Tag: Mexico

Directed by Guillermo del Toro [Other horror films: Mimic (1997), El espinazo del diablo (2001), Blade II (2002), Crimson Peak (2015)]

Quite a popular Mexican film, Cronos certainly brings an interesting story to the forefront. It’s unfortunate that I don’t care for the story, but it’s also likely not that much of a surprise.

Largely a dark fantasy with horror undertones (which isn’t a surprise, as it’s directed by Guillermo del Toro), the movie deals with a grandfather who, through no fault of his own, begins an odd, confusing transformation into – something. Whatever it is, it has white skin. Some people label this a ‘vampire’ film, and it may well qualify, but this isn’t your daddy’s Bela Lugosi.

What the movie focuses on is the grandfather’s relationship with his granddaughter, and while there are some touching moments toward the end, I largely didn’t find myself all that engaged. I mean, the story was interesting, but it just isn’t the type of thing I tend to gravitate toward, and I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed a lot of it.

I do think that Federico Luppi (The Devil’s Backbone, also directed by del Toro) gave a pretty good performance. He actually reminded me of Louis Ducreux’s character from 36.15 code Père Noël, and seemed a genuinely nice guy.

Both Claudio Brook (Alucarda, la hija de las tinieblas, The Mansion of Madness, The Bees) and Ron Perlman (5ive Girls, I Sell the Dead, Alien Resurrection, The Last Winter) seemed cartoonishly evil, but that was sort of the point. Tamara Xanath didn’t have much to do, but she was also a young girl, so that’s excusable.

The special effects here looked pretty swell. I mean, I could have done without the pulling off his skin thing toward the end, but I guess that it just increases the unease. We did get a little blood – which makes sense, as the main character finds he somewhat needs blood to survive – but not a whole lot. This film is more about the transformation’s impact on one’s psyche than it is about the actual transformation, though, so that’s to be expected.

I went into this one knowing it probably wasn’t going to be for me. I’ve not seen much of del Toro’s work, save Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I found that one okay, dark fantasy just isn’t my jam. Similarly, Cronos was an okay time, but I can’t say much of it is likely to stick with me, nor can I say I enjoyed much of it, nor can I say I’ll ever watch it again. It’s not a bad movie, but like My Boyfriend’s Back, I’m just not really the right audience for it.

5/10

Directed by René Cardona [Other horror films: El espectro de la novia (1943), La mujer sin cabeza (1944), The Living Idol (1957), La Llorona (1960), Las luchadoras contra el médico asesino (1963), Las luchadoras contra la momia (1964), Santo vs el estrangulador (1965), Espectro del estrangulador (1966), Las mujeres panteras (1967), La mujer murcielago (1968), Las luchadoras vs el robot asesino (1969), La horripilante bestia humana (1969), Santo en El tesoro de Drácula (1969), Santo contra los jinetes del terror (1970), Santo en la venganza de la momia (1971), Capulina contra los vampiros (1971), El increíble profesor Zovek (1972)]

Known in the USA as The Invasion of the Dead, Blue Demon y Zovek en La invasión de los muertos is a movie that is utterly unlike most things I’ve watched. That alone doesn’t make it bad, but even so, this isn’t that good.

Now, I’ve seen it once before, but like two other Mexican horror films in the same vein I’ve seen (Santo contra la magia negra and Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstruos), I saw this without subtitles, which, as you can guess, makes it rather hard to tell what’s really going on. This time around, I understood more. Well, sort of – whatever the Hell Zovek was rambling on about most of the time, I didn’t quite get – but otherwise, I certainly got more clarity.

If you don’t know either Blue Demon or Zovek, I couldn’t say I blame you. This is a luchador film – a film that stars Mexican wrestlers of the Lucha Libre variety. Blue Demon, or Alejandro Moreno, wears a mask throughout, and Zovek has a headband he rarely removes. As far as I can tell, at least from this film, Zovek is both a mentalist and an escape artist, along with being talented in hand-to-hand combat, while Blue Demon is a historian/scientist who runs some information agency, and also knows hand-to-hand combat.

Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that, as the film is known here as The Invasion of the Dead, this is a zombie movie. Sorry – when a film has random things like wrestlers going on, some of the more important pieces get pushed to the side of my mind.

The basic idea of the film is that an object is sent from alien beings to Earth, and this object (a sphere) brings the dead back to life. Apparently Professor Zovek (his full title) believes this to be due to an old calendar that predicts calamities. Oh, he also, toward the end, was attempting to contact the master who trained him telepathically, but his master couldn’t be reached, which would have been a good sequel hook, had Zovek not died in 1972 (at 31 years old) from a helicopter crash.

Actually, it’s on that note that I should also mention that, unlike what you might expect from the title, Zovek and Blue Demon get virtually no on-screen time together. This is perhaps because of Zovek’s untimely death, and Blue Demon being pulled in to finish up the movie. To be fair, the movie doesn’t feel too disjointed due to that unfortunate incident, but it does go a long way to explain that Blue Demon doesn’t have any action sequences until the final 15 minutes of the movie.

When it comes to the zombies, well, I had to admit I wasn’t impressed. For the most part, the only way one could tell they were zombies was due to either their blank stare or rigid way of walking. No make-up went to making any of them look particularly zombie-esque. Hell, even Sugar Hill threw cobwebs on their faces, but no luck here. Related, there’s about zero special effects, unless you want to count the occasional fire. That’s not that surprising, given this was a Mexican film, but even so, a zombie movie without any blood always struck me as sad.

As far as the performances go, it’s really hard to judge. I suspect that, for the most part, Blue Devil (or, again, Alejandro Moreno) and Professor Zovek just played themselves. Zovek got much more screen-time than did Blue Devil, which I’d say was a good thing, as Blue Devil had a subordinate who was used exclusively for ‘comedic effect’ (played by Polo Ortín), and he got old pretty quick. Speaking of pretty, Christa Linder (Night of 1000 Cats, The Incredible Invasion, and The Drifter in the Rain) didn’t have a lot to do, but she did wear some tight jeans and a tight shirt, so I had little to complain about.

Horror-wise, it’s rather hard to recommend the film. Sure, some of the sequences in the second half were fun, such as Zovek fighting off a zombie attack in a cave (twice, if not three times, he picks up a zombies and throws them back to the group), or Blue Demon fighting two random werewolf-type guys (don’t ask me where they came from – I honestly have no idea, they just popped up one scene), but those scenes struck me as more fun than horror. There was a cool scene of zombies slowly walking through a graveyard, but otherwise, this movie never felt all that spooky at all, which, while not necessarily surprising, was disappointing.

As it was, I was happy to see The Invasion of the Dead again, especially as I had subtitles this time around. I imagine some of you know how tedious it can be to watch a film in a different language with no subtitles, but if you don’t, I can personally attest to it rarely being a fun time. In this case, even with subtitles, the movie was hella slow, and I didn’t have that much fun with it, save a scene here or there.

If you’re interested in seeing Mexican horror films, or early post-Night of the Living Dead zombie films, this might be worth checking out, but otherwise, I wouldn’t really urge people to do so.

4.5/10

Directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada [Other horror films: Hasta el viento tiene miedo (1968), Vagabundo en la lluvia (1968), El libro de piedra (1969), Más negro que la noche (1975)]

This Mexican film, originally Veneno para las hadas generally known as Poison for the Fairies in the USA, is a lot like a film I saw earlier in the same month, a French movie called Don’t Deliver Us from Evil, albeit in a more family-friendly direction.

Which isn’t to say that the ending isn’t good – it is. Is it worth the build up, though? That’s hard to say. Much like the 1971 French film, two youths are becoming corrupted by their friendship, slowly leading up to a less-than-happy ending. Unlike that film, though, given these girls are just around ten, there’s nothing in the film dealing with their sexuality (which was a big part of Don’t Deliver Us from Evil). Instead, one of the girls is playing a game on the other that grows out of control.

It’s a very insular movie – aside from the two girls, played by Ana Patricia Rojo and Elsa Maria Gutierrez, no other character really matters, and for that matter, while their guardians appear (parents and grandparents), we almost never actually see their faces. Luckily, the story is engaging enough to allow the singular focus on these two girls, though I would have to imagine some would say the film drags deeply because of it.

Throughout the movie, there’s a growing ominous feeling, and it’s held pretty well. If you’re not asking yourself, “Where is this leading,” multiple times, then something wasn’t done right. All this said, though, with any slow-burn horror film, did the ending make up for the somewhat sluggish pace? It wasn’t perfect, but I liked how they concluded this. I didn’t love the film, but I do think it’s a lot more digestible than Don’t Deliver Us from Evil was, and I’d probably recommend this to anyone interested in checking something out with a bit more foreign flair.

7.5/10