The Curse of the Doll People is a 1961 horror film by Mexican director Benito Alazraki starring Elvira Quintana, Ramón Gay and Roberto G. Rivera. In its original Spanish language it is titled “Muñecos infernales”, along with an alternate name “Devil Doll Men”. It was produced by Cinematográfica Calderón S.A.

In Haiti, four men who are cursed by a voodoo priest for stealing a sacred idol from his temple. Soon after evil ‘doll’ people begin to kill their family members.

“The voodoo priest (Quintín Bulnes with long hair, mustache, and a snake drawn on his robe) also has a full-sized zombie that resembles the title creature in Edward L. Cahn’s Voodoo Woman (1957). A truly odd scene has the rotting corpse summon one of the little dolls like a pied piper, then walking off with him, patting him on the head for doing a deed for his master! The climatic good vs. evil confrontation, adorned with the high priest’s impressive black magic paraphernalia, is very reminiscent of the finale of Horror Hotel, made around the same time.” George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

Terror and Black Lace is a Mexican horror film from 1985, originally titled Terror y encajes negros, directed and scripted by Luis Alcoriza from a story by Ramón Obón. It stars Gonzalo Vega, Maribel Guardia, Claudio Obregón, Jaime Moreno and Claudia Guzmán.

Wikipedia | IMDb

“A Mexican psycho thriller filled with moustaches, machismo and melodrama but little else. Dismally dreary and, sadly, of little interest even for fans of world horror cinema.” Adrian J. Smith, Horrorpedia

“It’s the story of Isabel (Maribel Guardia), a young woman suffocated by her jealous, controlling husband (played perfectly by Gonzalo Vega), who keeps her virtually imprisoned in their apartment. The first two-thirds of the film chronicles Isabel’s struggle to break out of this extreme isolation. The story takes a turn in the final 30 minutes, when Isabel is terrorized by the psychotic Cesar (played by veteran character actor Claudio Obregón), after she witnesses him disposing of a dead body in her building. To the film’s credit, though, Isabel’s ordeal isn’t just horror for horror’s sake; it’s skillfully woven back into the main story as a way of highlighting both Isabel’s loneliness and her husband’s irrational distrust.” Amazon.com

Santo vs. the Martian Invasion – original title: Santo el Enmascarado de Plata vs ‘La invasión de los marcianos’ – is a 1967 Mexican sci-fi alien invasion film directed by Alfredo B. Crevenna from a screenplay by Rafael García Travesi. The film stars wrestling superhero Santo, plus Wolf Ruvinskis, El Nazi, Beny Galán, Ham Lee, Maura Monti and Eva Norvind.

Platinum-haired, shiny-clad Martians, aided by their scantily dressed females, announce their impending invasion with apocalyptic television broadcasts, then teleport themselves to private homes and public sporting events in order to terrorise and kidnap human beings. Naturally, muscle-bound masked wrestler superhero Santo comes to the rescue of his fellow Earthlings and finds time to indulge in some intergalactic romance…

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Whole film [in Spanish]:

El mundo de los vampiros (The World of the Vampires) is a 1961 Mexican horror film, directed by Alfonso Corona Blake.

The film is about a vampire, the Count Sergio Subotai, who seeks revenge against the descent from an enemy family. The hero is a musician played by Mauricio Garcés, who has a piano made from skulls and bones and knows a piece of music that kills vampires. It also stars Erna Martha Bauman, Silvia Fournier, Guillermo Murray and Jose Baviera.

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Here Comes the Devil (original title: Ahí va el diablo) is a 2012 Mexican/US horror film written and directed by Adrián García Bogliano (The ABCs of Death). It stars Francisco Barreiro, Laura Caro and Alan Martinez.

Argentinian director Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s latest film certainly puts it exploitation movie cards on the table from the opening scene, as the film kicks off with a couple of naked girls engaged in lesbian frottage before one of them is beaten and mutilated by a psycho killer who then flees to the hills. None of this is particularly relevant to the movie (it’s referenced once or twice, but the characters involved play no further part in the story) and so is a moment of purely gratuitous, salacious sleaze – but it does at least set you up for a film that has an emphasis on nudity and sexuality amongst its moments of horror. But this movie is far from erotic (the nudity might be frequent, but it’s rarely sexualised), and with few genuine scares too, it can’t match the 1970s horrors that it is so obviously in thrall to.

The film proper starts with married couple Felix (Francisco Barreiro) and Sol (Laura Caro) taking their adolescent son and daughter Adolfo (Alan Martinez) and Sara (Michele Garcia) for a picnic in the hills. As they leave the kids to explore the rocks, the couple sit in their car getting worked up with stories about their childhood sexual activities (how subversive…). But come nightfall, the kids haven’t returned. The couple start to fear the worse when suddenly, the children appear, seemingly none the worse for wear. But over the next few days, the kids start to act strangely and a medical examination of the girl suggests the possibility of a sexual encounter. Convinced that the kids were grabbed by local weirdo, Lucio (David Arturo Cabezud), the parents track him down and torture him to death. But the strange events continue – weird happenings in the house, including strange banging and the kids seemingly levitating suggest something demonic is happening. But Felix remains in denial, determined that things are back to normal and desperate to hide their murderous crime from a suspicious police officer. For Sol though, the guilt of their actions against a possibly innocent man and an awareness that all is not right with the kids leads her to break down and eventually return to the scene of the crime – a place locals suggest has mysterious, supernatural forces at work within the caves.

Here Comes the Devil has a lot of interesting elements going for it. The mash-up of vengeance thriller, possession movie, marital breakdown and sexploitation is slightly unusual even if it ultimately doesn’t work; and as unlikely as it sounds for such a lurid film, the movie that invariably comes to mind as you watch is Picnic at Hanging Rock – another story where children mysteriously vanish on a desolate mountain. The connection seems deliberate, though it’s an odd film to reference in the midst of a retro exploitation horror. Some of the visuals are impressive, the moments of horror often more subtle than you’d expect (though the murder of Lucio is spectacularly graphic) and the sound editing is remarkable – a weird collage of music that cuts out suddenly and strange sounds certainly helps build atmosphere.

But the problem is that none of this really comes together to form a compelling story. The disparate elements never gel and much of the film is ploddingly slow. The kids had no discernible personalities before they vanished, so it’s hard to really see their behaviour on their return as anything more than stroppy teenage sulking, while the supernatural elements are never explored properly – they feel like they’ve been shoved in just for the sake of it. And our main characters are equally one dimensional and impossible to relate to. Felix in particular comes across as such a cock that you really want something awful to happen to him, while Sol is just dull. There’s little tension in following her investigation, because you really don’t care what happens.

Here Comes the Devil tries hard to shock, but hardened horror fans have seen this all before. It’s not entirely disinteresting, but you’ll struggle to really get involved in the drama of the story. If the film was as smart and subversive as it wants to be, it might be something special, but as it is, there’s nothing particularly memorable or edgy here.

David Flint – Strange Things Are Happening

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Los Vampiros de Cocoacan is a 1974 Mexican horror film directed by Arturo Martínez. The film stars Germán Robles, Mil Máscaras, Superzan, Sasha Montenegro, Carlos López Moctezuma, Mario Cid, Franquestein [Nathanael León] and Pura Vargas.

After wrestlers Mil Mascaras and Superzan succeed in the ring, they are both shocked to discover that after their two last victories, their opponents have been found death with their blood completely drained by a vampire named Baron Bradock from Transylvania. Bradock hides dead bodies in his mansion at Coyoacan where he successfully converts them to vampires with the aid of an army of undead dwarves…

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Invasion of Death (original title: Blue Demon y Zovek en La invasión de los muertos) is a 1971 Mexican masked wrestler horror film directed by René Cardona (Night of the Bloody Apes) from a screenplay by René Cardona Jr (Guyana: Crime of the Century).

As the title suggests, the film features masked wrestler ‘superhero’ Blue Demon and Professor Zovek (real name: Francisco Xavier Chapa del Bosque), an escapologist and Mexican national hero who died in a helicopter accident during this production, battling with a zombie invasion that have been caused by a fireball from outer space…

IMDb

“While the Zovek sections of the movie (the majority of the film) are fairly good, the added scenes with Blue Demon and Polo Ortín are awful: mostly shot in some kind of factory (masquerading as Blue’s secret crime lab, I guess), they are static and boring. People come to report odd happenings to Blue Demon (a flying saucer, a headless corpse), and he proceeds to lecture them about the historical precedents of such events! Sometimes Blue will “talk” to Zovek on the phone, to try and link up the two threads of the plot, but not even the “monsters”are the same: in the Zovek scenes, the walking dead are the revived (if slightly decayed) corpses of normal people (in one scene there must be at least 75 of these zombies chasing Zovek, a very impressive sight), while Blue Demon has to face a handful of Hollywood-style monsters (such as a wolfman, a vampire, and a burly black guy with fangs…” D. Wilt, University of Maryland

Black Pit of Dr. M (original title Misterios de ultratumba “Mysteries from Beyond the Grave”) is a 1958 Mexican horror film directed by Fernando Méndez (El Vampiro) from a screenplay by Ramón Obón. It stars Gastón Santos, Rafael Bertrand, Mapita Cortés and Carlos Ancira.

Two doctors, Dr. Masali (Rafael Bernard) and Dr. Aldama (Antonio Raxel) agree to a macabre mutual pact: The first to die will return to tell the other about the mysteries beyond the grave. Aldama dies, and at a séance he informs his former colleague that if he really wants to carry out the pact, his chance will come in a couple of weeks. Forebodingly, Aldama’s spirit also ominously warns that Masali will have to pay a terrible price…

“Mendez stirs the conventions of melodrama, mad scientist movies and funereal lyricism (especially in the impressive return from the grave sequence) into a confusing mixture which is too heterogeneous to be effective.” The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror

” … another highly conservative Mexican horror film about the bloody havoc that will befall any transgressor who defies the laws of man and the Church. The film has soap opera pacing, a ghost story framework, a demented, melted-faced maniac running around — a little bit of everything. Ramón Obón’s script is short on logic but packed with macabre ideas. The reasonably elaborate production generates a spooky atmosphere of high-contrast horror… ” Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant

“Aside from its acid-scarred madman, The Black Pit of Dr. M is a more reserved gothic horror film compared to The Brainiac‘s brain-sucking alien or German Robles’ impressive cloaked vampiric aristocrat in the El Vampiro films. The black and white photography is wonderfully moody, cloaking Mazil’s asylum in deep shadows. The studio-bound exteriors are reminiscent of old Hollywood horror films (note the impressive torchlit funeral sequence early on).” Eric Cotenas, DVD Beaver

” … a masterpiece of gothic filmmaking that deserves far more attention and praise than it has received.” Bloody Disgusting

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Buy Mexploitation Cinema: A Critical History of Mexican Vampire, Ape-Man and Similar Films from Amazon.com

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Relatos de Presidio (‘Tales from Prison’) is a popular “sensacionales” Mexican comic with horror and crime themes aimed at adults. Published by Editorial Toukan (and running to over 800 issues), the far from politically correct artwork and stories in Relatos de Presidio feature gory scenes of death and torture involving victims from both sexes.

‘Sensacionales’ or ‘La revisit vaquero’ are very low quality black and white comics printed in tones of sepia featuring about four panels per page in a four square diagram. The pocket size books generally have approximately one hundred pages and are famous for portraying voluptuous women on their covers. Most are sold cheaply at newsstands, either new or second-hand (similar to Italian fumetti).

Adult comics have a unique place in Mexican culture. Sensacionales are trashy and exploitative, but they also represent a genuinely popular indigenous medium. The dominant role of adult comics in Mexico is relatively new. From the 1930s through the 1970s, Mexico had a thriving comic-book industry with many genres. Titles such as Pepín, Fantomas, and Memín Penguín sold millions of copies during this era. But in the 1980s, American superhero comics poured into Mexico. That, combined with the perception that comics were only for kids, nearly wiped out indigenous comic books in Mexico. The only genre to survive, and even thrive, was a unique form of adult pulp comics.

Wikipedia | Comic Vine | Related: Jacula | Secrets of Haunted House | Vampirella

Christmas is generally seen as a jolly old time for the whole family – if you are to believe the TV commercials, everyone gets together for huge communal feasts while excited urchins unwrap whatever godawful new toy has been hyped as the must-have gift of the year. It is not, generally speaking, seen as a time of horror.

And yet horror has a long tradition of being part of the festive season. Admittedly, the horror in question was traditionally the ghost story, ideally suited for cold winter nights, where people gather around the fire to hear some spine chilling tale of ghostly terror – a scenario recreated in the BBC’s 2000 series Ghost Stories for Christmas, with Christopher Lee reading M.R. James tales to a room full of public school boys. That series was part of a tradition that included a similar one in 1986 with Robert Powell (Harlequin) and the children’s series Spine Chillers from 1980, as well as the unofficially titled annual series Ghost Stories for Christmas than ran for much of the 1970s and is occasionally revived to this day.

A Christmas Carol

The idea of the traditional Xmas ghost story can be traced back to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol, where miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts in an effort to make him change his ways. It’s more a sentimental morality tale than a horror story, though in the original book and one or two adaptations, the ghosts are capable of causing the odd shudder. Sadly, the story has been ill-served by cinematic adaptations – the best version is probably the 1951 adaptation, though by then there had already been several earlier attempts, going back to 1910. A few attempts have been made at straight retellings since then, but all to often the story is bastardised (a musical version in 1970, various cartoons) or modernised – the best known versions are probably Scrooged and The Muppet Christmas Carol, both of which are inexplicably popular. A 1999 TV movie tried to give the story a sense of creepiness once again, but the problem now is that the story is so familiar that it seems cliched even when played straight. The idea of a curmudgeon being made to see the true meaning of Christmas is now an easy go-to for anyone grinding out anonymous TV movies that end up on Christmas-only TV channels or gathering dust on DVD.

A Christmas CAROL (1999)

Outside of A Christmas Carol, horror cinema tended to avoid festive-themed stories for a long time. While fantasies like The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life and Bell, Book and Candle played with the supernatural, these were light, feel-good dramas and comedies on the whole, designed to warm the heart rather than stop it dead. TV shows like The Twilight Zone would sometimes have a Christmas themed tale, but again these tended to be the more sentimental stories.

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The only film to really hint at Christmas creepiness was 1945 British portmanteau film Dead of Night, though even here, the Christmas themed tale, featuring a ghostly encounter at a children’s party, is more sentimental than terrifying. Meanwhile, the Mexican children’s film Santa Claus vs The Devil (1959) might see Santa in battle with Satan, but it’s all played for wholesome laughs rather than scares.

Santa Claus vs The Devil

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the darker side of Christmas began to be explored, and it was another British portmanteau film that began it all. The Amicus film Tales from the Crypt (1972) opened with a tale in which murderous Joan Collins finds herself terrorised by an escaped psycho on Christmas Eve, unable to call the police because of her recently deceased hubby lying on the carpet. The looney is dressed as Santa, and her young daughter has been eagerly awaiting his arrival, leading to a suitably mean-spirited twist. The story was subsequently retold in a 1989 episode of the Tales from the Crypt TV series.

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This film would lead the way towards decades of Christmas horror. Of course, lots of films had an incidental Christmas connection, taking place in the festive season (or ‘winter’, as it used to be known). Movies like Night Train Murders, Rabid and even the misleadingly named Silent Night Bloody Night have a Christmas connection, but it’s incidental to the story. Those are not the movies we are discussing here. No, to REALLY count as a Christmas film, then the festive celebrations need to be at the heart of events.

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Two distinct types of Christmas horror developed. There was the Mad Santa films, like Tales from the Crypt on the one hand, and the ‘bad things happening at Christmas’ movie on the other. The pioneer of the latter was Bob Clark’s 1974 film Black Christmas, which not only pioneered the Christmas horror movie but also was an early template for the seasonal slasher film. Some critics have argued, with good cause, that this is the movie that laid the foundations for Halloween a few years later – a psycho film (with a possibly supernatural slant) set during a holiday, where young women are terrorised by an unseen force. But while John Carpenter’s film would be a smash hit and effectively reinvent the genre, Black Christmas went more or less unnoticed, its reputation only building years later. In 2006, the movie was remade by Glen Morgan in a gorier but less effective loose retelling of the original story.

Black Christmas

Preceding Black Christmas was TV movie Home for the Holidays, in which four girls are picked off over Christmas by a yellow rain-coated killer who may or may not be their wicked stepmother. A decent if unremarkable psycho killer story, the film was directed by TV movie veteran John Llewellyn Moxey.

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Also made for TV, this time in Britain, The Exorcism was the opening episode of TV series Dead of Night (no connection to the film of that name) broadcast in 1972. One of the few surviving episodes of the series, The Exorcism is a powerful mix of horror and social commentary, as a group of champagne socialists celebrating Christmas in the country cottage that one couple have bought as a holiday home find themselves haunted by the ghosts of the peasants who had starved to death there during a famine. While theatrical in style and poorly shot, the show is nevertheless creepily effective.

1980 saw Christmas Evil (aka You Better Watch Out), a low budget oddity by Lewis Jackson that has since gained cult status. In this film, a put-upon toy factory employee decided to become a vengeful Santa, putting on the red suit and setting out to sort the naughty from the nice. It’s a strange film, mixing pathos, horror and black comedy, yet oddly it works, making it one of the more interesting Christmas horrors out there.

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Also made in 1980, but rather less successful, was To All a Goodnight, the only film directed by Last House on the Left star David Hess and written by The Incredible Melting Man himself, Alex Rebar. This generic slasher, with a house full of horny sorority girls and their boyfriends being picked off by a psycho in a Santa outfit, is too slow and poorly made to be effective.

The most notorious Christmas horror film hit cinemas in 1984. Silent Night Deadly Night was, in most ways, a fairly generic slasher, with a Santa-suited maniac on the loose taking revenge against the people who have been deemed ‘naughty’. The film itself was nothing special It’s essentially the same premise as Christmas Evil without the intelligence), and might have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for a provocative advertising campaign that emphasised the Santa-suited psycho and caused such outrage that the film was rapidly pulled from theatres.

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Nevertheless, it had made a small fortune in the couple of weeks it played, and continued to be popular when reissued with a less contentious campaign. The film is almost certainly directly responsible for most ‘psycho Santa’ films since – all hoping to cash in on the publicity that comes with public outrage – and spawned four sequels.

Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 is notorious for the amount of footage from the first film that is reused to pad out the story, and was banned in the UK (where the first film was unreleased until 2009). Part 3 was directed, surprisingly, by Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter) and adds a psychic element to the story. Part 4, directed by Brian Yuzna, drops the killer Santa story entirely and has no connection to the other films beyond the title, telling a story of witchcraft and cockroaches, while Part 5 – The Toymaker – is also unconnected to the other movies.

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Also made in 1984, but attracting less attention, Don’t Open Till Christmas was that rarest of things, a 1980s British horror film – and one of the sleaziest ever made to boot. Starring and directed by Edmund Purdom from a screenplay by exploitation veterans Derek Ford and Alan Birkinshaw, the film sees a psycho killer, traumatised by a childhood experience at Christmas, who begins offing Santas – or more accurately, anyone he sees dressed as Santa, which in this case includes a porn model, a man at a peepshow and people having sex. With excessive gore, nudity and an overwhelming atmosphere of grubbiness, the film was become a cult favourite for fans of bad taste cinema.

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The third Christmas horror of 1984 was the most wholesome and the most successful. Joe Dante’s Gremlins is all too often overlooked when people talk about festive horror, but from the opening credits, with Darlene Love’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) belting out over the soundtrack, to the carol singing Gremlins and Phoebe Cates’ story of why she hates Christmas, the festive season is at the very heart of the film. Gremlins remains the most fun Christmas movie ever made, a heady mix of EC-comics ghoulishness, sentiment, slapsick and action with some of the best monsters ever put on film.

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Gremlins would spawn many knock offs – Ghoulies, Munchies, Critters and more – but only Elves, made in 1989, had a similar Christmas theme. This oddball effort, which proposes that Hitler’s REAL plan for the Master Race was human/elf hybrids. When the elves are revived in a pagan ritual at Christmas, only an alcoholic ex-cop played by Dan Haggerty can stop them. It’s not as much fun as that makes it sound.

Family horror returned in 1993 stop-motion film A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick and produced / co-written by Tim Burton. This chirpy musical see Pumpkin King Jack Skellington, leader of Halloween Town, stumbling upon Christmas Town and deciding to take it over. It’s a charming and visually lush movie that has unsurprisingly become a festive family favourite over the last twenty years.

Santa Claws

Rather less fun is 1996′s Santa Claws, a typically rotten effort by John Russo, with Debbie Rochon as a Scream Queen being stalked by a murderous fan in a Santa outfit. This low rent affair was pretty forgettable. It is one of several low/no budget video quickies that aimed to cash in on the Christmas horror market with tales of killer Santas – others include Satan Claus (1996), Christmas Season Massacre (2001) and Psycho Santa (2003).

1997 saw the release of Jack Frost (not to be confused with the family film from a year later of the same name). Here, a condemned serial killer is involved in a crash with a truck carrying genetic material, which – of course – causes him to mutate into a killer snowman. Inspired by the Child’s Play movie, Jack Frost is pretty poor, but the outlandish concept and mix of comedy and horror made it popular enough to spawn a sequel in 2000, Jack Frost 2 – Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.

That might seem as ludicrous as Christmas horror goes, but 1998 saw Feeders 2: Slay Bells, in which the alien invaders of the title are fought off by Santa and his elves. Shot on video with no money, it’s a film you might struggle to get through.

Rather better was the 2000 League of Gentlemen Christmas Special, which mixes the regular characters of the series into a series of stories that are even darker than usual. Mixing vampires, family curses and voodoo into a trilogy of stories that are linked, Amicus style, it’s as creepy as it is funny, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that Mark Gatiss would graduate to writing the more recent BBC Christmas ghost stories.

The League of Gentlemen

Two poplar video franchises collided in 2004′s Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys, with the great-nephew of the original Puppet Master battling an evil organisation that wants his formula to help bring killer toys to life on Christmas Eve. Like most of the films in the series, this is cheap but cheerful, throwaway stuff.

2005′s Santa’s Slay sees Santa reinvented as a demon who is forced to be nice and give toys to children.Released from this demand, he reverts to his murderous ways. Given that Santa is played by fearsome looking wrestler Bill Goldberg, you have to wonder how anyone ever trusted him to come down their chimney and NOT kill them.

Santa’s Slay

Also in 2005 came The Christmas Tale, part of the Spanish Films to Keep You Awake series, in which a group of children find a woman dressed as Santa at the bottom of a well. It turns out that she’s a bank robber and the kids decide to starve her into handing over the stolen cash. But things take a darker turn when she escapes and the kids think she is a zombie. It’s a witty, inventive little tale.

A Christmas Tale

2006 saw Two Front Teeth, where Santa is a vampire assisted by zombie elves in a rather ludicrous effort. Equally silly, Treevenge is a 2008 short film by Jason Eisener, who would go on to shoot Hobo with a Shotgun. It’s the story of sentient Christmas trees who have enough of being cut down and displayed in people’s home and set out to take their revenge.

Treevenge

Recently, the Christmas horror has become more international, with two European films in 2010 offering an insight into different festive traditions. Dick Maas’ Sint (aka Saint) is a lively Dutch comedy horror which features a vengeful Sinterklaas (similar to, but not the same as, Santa Claus) coming back on December 5^th in years when that date coincides with a full moon, to carry out mass slaughter. It’s a fun, fast-paced movie that also offers a rare glimpse into festive traditions that are rather different to anything seen outside the local culture (including the notorious Black Peters).

Finnish film Rare Exports, on the other hand, sees the original (and malevolent) Santa unearthed during an excavation, leading to the discovery of a whole race of Santas, who are then captured and sold around the world. Witty and atmospheric, the film was inspired by Jalmari Helander’s original short film Rare Exports, Inc, a spoof commercial for the company selling the wild Santas.

Rare Exports

But these two high quality, entertaining Christmas horrors were very much the exception to the rule by this stage. The genre was more accurately represented by the likes of 2010′s Yule Die, another Santa suited slasher, or 2011′s Slaughter Claus, a plotless, pretty unwatchable amateur effort from Charles E. Cullen featuring Santa and the Bi-Polar Elf on an unexplained and uninteresting killing spree.

Slaughter Claus

Bloody Christmas (2012) sees a former movie star going crazy as he plays Santa on a TV show. 2009 film Deadly Little Christmas is a ham-fisted retread of slashers like Silent Night Deadly Night and 2002′s One Hell of a Christmas is a Danish Satanic horror comedy. Bikini Bloodbath Christmas (2009) is the third in a series of pointless tits ‘n’ gore satires that fail as horror, soft porn or comedy.

And of course the festive horror movie can’t escape the low budget zombie onslaught – 2009 saw Silent Night, Zombie Night, in 2010 there was Santa Claus Versus the Zombie, 2011 brought us A Cadaver Christmas, in 2012 we had Christmas with the Dead and Silent Night of the Living Dead is currently in pre-production. None of these films are likely to fill you with the spirit of the season.

So although we can hardly say that the Christmas horror film is at full strength, it is at least as prolific as ever. With a remake of Silent Night Deadly Night, now just called Silent Night, playing theatres in 2012, it seems that filmmaker’s fascination with the dark side of the season isn’t going away anytime soon.

Silent Night

Article by David Flint

In the early 1960s, US film distributor K.Gordon Murray had a surprising amount of success importing, editing and dubbing Mexican children’s films and releasing them to unsuspecting audiences. His biggest hit was Santa Claus (aka Santa Claus vs the Devil), which pulled in large audiences who presumably expected something more festive than the incoherent and badly-dubbed atrocity they got. And he pulled the same trick with several other films, including this bizarre sequel to Mexican fairy tale movies Little Red Riding Hood (1960) and Little Red Riding Hood and Friends (1961).

In this often incomprehensible film, we see Little Red Riding Hood (Maria Gracia) and Tom Thumb (Cesaro Quezadas) battling a collection of monsters who live in the Haunted Forest (which seems to be inconveniently next door to their village). The monsters, who include Dracula and the Frankenstein monster, are led by The Queen of Badness (Ofelia Guilmáin), who seems modelled o the Wicked Queen from Disney’s Snow White. She’s a ruthless leader, and we first meet her as she presides over a show trial for the Wolf (Manuel Valdés) and the Ogre (José Elías Moreno), who are accused of not being evil enough after what I assume were the events in previous films.

The Wolf is something to behold, dressed in the most ragged, flea-bitten and unconvincing animal costume you’ll ever see. He also rarely stops talking, his voice in the dubbed version a gruff vocal that soon starts to grate… especially when he sings! Did I not mention that this is a musical too? Well, it is… at least for the first 20 minutes or so, after which everyone involved seemed to forget that they needed to include songs until the final scene.

The Queen of Badness casts a spell on the local villagers, turning them into monkeys and mice, so it is down to Little Red Riding Hood, Tom Thumb (who is quickly transformed into a normal size child by the Good Fairy – presumably to save on special effects, as he’s rarely on-screen before his transformation) and Stinky the Skunk, another fine animal costume and dubbed with a speeded up chipmunk voice that immediately makes your teeth hurt and is only occasionally comprehensible. Oh, and they have Red Riding Hood’s dog, which is the most indifferent animal actor ever seen on film – he frequently just wanders off camera, ignoring the dramatic action.

Our heroes make their way through the Haunted Forest – a passably spooky set – towards the Queen’s castle, battling the odd monster. Sometimes, helped by other kids, they even torture the monsters they defeated – one poor creature is hung by his feet and beaten like a piñata.

On reaching the castle, they defeat Mr. Hurricane, Dracula and Frankenstein (sorry purists, that’s what they call the monster here), finish off a terrible looking dragon and save their friends the Wolf and the Ogre, who have been bickering away in a cell before being tortured by Siamese Twins 2-in-1. As for the Queen of Badness… well, let’s just say she meets an explosive end.

Little Red Riding Hood and Tom Thumb vs The Monsters (originally Caperucita y Pulgarcito contra los monstruos and also titled Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood) is, of course, complete rubbish. The dubbed version is entirely incoherent, but it’s hard to imagine it was a masterpiece beforehand, given the all-round shoddiness on display. Yet the film is certainly entertaining for fans of bizarre cinema, and it’s easy to imagine cinemas full of undemanding, monster loving kids in the early Sixties eating it up.

Review by David Flint

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Autopsy of a Ghost (original title: Autopsia de un Fantasma) is a 1968 Mexican horror-comedy film, directed by Ismael Rodríguez and starring Basil Rathbone (cinema’s most famous Sherlock Holmes), John Carradine (Houses of both Frankenstein and Dracula) and Cameron Mitchell (Blood and Black Lace, The Toolbox Murders). The remaining cast were all Spanish speakers – the film is particularly notable as the final screen role for Rathbone.

Elizabethan dandy, Canuto Perez (Rathbone), roams the Earth in limbo, having committed suicide 400 years previously, doomed to potter about as a ghost in a lonely castle. For company he has his own skeleton, which has managed to separate itself from his person and interacts with him as an individual entity, usually being contrary, and a chuckling tarantula. Perez’s previous life had seen him carousing with ladies without much thought for their feelings and his suicide came as an escape from the Earthly punishment which faced him. A little overdue, Satan (Carradine) appears and offers him a way out – he has four days to make one of four women fall in love with him to such an extent that they would be willing to die for him. The catch is that he mustn’t venture beyond the four walls of the castle and must rely on the Devil to tempt the unlucky females into his lair. Cue much dressing up, a robot and a child who’s at least 30 years old.

The same year George Romero was re-writing the horror rule-book, Carradine and Rathbone had serious gas bills to pay and lowered themselves to appearing in Mexican farces, the horror and comedy of which would already have been outdated by their heydays in the 30′s and 40′s. The pair had already disgraced themselves (along with Lon Chaney Jr) in the previous year’s Hillbillys in a Haunted House but little could prepare them or the audiences, such as they were, for this jaw-dropping mess. It actually starts rather entertainingly, the jokes are passable, the sets are well decorated and it’s huge fun to see three such famous faces in such bizarre circumstances. Sadly, the joke wears thin extremely quickly, a particular shame as the running time is gargantuan for what it is – approaching the two-hour mark. Worse still, so excited are the film-makers, they forget to include our heroes for around half the film.

Carradine later asserted that Rathbone’s death, shortly after filming, could be attributed to the high altitude they filmed at. That, or presumably, he got to watch the film. It would seem that Rathbone and Carradine both read their lines in English and were dubbed, rather than learning phonetically; Mitchell, the show-off, spoke his, like the rest of the cast, in Spanish. Though the few supporters of the film would claim that Rathbone is having some fun in his twilight years, his scenes as Cyrano de Bergerac and reading Hamlet rather smack of ridicule at his expense.

Shot in colour on a budget seemingly stratospherically higher than standard Mexican films, the urge to pack as much in as possible makes it absolute torture to watch, a constant parade of ridiculous characters, none of whom are any real fun or offer anything of interest. Rightly buried, this will never see the light of day officially, there simply isn’t an audience that would appreciate it. You can watch it for free online (see below), though you may feel overcharged.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Big thanks to BasilRathbone.net for some of the pictures.

Highlights of the film:

Whole film online:

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary is a 1974 (released 1975) Mexican/US horror film directed by Juan López Moctezuma (The Mansion of Madness, Alucarda) from a screenplay by Don Henderson, Don Rico and Malcolm Marmorstein. It stars Cristina Ferrare, David Young, John Carradine, Helena Rojo, Arthur Hansel, Enrique Lucero, Susana Kamini.

For years, only available on video, Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary was released in the U.S. on DVD in 2013 by 3D Circus, a company who apparently did not have the rights. Bizarrely, they also included a supposed 3D version even though the film was never shot in this process! Provocative modernistic artwork – see below – and the novelty of an obscure horror in 3D ensured that this release sold well, although a definitive high definition Blu-ray from Code Red is planned.

Quentino Tarantino is a big fan of this movie, so in October 2013 he loaned his print to the Mexican Cine de Morelia film festival and made a personal appearance, saying: “It’s not a vampire movie per se, because the lead character, Mary, does not have any supernatural powers, she just has a disease that she has to drink blood.” The director compared Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary to the film Martin (1976), by George Romero, whose protagonist isn’t a vampire either, but has the need to drink blood.

Plot: 

Mary, an attractive young American surrealist artist (Cristina Ferrare) lives in Mexico where she can more readily satisfy her bloodlust. Seducing then murdering her male victims, she then sucks their blood as they lie dying. Secretly stalking her, a masked figure in black, is also committing similar bloodsucking homicides.

Despite the bisexual attentions of her art dealer friend (Helena Rojo), she falls for Ben Rider, a handsome young American drifter (David Young) and begins to question her soulless existence. Meanwhile, the Mexican police and the FBI are closing in and suspect Ben is the perpetrator of the mysterious murders. Eventually, Mary is shocked by the appearance of her killer father (John Carradine), also a blood addict…

Reviews:

“Though Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary doesn’t have any of the surreal touches that Moctezuma’s better known pictures do, it’s an interesting and reasonably well made slice of seventies horror weirdness. The film is fairly well shot, features some nice atmosphere and okay moments of tension and it’s got a pretty cool cast on top of that.” Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop!

“The picture is smoothly put together and has some stylish touches, especially in the transitions from one scene to another. The shock cut to the shark attack victim is one, while other scenes are heralded by a closeup of a bejeweled skull, the closeup of Greta’s corpse (her murder isn’t shown), and so on. Mary’s paintings (with the exception of the portrait of her father) are rather Dali-like representations of brains, hearts, animals, caverns, tunnels, etc. López Moctezuma isn’t able to do much with the mise en scene given the contemporary setting – La mansión de la locura and Alucarda are much more flamboyant in their design–but the overall look of the picture is satisfactory.” Dave Wilt, University of Maryland

“Although in the scenes where she connects with other actors, Ferrare’s portrayal is solid there are other times where she has to be the cold killer. In some ways this makes sense. She is a predator when she needs to feed but still wants to have another connected life when the desire is not so great. Still in the last act the way she seems almost helpless as she is chased by the masked killer seems really out of place.” Soresport Movies

” … although  Moctezuma shows some visual flair in a number of the sequences, he doesn’t appear to have been capable of overcoming its crushing banality.” Phil Hardy (Editor), The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror

” [Carradine's] greatest contribution to the pic is to make the bloodbath climax a laughable one.” Variety

“A disaster… Juan Moctezuma could only procure Carradine for a few days of shooting, and decided to pull the old Ed Wood-Bela Lugosi scam on us? … Not recommended for the squeamish or the intelligent.” Fangoria

“Carradine – and his stand-in – play an unexpectedly energetic role in this expectedly awful U.S.-Mexican sex-horror bomb. Carradine receives “special guest star” billing for his part as “The Man”, the mysterious masked stranger who dogs Cristina Ferrare on his travels through Mexico. For most of the running time, the heavily disguised character is played by the double, who wears a black mask to conceal the substitution; he also wears a large black hat which (combined with the mask) makes him look like one of the characters in the comic strip Spy vs. Spy.” Tom Weaver, John Carradine: The Films (McFarland, 1999)

Buy John Carradine: The Films book from Amazon.co.uk

IMDb | John Carradine on Horrorpedia

We are grateful to Critical Condition and Soresport Movies for some images above.

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El Sombrerón is a fictional character and one of the most famous legends of Guatemala, told in books and a 1950 film. El Sombrerón is also a bogeyman figure in Mexico and is referred to in some Colombian legends.

This character is also known with other names, like Tzipitio, the goblin, and sometimes Tzizimite, his main characteristics are always the same: a short, old-looking man with an opaque face, dressed in black with a thick, shiny belt; he wears a black, large hat and boots that make a lot of noise when he walks. His appearance is in conjunction with a sudden and unlikely cold breeze which soon disappears. A similar legend in El Salvador is called Cipitio, who is a short boy with backward feet, and, of course, a big hat. El Cipito pursues pretty girls and torments them if they reject his advances.

When no-one is around he likes to mount horses and braid their tails and manes – when he cannot find horses, he braids the hair of dogs. He also likes to court young ladies who have long hair and big eyes. When he likes one in particular, he follows her, braids her hair and serenades her with his silver guitar – only the intended female victim can hear the song of El Sombrerón;  his victims become enamoured with his song and stop sleeping and eating, proceeding to waste away. Upon departure from the mortal realm, the El Sombrerón steals their soul to be with him forever.

El Sombrerón appears at dusk with two huge black dogs attached by heavy chains, dragging along a group of mules carrying coal, with whom he travels around the city and its neighbourhoods. When a woman corresponds to his love, he ties the mules to the house’s pole where she lives, unhooks his guitar and starts singing and dancing. Some residents of La Recolección and Parroquia Vieja say he still wanders at nights when there is a full moon.

A particular legend of La Recolección in Guatemala tells of a young woman named Susana; she was a very pretty girl, with long hair and big, hazelnut eyes. One night when there was a full moon, Susana was sitting in the balcony admiring the sky when suddenly, a short character with a big hat and a guitar approached her. Entranced by her beauty, he sang her a song but her parents overheard her stirrings and ordered her inside. Since that day she was unable to sleep as El Sombrerón continued to appear in the house or sang to her from the street. Unable to eat either as every time they served her food, it was contaminated with soil; her parents cut her hair and took it to the local church so that the priest would put holy water on it and prayers were said for her. A few days later the goblin stop bothering her. Culturally, the legend advises teenage girls to preserve the collective values of a society.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

The Mummy can, in many respects, hold claim to being the most unloved of the classic movie monsters – if not, then surely the most inconsistently served. The oft-quoted line from Kim Newman, that the issue lies with “no foundation text” upon which to base the creature, certainly carries some weight, though Mummies had certainly been written about in the 19th Century – notable works include Poe’s short story, Some Words With a Mummy (1850), Conan Doyle’s Lot No. 249 (1892), the latter establishing the Mummy as a malevolent predator seeking revenge, as well as touching upon elements also explored in later films, such as the methods of resurrection and the supernatural control of a ‘master’.

Poe’s tale is rather more barbed, the bandaged cadaver reanimated by electricity and quizzed upon its ancient knowledge (or lack of), a side-swipe at both modernist self-aggrandising and the Egyptomania which had swept through both America and Europe since Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign of 1798-1801. The fascination of the general public in all levels of society lasted throughout the Victorian era, peaking again when Howard Carter uncovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. This obsession didn’t stop with the collection of Egyptian artworks and an influence on fashion and architecture – it was not uncommon in both America and Europe (though England especially) for the upper classes to purchase sarcophagi containing mummified remains at public auctions and then charging interested parties to a literal unveiling at what became known as ‘mummy unwrapping parties’. Though many of these were under the slightly dubious guise of scientific and historical investigations, the evidence of publicity material listing admission prices for children rather suggests a more obvious parallel of the fascination with freak shows, as well as the ever-popular grave robbing and body snatching.

It is such unbalanced factors which contributed to the Mummy onscreen as such a difficult to pin-down character. Bram Stoker’s 1909 novel, The Jewel of Seven Stars, concentrated on the attempts to resurrect a mummified Egyptian Queen but is full of the author’s own clear obsession with the subject, detailing minute features of objects and environment. Even looking at these three texts, very different perspectives are offered:

1. The curse
2. The resurrection (either via electricity, potion or supernatural means)
3. Love across the ages
4. The exotic nature and history of Egypt

Mummy films are somewhat doomed to pick one or more elements of this and then factor in the very nature of a Mummy – a zombie with bandages with a grudge. Most films dealt with this threat as a singular foe, one with pre-determined victims in a relatively limited environment (either in his native Africa/South America or relocated to a museum elsewhere). Fundamentally, it’s not easy the share the fear of the pursued – the regularly featured greedy archaeologist or treasure hunter clearly would not have many rooting for them, the similarly omnipresent character of the innocent damsel being mistaken by old clothy for his bride from B.C. is often equally wretched.

The first documented films concerning Mummies are 1899’s Georges Melies‘ Cleopatra (French: Cléopâtre), also known as Robbing Cleopatra’s Tomb, which, at only two minutes in length, is pretty much the synopsis, action and epilogue all in one. Despite a false alarm in 2005, no copy of the film now exists, a fate shared by another French film, 1909’s The Mummy of the King Rameses (French: La Momie Du Roi). Though literature was raided for ideas in some of these early efforts, in particular 1912’s The Beetle, based on the Rich Marsh 1897 novel of the same name, the general tone was of mystery, over-egged comedy and slushy drama, the long-lost tombs of nobility and monarchy gripping audiences without the need for too much in the way of ravenous corpses.

1932’s Chandu the Magician just pipped Universal to the post as an Egyptian villain stalked America’s screens with a recognisable actor in the role of the baddy, Bela Lugosi kidnapping all and sundry in a bid to possess a death ray (he later appeared as the hero in the follow-up, 1934’s Return of Chandu). As with so many of Universal’s introductions of classic monsters, many elements of 1932’s The Mummy leeched into films right up to the present day. For first-time viewers, the biggest surprise is the incredibly short screen time of the bandaged one, though the slowly-opening eyes of the revived Mummy is one of the great moments in horror film.

It is as the reawakened Ardath Bey that Boris Karloff spends most of the film; Jack Pierce’s excellent make-up giving ‘life’ to a cadaverous-featured, be-fezzed Casanova seeking his love whom he believes has been reincarnated. The Egypt of the film is populated by aloof and cultured Westerners working in a land of subservient and befuddled locals, including Horrorpedia favourite, Noble Johnson as ‘The Nubian’ and can be seen as a view of a colonial viewpoint of ‘foreigners and their strange ways’, sometimes quasi-religious, at others playing on the public awareness of the so-called Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, an event only a decade prior. Egypt is still as remote, uncouth and dangerous as the forests of Romania and the invented village of Vasaria – the notion that this place actually exists and that tombs were still being uncovered lending an extra, illicit thrill, modern science at war with religious belief and customs. Bey/Imhotep stalks his beloved in a more stealthy manner than that of Dracula, the quick nip on the neck replaced by a rather more sinister, unspoken threat of capture, death and sex, the latter two being interchangeable. This, of course, remains unspoken but presumably an inevitability, Universal instead charging the film with shots of unbridled romance, both in set-design and, importantly, a specifically-composed score by James Dietrich and Heinz Roemheld, the first for a Universal Horror. This was underpinned by passages from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, another nod to Transylvania.

Though a success at the box office, it was a full eight years before Universal unleashed a Mummy again, the 1940 film The Mummy’s Hand not being a sequel but rather a reintroduction of the monster. Universal flex their creative muscle here, rather like 1941’s The Wolf Man, their invented lore (the poem of how a man is doomed to turn to beast) it is a given ‘fact’ that a Mummy can be brought back to life and indeed sustained by a potion of ‘tana leaves’. Evidently aware of the lack of an actual Mummy in its 1932 effort, the studio pushed the bandaged monster to the fore, plot and backstory being secondary to getting him on screen and tormenting people. It was a simple enough conceit that it was this Mummy, Kharis who would appear in the film’s sequels, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Curse, all of which would feature Lon Chaney Jr as the monster, the quality always sinking ever lower but still with Pierce’s sterling work on the costume and make-up, much to Chaney’s chagrin.

If the lack of genuine horror in the films wasn’t enough, the ever-present comedy or cartoon featuring Mummies again gave the character a persona that was not to be taken seriously. No matter how hard you tried, if you put bandages on a violent, ever-living zombie, there was a danger of farce. This can be evidenced with attempts such as the RKO-distributed Wheeler & Woolsey film, Mummy’s Boys (1936), The Three Stooges’ We Want Our Mummy (1939) and Mummy’s Dummies (1948) and on to Abbott and Costello’s encounters in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955), a threadbare affair in both costume and entertainment – comedy often leaned on the fact Mummy is an un-threatening sounding word with two meanings as well as the opportunity to sing and dance in a manner audiences might expect from Egyptians (or not). Bandage unravelling was a given.

It would be two other countries which would rescue the Mummy from the filmic doldrums, at least in sparking an audience’s interest. 1957 saw the release of two Mexican films – The Aztec Mummy (Spanish title: La Momia Azteca) and The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (Spanish: La maldición de la momia azteca), neither likely to win awards for outright quality but giving Mummies in new life in a new environment, the ancient Aztec culture and wacky wrestling superhero (in this case El Ángel) marrying easily with the tropes already laid down by the earlier American films. The films offered enough promise for Jerry Warren to recut, dub and add additional scenes for an American audience. The films were a success in both markets and led to two further sequels, The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy (1958) and Wrestling Women vs.The Aztec Mummy (1964).

Britain’s bandaged offering, inevitably from Hammer, was 1959’s The Mummy. Here, Hammer borrowed heavily from Universal (again, overlooking the studious 1932 film and cutting straight to the monster-driven sequels) but brought out the big guns; Terence Fisher directing and the double-whammy of Lee and Cushing. For all the film’s faults, and there are several, the film finally gives the monster the strength and terror that his complex evolution and background demands. Here, Lee towers over the other characters both literally and metaphorically, emerging from a swamp in a scene which should be considered as iconic as any in Hammer’s canon. No longer a shuffling bag of bones, the Mummy here is athletic and merciless, with the strength and stature of Frankenstein’s Monster with the eternal threat of Dracula. Two sequels misfired quite badly, 1964’s Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb and 1971’s Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb both having the odd moment of inspiration (the latter’s scenes involving Valerie Leon in particular!) but running out of things for the Mummy to do.

Interestingly, Egypt’s own attempt at filming its own national monster feasted liberally on Abbott and Costello romping, the result being 1953’s Harem Alek (literally ‘shame on you’, retitled as Ismail Yassin Meets Frankenstein). Shrieking and gurning abound in a very close relation to the American comedians in their meeting of Frankenstein, the mummy in question being much nearer to the bolted creature.

Grabbing the monster by the scruff of the neck was Spain’s Paul Naschy, never one to tip-toe around a subject. 1973’s Vengeance of the Mummy (Spanish: La vengance de la momia) is gory, lurid and enormous fun, the hacking and head-crushing monster being completely self-governing and with the added bonus of an alluring assistant, played by Helga Liné, though sadly her rumoured nude scenes have yet to surface. Naschy played the Mummy once more, in the all-star monster fest of 1988’s Howl of the Devil.

The Mummy often appeared as part of an ensemble of monsters, giving the film-maker an answer as to what to do with it – from singing puppet mayhem of Mad Monster Party? and 1972’s animated semi-prequel Mad Mad Mad Monsters to encounters with Scooby Doo and rock band Kiss, the monster remained an also-ran and supporting character. Though managing to get on screen in 1987’s Monster Squad, missing out on the action of 1981’s The Monster Club suggests his standing in the pantheon of monsters was less than stellar.

1980’s The Awakneing was a latter-day attempt at filming Stoker’s novel – though managing to capture visually a sense of antiquity and some pleasing shots of Egypt, it lacks fire and threat and once again a classic monster is reduced to dreary, slow-paced banality. On the other side of the coin was Frank Agrama’s 1981 brutal guts and gusto Dawn of the Mummy, which sees the restless ones reanimated by the hot lights of a fashion shoot. This at least forgives lots of manic running around and a conflict between the modern day and the ancient, gloves off and with little regards to sense or history. The title alone should lead the audience to expect a more zombie-based event and though frequently silly and frayed, largely due to the low budget, it does at least give the sub-genre a shot in the arm.

Later films perhaps tried too hard – 1982’s Time Walker pitched the Mummy as actually being an alien in stasis; 1983’s baffling and boring Scarab throwing Gods, Nazis and scientists into the mix but only ending up with a mess; Fred Olen Ray’s breast-led 1986 effort, The Tomb. None came very close to succeeding in any sense.

The 1990’s was possibly the most desperate time for Mummies worldwide – whether it was the schlock of Charles Band (The Creeps, 1997), the critically-mauled 1998 film Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy or Russell Mulcahy’s flying Mummy of Talos the Mummy (1998), the monster suffered more than most at the hands of those trying to use new technology at the expense of plot and character to succeed. Only in 2002 with Don Coscarelli’s film Bubba Ho-Tep did The Mummy make a meaningful return, pleasing both fans of Bruce Campbell and too-cool-for-school scouts for cults as they happen, as well as horror fans desperate to see their bandaged hero as a tangible threat.

When Hollywood finally decided to throw some money at a reborn franchise, there was to be disappointment – the Indiana Jones-type action of 1999’s The Mummy, as well as its sequels and spin-offs were an exercise in CGI and tame thrills. Speakers were blown, images were rendered but whatever fun audiences had, omitted the scare factor. 2014’s R-rated The Pyramid promises Rec-style horrors and a return, successful or not, to the concept of a straight-forward monster released from its tomb. Further field, Universal have promised/threatened to relaunch their entire world of monsters, beginning with The Mummy from 2016.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

 Mummy Filmography 

1899 – Cleopatra

1909 – The Mummy of the King Rameses (aka. La momie du roi)

1911 – The Mummy

1912 – The Mummy

1912 – The Vengence of Egypt

1912 – The Mummy and the Cowpuncher

1913 – The Egyptian Mummy – comedy short

1914 – Naidra, The Dream Worker

1914 – The Necklace of Rameses

1914 – Through the Centuries – short comedy

1914 – The Egyptian Princess

1914 – The Mummy

1915 – The Dust of Egypt

1915 – When the Mummy Cried for Help

1915 – Too Much Elixir of Life

1916 – Elixir of Life – comedy short

1916 – The Missing Mummy – comedy short

1917 – The Undying Flame

1917 – The Eyes of the Mummy

1918 – Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled – comedy short

1921 – The Lure of Egypt

1923 – The Mummy

1923 – King Tut-Ankh-Amen’s Eighth Wife

1926 – Mummy Love

1926 – Made For Love

1932 – Chandu the Magician

1932 – The Mummy

1933 – The Ghoul

1934 – The Return of Chandu

1936 – Mummy Boy

1939 – We Want Our Mummy

1940 – The Mummy’s Hand

1942 – The Mummy’s Tomb

1943 – The Mummy Strikes

1944 – The Mummy’s Ghost

1944 – A Night of Magic

1945 – The Mummy’s Curse

1953 – The Mummy’s Revenge (Spain)

1953 – Harem Alek (Egypt)

1955 – Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy

1957 – Curse of the Aztec Mummy (Mexico/USA)

1957 – Castle of the Monsters

1957 – Curse of the Pharaohs

1957 – Robot versus the Aztec Mummy (aka “La momia azteca contra el robot humano, Mexico)

1958 – Dos Fantasmas y una Muehacha (Mexico)

1958 – House of Terror (aka “Face of the Screaming Werewolf,”  Mexico/USA)

1958 – The Man and the Monster (Mexico)

1959 – The Mummy

1960 – Rock n Roll Wrestling Woman vs the Aztec Mummy

1962 – I Was a Teenage Mummy

1963 – Attack of the Mayan Mummy

1964 – Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb

1965 – Mummy’s Dummies

1965 – Orgy of the Dead

1966 – Death Curse of Tarta

1966 – Mad Monster Party?

1967 – The Mummy’s Shroud

1968 – El Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monster (Mexico)

1969 – The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals

1970 – Santo in the Vengeance of the Mummy (aka Santo En La Venganza de la Momia, Mexico)

1970 – Dracula vs. Frankenstein” (aka ‘Assignment Terror, Italy/Spain/Germany)

1970 – The Mummies of Guanajuato (Mexico)

1971 – Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb

1972 – Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters

1972 – Dr Phibes Rises Again

1973 – Vengeance of the Mummy (La vengance de la momia, Spain)

1973 – The Cat Creature

1973  – Chabelo y Pepito vs. Los Monstruos” (Mexico)

1973 – Son of Dracula

1975 – Demon and the Mummy (US TV Movie)

1978 - Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park

1980 – Fade to Black

1980 – The Awakening

1981 - Dawn of the Mummy

1981 – The National Mummy (La Momia Nacional, Spain)

1981 – Sphinx

1982 – Secret of the Mummy (Brazil)

1982 – Time Walker

1982 – Scarab

1985 – The Tomb

1985 – Dear Mummy (Hong Kong

1985 – Transylvania 6-5000 (US/Yugoslavia)

1987 – Night of the Living Duck ( US animated short)

1987 – The Monster Squad

1988 – Howl of the Devil

1988 – Saturday the 14th Strikes Back

1988 – Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf (US animated short)

1988 – Waxwork

1989 – Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2 (Hong Kong)

1990 – I’m Dangerous Tonight (US TVM)

1990 – Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

1990 – I’m Dangerous Tonight

1992 – I was a Teenage Mummy

1992 – Nightmare Asylum

1992 Franky and his Pals

1992 – Bloodstone: Subspecies II

1993 – Bloodlust: Subspecies III (US/Romania)

1993 – The Mummy Lives

1993 – The Mummy A.D. 1993

1993 – The Mummy’s Dungeon

1994 – Stargate

1995 – Monster Mash

1996 – Le Siege del l’Ame (France)

1996 – The Mummy (Pakistan)

1996 – Birth of a Wizard (Japan)

1996 – La Momie Mi-mots” (aka “Mummy Mommy, France)

1996 – The Seat of the Soul” (aka “Le siege del Time, Canada)

1997 – The Creeps

1997 – Bram Stoker’s The Mummy

1997 – Mummy’s Alive

1997 – Under Wraps (TV Movie)

1998 – Trance

1998 – Talos the Mummy

1999 – Ancient Desires

1999 – The Mummy

2000 – Curse of the Mummy

2000 – Lust in the Mummy’s Tomb

2000 – Ancient Evil – Scream of the Mummy

2001 – Mummy Raiders

2001 – The Mummy Returns

2002 – Bubba Ho-Tep

2002 – The Scorpion King

2002 – Mummy’s Kiss

2005 – Legion of the Dead

2005 – The Fallen Ones

2006 – Seven Mummies

2006 – The University of Illinois vs. a Mummy

2007 – Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy

2008  – The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

2008 – Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior

2010 – The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

2012 – Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption

2014- Scorpion King 4 – Quest for Power

2014 – The Mummy Resurrected

2014 – The Pyramid

The Hell of Frankenstein - original title: Orlak: infierno de Frankenstein (“Orlak: Hell of Frankenstein”) – is a 1960 Mexican horror film written, produced and directed by Rafael Baledón (Swamp of the Lost Souls; The Curse of the Crying Woman) from a screenplay adaptation by Alfredo Ruanova (Bring Me the Vampire; Genie of Darkness; Satanás de todos los horrores) and Carlos Enrique Taboada (The Witch’s Mirror; Nostradamus y el destructor de monstruos; Even the Wind is Afraid). Publicity material states the title as Orlak – El Infierno de Frankenstein.

The film stars Armando Calvo, Rosa de Castilla, Irma Dorantes, Andrés Soler (as Professor Frankenstein), Pedro de Aguillón, David Reynoso, Carlos Ancira, Antonio Raxel, Carlos Nieto, Julián de Meriche, Joaquín Cordero (as Jaime Rojas/Orlak). 

Plot teaser:

Jaime Rojas (Joaquín Cordero), a suspected murderer, is completing his prison sentence for a minor crime, when he aids Professor Frankenstein (Andrés Soler) in escaping from prison. The scientist creates an artificial man made from assorted body parts, which Rojas uses to avenge himself against the officials and his former partners. Meanwhile, Frankenstein is unaware of the criminal acts his killer automaton, wearing a black sombrero and cape, is carrying out…

Reviews:

Despite promotional material depicting Frankenstein’s creation as being disfigured, until the climax Joaquín Cordero is merely impassive-looking and his nefarious deeds more criminal than horrific. This betrays the film’s original form as a four-part serial and perhaps explains the pseudo-scientific/western approach, as opposed to the full-blown gothic of the best Mexican horror such as Baledón’s impressive The Curse of the Crying Woman. The result is reasonably diverting, with a lively and fiery ending but, aside for Mexican horror completists, this is hardly required viewing.

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

“Frankenstein’s laboratory clearly shows the limitations imposed by the shoestring budget and whatever interest the picture has is probably due to Taboada and Ruanova’s uncanny ability to fill their labyrinthine plots with invention and keep things going at breakneck speed…” Phil Hardy (editor), The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror

“Working in a chiaroscuro landscape and with not much funding, Baledon cleverly reverted at appropriate times to the minimalist approach of certain German filmmakers of the silent era, not in duplicating expressionistic poses and design, but in evoking an expressionistic sense of positioning and drama; at other times, he created a visual delight, part expressionistic, part surrealistic, as when filming about a wedge shaped building whose center juts toward the audience in the middle of the screen.” Mirek Lipinski, Vampiros and Monstruos

IMDb

El robo de las momias de guanajuato (which translates as “Robbery of the Mummies of Guanajuato”) is a 1972 Mexican masked wrestler horror film directed by Tito Novaro (The Castle of Mummies of Guanajuato) from a screenplay by Francisco Morayta and Miguel Morayta (Invasion of the Vampires; Bloody Vampire). It stars Mil Mascaras and Blue Angel.

Review:

Stilted is a polite term for the lack of action and horror here. Two evil scientists spend an inordinate amount of time discussing their plans. There is no tension, no atmosphere and, even from those involved, seemingly no interest. A jaunty jazzy score is credited to director Novaro (as “supervisor”) so its presumably library music and sadly the only positive here.

Strictly second rate, the wrestlers here are even less actors than Santo or Blue Demon. There is scene after scene where everyone just discusses what’s going on… or rather, what’s not going on! Bashing midgets galore and super scared kids do not help either.

A climatic fight between the supposedly superhero wrestlers and the “mummies” – whom are all dressed in modern clothing? – is largely filmed long shot and staged like a school ground fight with no-one making much effort.

The term ‘worst film is the world’ is often bandied around but El robo de las momias de guanajuato is so poorly presented, even for a Mexican wrestling film – and so inept, it has to be part of this unfortunate canon. And whilst some bad films have an undoubted appeal, this is just dull. Nice poster though…

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

IMDb

Dr Satan versus Black Magic (Dr. Satan y la Magia Negra) is a 1968 Mexican horror film directed by Rogelio A. González (Ship of Monsters) and starring Joaquin Cordero (Dr Satan; The Hell of Frankenstein; The Terrible Giant of the Snow), Sonia Furió and Noe Murayama (Blue Demon Versus the Infernal Brains). The film is a sequel to Dr Satan (1966) and retains the character and actor of the titular physician but changes director and transfers from black and white to colour.

Deep in the bowels of Hell, the notorious yet suave Doctor Satan (Cordero) is being given a thorough dressing-down by his employer, Lucifer. He is given one last chance to avoid Earthly punishment by doing his master’s bidding; he must return to Earth and steal the evil sorcerer, Lei Yin’s (Murayama) secret of turning base metals into gold. Preferring action and violence to an eternity in Purgatory, the doctor accepts.

Back on the Earth’s crust we meet Lei Yin, a somewhat Fu Manchu-like character who, alongside having a brilliant scientific mind, also happens to be a vampire of the old school changing-into-a-bat variety. Yin has come into possession of ‘the Sorenson Formula’ (by virtue of murdering Doctor Sorenson), which grants him alchemy via the use of an elaborate set-up involving a large ray-gun. Like any arch-villain worth his weight in recently transformed gold, he is always accompanied by his henchpersons played by Aurora Clavel (The Wild Bunch) and Nathanael León (Hellish Spiders; Night of the Bloody Apes; many Santo films).

Meanwhile, Dr. Satan is busy interviewing young ladies in his office, the lucky candidates rewarded by being transformed into super-strong go-go zombies, doomed to do whatever the good doctor decides. In a thoughtful touch, he dubs them Medusa (Furió) and Erata (Luz Maria Aguilar) and they sleep alongside him in coffins in his crypt. Whilst Dr. Satan and his slaves attempt to track down Lei Yin, the evil mastermind is attempting to relocate to Hong Kong but is rumbled by the police; luckily for him, his able assistant uses her desk-cum-tank the riddle to interferers with bullet-holes.

An early attempt to slay Yin is foiled when the doctor realises his bullets are useless and he can only kill him via the usual stake to the heart. Now aware of his pursuers, Yin makes the first of his regular transformations into a bat, a metamorphosis which only confirms Horrorpedia’s regular assertion that the manufacture of realistic fake flying mammals will forever remain out of Man’s reach.

In true Satanik/Diabolik fashion, it now becomes a battle of wits, with the permanently fog-greeted Lin maniacally laughing, as Dr Satan and his zombladies chase him in a red sports car, eager to please Lucifer. The doctor’s quick wits shift the advantage, as do Lin’s futile attempts to suck the blood of the zombies (“Ugh, zombies! Disgusting!”) but when The Infernal One checks in, will the doctor have succeeded in sparing his own life from an eternity in limbo?

Dr. Satan was considered a strong enough character to bring back for another crack at box office success, the advent of colour giving a whole host of new opportunities to exploit one of the more bizarre genre mash-ups from Mexico. The titular character is something of a novelty in himself, following in the footsteps of the likes of Italian characters Satanik and Kriminal but with an even closer bond to evil and Hell itself. Handsome and debonair, Cordero is a difficult villain/hero to either despise or root for, a little bland in himself and only of any real interest at all due to his winsome companions. Murayama, however, clearly relishes his role, cackling and cape wafting like it’s going out of fashion, equally diabolical when in his laboratory of bubbling vials or transforming into a bat in a flash of magnesium light.

The film is of the shaky sets kind but enjoyably so, the lurid, psychedelic colours redolent of some of the more trippy of Coffin Joe’s films, whilst retaining a cartoon innocence and throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-it fireworks mentality. Somehow, the film conspires to drag its heels on occasion, the pay-off being that when the action does hit, it’s with kaleidoscopic fervor, both visually and aurally, the blips of the lab combining with berserk electronic barrages to assault the senses.

Zombies, vampires, coffins, a mad scientist and his lab, bats, a stunning appearance by the Devil himself and fatal femmes and foes, this is Mexican fantasy horror at its most enjoyable, as you’d expect from the director of the jaw-dropping Ship of Monsters.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

México Bárbaro is a 2014 Mexican horror anthology film with tales by eight different directors:

Isaac Ezban – “La cosa mas preciada”
Laurette Flores Bornn – “Tzompantli”
Jorge Michel Grau – “Muñecas”
Ulises Guzman – “Siete veces siete”
Edgar Nito – “Jaral de Berrios”
Lex Ortega – “Lo que importa es lo de adentro”
Gigi Saul Guerrero – “Día de los Muertos”
Aaron Soto – “Drena”

Cast: 

Mathias Retamal, Barbara Perrin Rivemar, Claudia Goytia, Sara Camacho, Ramón Medína, Rubén Zerecero, Dulce Alexa, Anuar Zuñiga Naime, Lorena Gonzalez, Gilean Alducin Luciano.

The title is derived from a 1908 essay by John Kenneth Turner that highlighted the political and social situation in Mexico during the twilight of the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

Official plot synopsis:

México Bárbaro shows the world stories that form a part of our culture, and even some that have haunted us and made us have nightmares since childhood, those ones which took away our innocence. The boogeyman, trolls, ghosts, creatures, Aztec sacrifices, and of course our most beloved tradition, Day of the Dead, immerse in urban and rural stories are some of the issues that make up this anthology.

Reviews:

” … the film fails to be a cohesive conceptual anthology. When it world premiered at Sitges 2014, it was screened back-to-back with two other recent horror anthologies: V/H/S: Viral and ABCs of Death 2. If I’m going to compare it with those productions, well, México Bárbaro at least doesn’t try to unite its eight segments in a way that hardly makes any sense as V/H/S: Viral did, but it definitely lacks the concrete ideas — as well as the brutality and energy — that the best shorts from ABCs of Death 2 have. It’s a welcomed effort that could have been much more powerful.” Eric Ortiz Garcia, Twitch

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