with anyone but his mother. Yes, that’s right. If you’re not creeped out by human dolls running around and killing people, this movie tosses in a side dish of incest. And not implied. Oh no. No, no, no. This incest is driven into your eyes and heart with all the fervor and subtlety of a Mexican soap opera from Hell.
Yes, Yermo has entered the House of Dolls, the store where Lorenzo and his ladylove mother call home. When our hero — is he our hero? — takes him to a children’s show, all the doll will do is fart. And fart. And fart some more.
The music in this is insane, like cowboy music with synths at times and screams and growls at others, all in English for a movie shot in Spanish that looks and feels like a latmodelrl scumbag Italian film but came out years after it was made and was only available in bootleg bins in Mexican stores in the U.S.
Everything in the above paragraph is why I am both fascinated and upset by this movie, which we all know means that I will be talking about it non-stop to anyone dumb enough to listen.
Most of this movie is Yermo and the lunatic son lying on the floor and laughing, as if you have a window in to their baffling world. I want to know more. In the perfect world of my dreams, this movie would have had at least two sequels to explain more. And no, the budget, aesthetics and sheer incomprehesinbility of this would not have been altered a lick in between installments.
This movie was near-impossible for me to find, but if you want to come over to my house, I’ll mix you cocktails spiked with hallucinogenics and we can scream at one another about this movie for as long as it takes.
This Friday, we’re meeting at the Groovy Doom Facebook page at 8 PM for another double feature that will need some strong drinks to get you through. Just like last week, fair warning — both of these films are PACKED with gore. If necrophilia and babysitters getting burned in ovens aren’t your thing, stay away (but please come watch with us!).
Up first is the 1979 Joe D’Amato chunkblower known as Buio Omega. For this, we’ve decided to start simple, because the second cocktail is going to burn out all your brainstems. Well, even my simple is complicated, so here are two recipes:
Dark and Stormy (simple version)
2 oz. dark rum (Goslings Black Seal is traditional, but I use Kraken)
3 oz. ginger beer
1/2 oz. lime juice
Fill a highball (or Big Gulp) glass with ice. Add rum.
Pour in ginger beer and lime. Stir, garnish with a lime wedge and drink up.
Beyond the Darkness and Stormy (complicated version, based on this recipe)
2 oz. dark rum
3 oz. ginger beer (go for a lower sugar and spicier brand)
1 oz. spiced simple syrup (read on…)
Lime for garnish
Making this recipe means making your simple syrup a few days in advance. To do that, use this recipe:
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups water
6 sticks cinnamon (making sure to grate a quarter stick into the mix)
30 whole cloves
10 allspice berries (or just double the ground allspice below)
1/4 tsp ground all spice
1 vanilla bean cut in half and seeds scraped out
1/2 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
1/4 cup fresh ginger sliced (you can always use a dash of dry ginger spice, but I have some rad frozen ginger cubes I’ve been dying to use)
3 oz lime juice
Making simple syrup is, well, simple. Throw everything in a pot and simmer it over medium — not too hot — heat. Once it gets warm, turn it on low and stir it until it thickens on your spoon. Let it cool.
Then, strain out the spices and store it in a container in the fridge.
Here’s how to make this magic work:
Fill a highball (or Big Gulp) glass with ice. Add the ginger beer and then the simple syrup. You’re going to be amazed, because the syrup will sink to the bottom.
Hold a spoon upside down at the top of the glass at the top of the ginger beer later. Pour the rum over the spoon like you’re an absinthe fiend. Prepare yourself to shit your pants at how cool this is. I’m not going to spoil it.
Are you ready to go on a journey? Absurd is one of my favorite movies ever — I know I say that all the time — so this axe murder movie demands, well, a drink that lives up to the ideals of the film itself.
A splash of 7-Up or Sprite or the generic brand of your fancy
1/2 oz. grenadine
As much pineapple juice as you want
Throw it in a glass with lots of ice. Get a straw and chop your head off.
I can’t wait to go buy little bottles of everything for this. Seriously, this is going to be an experiment in just how much we can all safely enjoy films and drinking at the same time. That said, you don’t need to drink to enjoy movies. Sobriety is cool, too.
Rafael Baledon was an actor and director who also created the 1963 film The Crying Woman. Here, he makes his own take on the Universal Frankenstein mythos with a film that is broken into four parts, as by splitting it up into four sections like a movie serial, Baledon was able to get around some Mexican union laws.
Jaime Rojas (Joaquin Cordero, Vacation of Terror 2, Dr. Satan) has just been released from jail when he helps Dr. Frankenstein escape from prison. The scientist succeeds one more time in making new life in the form of the bestial Orlak, a monster with Rojas’ face that the evil doctor controls via radio waves to kill numerous men, women and even a baby.
Behold pure magic! You may have noticed that I have a weakness for movies where planetary races of female overlords descend on our little mudball and wipe humans out left and right. This is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of the genre ever and has suddenly leaped to the top of the list.
What else should I expect from Alfredo B. Crevenna, the director of The Fury of the Karate Experts, one of the most out-there films ever, a movie that somehow combines Santo, kung fu mysticism, aliens, the Coral Castle and Atlantis?
After walking into a flying saucer-looking ride at a carnival, a group of humans is soon light speeding their way through space, the prisoners of a planet of women looking for a new home. Beyond the nuclear family being menaced, we also have a boxer who is in over his head with the mob, his girl and the gang of thugs out to make him pay.
Soon, they’re being experimented on by the evil queen Adastrea and helped by her twin Alburnia. There’s a legend on their planet that twins would arrive, with one serving a dark god and the other a being of light. They’re both played by Lorena Velazquez, whose acting career continues to this day. She’s as close to a scream queen as this era would produce, with roles in The Ship of Monsters, Macabre Legends of the Colony, She-Wolves of the Ring and, in perhaps her best-known horror role, she was Thorina, queen of the vampires in Santo contra Las Mujeres Vampiros. She’s beyond fabulous in this, threatening the lives of children in one scene and sweet and tender in the next.
Speaking of children, the space women have a plot to take human lungs — the younger the better — and use them to make their own ability to breathe our air.
If you’re looking for more movies like this, you can always pick Catwomen of the Moon, Fire Maidens from Outer Space, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Missile to the Moon, Amazon Women on the Moon or Queen of Outer Space.
One of the space women, Eritrea, is played by Maura Monti, who would play a similar role in Santo vs. the Martian Invasion, released the very same year. She’s also The Batwoman, which we covered last week.
This movie packs plenty of poignant moments and hilarious dialogue inside it, so much so that you’re unsure if you’re watching a drama or a comedy at points. The sets are astounding works of pop art, the aliens’ costumes leave little to the imagination and the bad guys are as bad as you can get. All movies should aspire to do so much with so little.
Known as The Book of Stone up here in the U.S., this film was directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada, who also wrote the Nostradamus movies and directed Blacker than the Night and Poison for the Fairies.
Julia (Marga Lopez, Even the Wind Is Afraid) has been hired to be the governess for Silvia, a rich young girl who cannot connect with her father (Joaquin Cordero, Dr. Satan), who only cares about his new wife (Norma Lazarenko, Survive!) Silvia claims that she has only one friend, Hugo, who everyone else sees as a stone statue in the middle of the courtyard. But when Hugo starts doing her bidding, she may be more correct than anyone could believe.
While a Mexican film, this feels like a Gothic along the lines of The Turn of the Screw or The Innocents. This film is considered one of the classics of Mexican horror cinema and for good reason. It has a thick atmosphere fraught with tension that it delivers on. It was also remade in 2009, in case you feel like hunting that down.
If you’re anything like me, you were probably wondering when John Carradine would show up in the Mexican horror movies we’ve been sharing over the last few days. It seems like in the late 60’s, if you were making a movie that anything to do with suspense or monsters, Carradine would magically appear on your set. For the price of a carton of untipped Player’s and several bottles of Chivas Regal, he would be in your film no questions asked.
Carradine goes one better in this film by providing the introduction. Seriously, you don’t know how many drinks I would have poured out for this man.
How did he get to Mexico, you may ask? Carradine and Basil Rathbone had gone to Mexico Autopsia De Un Fantasma in 1968 and for some reason, Carradine would stay behind to make four more movies for Luis Enrique Vergara. He’d appear opposite Mil Mascaras in Pacto Diabolico and Enigma Muerte while showing up as the skinniest of Draculas in Las Vampiras before making this movie.
Marlene (Regina Torne, who went on to appear in many a telenovela) is a fashionista dealing with the loss of her husband and, just as suddenly, the loss of half of her face to a strange disease. She turns to mad scientist Dr. Favel (who else other than Carradine?), who has a simple solution: let’s kill some young women and harvest their blood. He also claims that he can bring her husband back to life with some more work on her part.
Known as Madame Death up here and as The Death Woman in the UK, this is the kind of movie where models die left and right while hunchbacks attempt to assault people and need to be reminded of their place with the cut of the whip. Also, a guillotine in a wax museum is put to good use.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.