How can you make the star of Dr. Satan even better the second time around? Well, you can make him closer to Danger: Diabolik to start. And then, you can put him up against a vampiric black magician from China named Yei Lin (Noe Murayama, the son of a Japanese dentist who moved to Mexico and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps). Oh yeah. You can also have Satan himself show up.
Dr. Satan starts this one off by killing two women, Medusa and Erata, then damning their souls to Hell by asking them to serve him and sleep alongside him in coffins. Of course they say yes.
This movie series didn’t just go from black and white to color. It leaped there, blasting your eyes with neon tones that Mario Bava would tell them to mute a little. It’s like Hammer meets pop art meets, well, Mexican horror films.
Bad guys that turn into bats and get mad when tea cermonies are ruined and when they bite into zombie women? Labs full of boiling flasks and more smoke than a Sleep concert? Satan himself cutting promos? This movie is everything you ever wanted and more. Who says it has to make sense?
I love that we live in a time when the movies we once watched on fuzzy VHS rentals that were scored with wear and tear are now available on pristine blu rays from boutique labels. For example, 1988’s Dream Demon is now in my hands and instead of a tape that might fall apart in my battered VCR, I have a director’s cut blu ray that’s been lovingly restored from the original camera negative.
Diana (Jemma Redgrave) is about to marry the man of her dreams, a war hero named Oliver, freshly home from the Falklands. Yet as she moves into a huge new home near London, she starts to experience terrifying and gore-strewn dreams where she’s beaten, abused and tormented. She’s also being stalked by two journalists (Timothy Spall and Jimmy Nail, who were on the show Auf Wenderstein, Pet) who are determined to dig some dirt up about her future husband. Things get even stranger when an American named Jenny (Kathleen Wilhoite, Witchboard, Fire in the Sky) shows up not only in her waking life, but in the dream world as well.
Director/co-writer Harley Cokeliss made the first filmed version of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, as well as working second unit on The Empire Strikes Back before he made films like Battletruck and Black Moon Rising.
Here, he shows a deft hand for telling a dream logic story that is packed with practical effects and so much of the goopy red stuff. Not all of it makes sense, but you can pretend that it’s the late 80’s, you’re in a video rental store and this looks pretty great from the box cover. It lives up to that promise.
Like all Arrow releases, this movie is absolutely loaded with features, including interviews with nearly everyone involved, two cuts of the film, a making of feature and commentary by Cokeliss and producer Paul Webster.
You can get this from Arrow Video, who were nice enough to send us a copy.
Ryan (Richard Summers-Calvert, who also wrote and directed this film) and Sunny (Kate Lister) are estranged family members who find themselves car-sharing to a funeral for an unnamed person in Scotland.
They both have issues. Ryan’s mother is about to die and Sunny is dealing with autism and coming to terms with a recent suicide attempt. Can these two get along together for three days? Or is this trip doomed?
I liked how natural this movie felt and how well the leads played off one another. They both explore and experience so much in just a few days, but you come away rooting for them to win.
This movie will be available on demand soon. You can learn more at the filmmaker’s official site.
DISCLAIMER: This was sent to us by its PR company.
Rogelio A. Gonzalez made more than 70 movies, but I wonder if he ever made anything near as good as this movie, which is perhaps one of the strangest films I’ve ever had the delight to witness.
I was wondering how to even describe this movie. Basically, Gamma (Ana Bertha Lepe, Miss Mexico 1953 and a third-runner up for Miss Universe) and Beta (Lorena Velazquez, Miss Mexico 1960 and also Zorina queen of the vampires in Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro) have come from Venus to find men to repopulate their planet. Of course, they can’t resist biting people or falling in love with Lauriano (Eulalio “Piporro” Gonzalez, one of the kings of golden age of Mexico comedy and the literal embodiment of Northern Mexican culture), a singing cowboy.
Sure, that would set up a great movie, but this is Mexico. Which means that the ship has a robot named Tor who is collecting a whole bunch of monsters — why, the title translates as Ship of Monsters, surprise! — and those monsters are about to go crazy. There’s Uk the cyclops, the many armed Carasus, Prince of Mars Tagual, Utirr the spider and the dinosaur skeleton named Zok. Also, Tor falls for a jukebox. And some of the special effects were ripped off from the Russian movie Road to the Stars.
Imagine if Ed Wood lived in Mexico, had a better budget, lucked out and had magnificent actresses willing to wear swimsuits and high heels, as well as a singing cowboy. Then we’d cut open slice open a peyote cactus and make him sit in a cave until he made this and it still might not this charming and odd.
Known as Brainiac in the U.S., this was directed by Chano Urueta, who helped Blue Demon get on the silver screen and was written by Federico Curiel, who would make The Champions of Justice, several Santo movies and Neutron.
All the way back in 1661, Baron Vitelius was burned at the stake during the Inquisition and claimed that the next time a certain comet passed by the Earth, all of the children of those that did him wrong would pay. I mean, you would think a bunch of religious folks would treat a necromantic sorcerer better, but such is life in ancient Mexico.
Three hundred years later, Baron Vitelius rides back in on that comet and is now able to change at will into a monster able to suck out the brains of his victims via a gigante forked tongue, which is incredibly easy to do thanks to his ability to hypnotize his victims.
How bonkers is this movie? No less than Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart paid tribute to it in their song “Debra Kadabra,” saying “Turn it to Channel 13 / And make me watch the rubber tongue / When it comes out! From the puffed and flabulent Mexican rubber-goods mask / Next time they show the Binaca / Make me buy The Flosser / Make me grow Brainiac Fingers / But with more hair!”
In America, we’d be satisfied with an evil alien. In Mexico, they added the fact that he was a wizard who brought people back from the dead before he was burned alive and took a ride on a heavenly body for three hundred years. Viva la peliculas de terror!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This originally ran on the site on August 4, 2018. I’ve brought it back for this week of Mexican horror. Please enjoy!
René Cardona Jr. gave us Tintorera, a Susan George-starring vehicle that is less the Mexican version of Jaws and more softcore three-way porn, as well as Guyana: Crime of the Century, which somehow included Stuart Whitman as Reverend James Johnson leading Johnstown, along with Gene Barry and Joseph Cotten. If these things warm your heart, you’re reading the right website.
Based on Charles Berlitz’s best-selling book, this one has it all. Atlantis. A possessed doll. Black characters dubbed to sound like they’re coming straight out of Amos ‘n Andy. John Huston.
The Black Whale III has set sail for the Bermuda Triangle with the Marvin family leading the way. Sure, they’re looking for Atlantis, but mostly they just argue with one another. Finding a doll in the water, the family’s young daughter Diana becomes possessed, telling people how they’ll die and locking the cook in the freezer.
Oh yeah — there’s also a scuba diving expedition that leads to the oldest daughter getting her legs crushed and her father just can’t decide whether or not to cut her legs off. Such is the drama of this film.
People start getting killed off until the desperate captain tries to call other ships for help. They end up hearing multiple distress calls, including their own being played back to them. When they finally reach someone, they learn that everyone on board died ten years ago. All that’s left is the doll floating in the water.
Claudine Auger (Black Belly of the Tarantula) shows up here, livening things up somewhat. This film is strange, as it wants to be about so many things while struggling to be about anything. And as mentioned before, the near minstrel show dubbing of the black cook is quite troubling at worst or hilariously inappropriate at best.
Let me reiterate: Hollywood legend John Huston is somehow in this piece of shit. Oh the 1970’s, when once big time talent would show up in the strangest of films!
I found this for free on Amazon Prime, so I recommend you do the same. The doll parts are at least somewhat cool, as is the atonal soundtrack and poor dubbing.
This seems like a crime movie, except that, you know, Dr. Satan has made a deal with Satan to be able to control his three zombie women, which feels like probably the best reason to give over your immortal soul when you think about it.
The devil does show up several times, mostly from far away and he has large black wings and he’s really ferocious and awesome in the way that only a totally Catholic culture could make him look.
Joaquin Cordero, who plays the titular character, studied in a seminary and even considered being a priest at one point. He decided to become a lawyer, but then changed his mind and became an actor. He would go on to become one of Mexico’s biggest stars, including appearances in Secta Satanica: El Enviado delSenor, Vacations of Terror 2, The Book of Stone and the somehow even better sequel to this movie.
Interpol agents against a doctor with zombie slaves that were gifted to him by el primero de los caidos. It’s as if someone took my most perfect dreams, sent them back in time and filmed them in Mexico. The left hand path has taken me many places, but this may be the most enjoyable.
In the medieval Japan that only appears in fantasy, a court astrologer foretells a great disturbance that could cause the end of the kingdom of Emperor Suzaku. The astrologer’s wife wants one of his two proteges, Doman, to take over for her husband, while Yasunori — the more idealistic of his disciples — just wants the love of the seer adopted daughter Sakaki.
This leads to Yasunori the astrologer’s wife plotting his murder, which ends up with the old man and Sakaki dead. Yasunori is blamed when he kills the woman in a rage, takes the old man’s Chinese book of secrets and runs on a journey with no destination into the woods.
Soon, he’s gone mad, but will soon meet the daughter’s long lost sister Kuzunoha, fall in love and then learn that she’s a fox in human form.
This movie has never been available outside of Japan. Get ready — it looks unlike any movie I’ve ever seen from that country.
This is a movie that combines stage play, animation, butoh dance, kabuki and expressionist filmmaking to create something truly wondrous.
Known as Koiya Koi Nasuna Koi (Love, Thy Name Be Sorrow), this was directed by Tomu Uchida, who once left Japan to be part of the Chinese Communist cause. He took the name Tomu as it means “to spit out dreams.”
This is now available from Arrow Video, who has released it on blu ray with a new Toei restoration.
DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by Arrow Video.
We’ve already discussed the lunacy of Jerry Warren and his movie The Wild World of Batwoman a while back. That’s not the only bonkers movie that he’d ever make. Let’s take this movie, which is really La Casa del Terror and La Momia Azteca mixed into a new movie, along with footage that Warren shot just for this new effort. You think Puffy invented the remix? Check in with Jerry.
Warren took his scissors to all of the comedy scenes of Tin-Tan from Casa del Terror, replacing them with the Lon Chaney Jr. footage from La Momia Azteca. This wasn’t anything new for him, as he’d already released Attack of the Mayan Mummy the previous year, replacing most of that movie with newly filmed American footage. And he’d use footage from that movie to make this!
He also took two Chilean movies — La Casa esta Vacia (The House is Empty) and La Dama de La Muerte (The Lady of Death) and made Curse of the Stone Hand.
I have no idea what drive-in fans thought, thinking they’d probably seen this movie before because they totally had. They just didn’t have IMDB to look it up.
A psychic named Ann Taylor — no relation to Ann Taylor or her Loft — goes back to her past life and leads a team of archaeologists to an Aztec pyramid with two mummified bodies, one being an Aztec warrior and the other a werewolf, who just so happens to be Lon Chaney Jr., who is white and not Mexico and no one ever brings that up.
The craziest thing then happens: the Aztec warrior escapes and kidnaps the psychic. They both get hit by a car and that’s it. They’re out of the movie, never to be seen again, because they’re dead. We’re only told this fact by a newspaper that spins on to the camera.
This is the Face of the Screaming Werewolf, after all. Not the Faces of the Screaming Warrior and the Aztec Mummy.
Meanwhile, Lon Chaney Jr. goes full lycan, kills the scientist who revived him and then is stopped by Tin-Tin, who shows up out of nowhere because he’d been edited out of the movie up until now. Yes, this nameless hero just shows up unannounced and murders the werewolf with a torch, just like he did in La Casa del Terror, but now without the benefit of a lick of context.
To top that all off, two cops then discuss how there was never a werewolf at all. Yes, somehow even in the world of a Jerry Warren film, the cops can watch the truth and distort it before your eyes.
Casimiro (Mexican comedian Tin Tan) is the lazy night watchman for a wax museum, but the reason why he’s been so sleepy is because his boss has been draining his blood and using it to bring the dead back to life, including a mummy who is also a werewolf! Yes, that’s Lon Chaney Jr., flying to Mexico in 1959 to make this totally bonkers movie.
It takes seeing his girlfriend get taken and his boss killed by the werewolf to get our hero to act, at which point he kills a werewolf in the traditional way: he beats it to death with a torch and sets everything on fire.
Jerry Warren bought the film and combined fit with La Momia Azteca, edited out all the comedy, kept all the Chaney, shot some new footage and renamed it Face of the Screaming Werewolf. Movies are amazing, huh?
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