La Noche de Los Mil Gatos — known as Blood Feast, despite there being an entirely different movie with that same title — comes from Rene Cardona Jr., who past films have already proven to me must be some kind of maniac. I mean, the dude threw cats at his actors and filmed scenes where cats are launched into the air with no cutting away. He did much worse to birds and other actors in later films, which makes him, well, a movie director.

Luckily, he has Hugo Stiglitz (Nightmare City, Bermuda Triangle) in this to play, well, Hugo. And what does Hugo do? Oh, just chase down gorgeous women with his helicopter, pick them up with his sexual charisma and then take him back to his castle where he and Dorgo kill them in increasingly disgusting ways before feeding. them to the cats — rumor there are a thousand of them — that live in a pit. He also keeps the women’s heads like pickled punks in a jar.

Finally, he picks the wrong girl — Cathy (Anjanette Comer, who we all know was in The Baby and that makes anything she does perfect and good and wonderful) — who tears a hole in the fence and lets the cats savor a Hugo smorgasbord. Such is life, where it is cheap!

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This originally ran on October 26, 2017. If we’re discussing Mexican horror, we need to talk about this movie.

Alucarda is:

A 1977 nunspolitation/vampire/Mexican horror/Exorcist inspired film about two girls who become possessed by Satan.

The source of many My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult samples, specifically the song “And This Is What the Devil Does.”

A movie filled with so much screaming, it upset my dog.

All of the above and so much more.

Juan López Moctezuma, the director of the film, was close with Alejandro Jodorowsky (some claim he was behind the camera for El Topo). So you should expect something much stranger than your average horror film.

In a Mexican convent and orphanage, a new girl named Justine arrives. She becomes close with another orphan named Alucarda, who was born in a mysterious barn and may be evil before this film even starts. In fact, she often appears in the film out of the shadows, filled with menace and questioning everyone’s faith.

While the two girls — whose relationship is nearly sexual — play in the forest, they discover a band of gypsies and the barn where Alucarda was born. Then, of course, they open a casket and unleash Satan, who possesses them. They take part in an orgy where the literal goat-headed one himself shows up, which is only stopped when Sister Angélica prays for Jesus to intervene. The witch conducting the ritual is struck down in bloody fashion.

A title card comes up telling us that this is the end of part one. I stood up and cheered. I was home alone.

Justine and Alucarda start questioning every mass and even praise Satan out loud, questioning the faith of every member of the convent. Father Lazardo demands an exorcism, one that costs Justine her life. Alucarda is saved at the last moment by Dr. Oszek (Claudio Brook, who also appeared in Del Toro’s Cronos and who also plays the hunchback who leads the women into the forest). Now, Alucarda has a new love interest, the Doctor’s daughter Daniela.

Alucarda isn’t done. She must have her revenge. She possesses a nun and sets her on fire. Father Lazardo beheads her and the entire monastery must self-flagellate to prepare themselves to fight Satan.

Justine’s body is gone — it’s in the barn where Alucarda was born. When they open it, it’s filled with blood and she emerges, now a vampire. While Alucarda kills everyone else. Sister Angélica attempts to save Justine. The doctor tries little spurts of Holy Water but it’s not enough. He barely escapes with his life, while the sister pays the ultimate price. Only Angélica’s dead body can stop Alucarda, who screams and disappears.

You know how I get evangelical about movies? Well, Alucarda is one of them. From the sets to the clothes to the acting to sound design to the just plain weirdness of it all, there’s never been a movie quite this weird. And with the movies I’ve seen, that’s an achievement.

You can get this movie from Mondo Macabro.

The artwork for this post comes from Ink Rituals and you can buy this shirt at Pallbearer Press.

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?

You can watch this on YouTube.

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.

You can watch this on YouTube.

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 del Senor, 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.

You can watch this on YouTube.