Mexican Monsters on the March . Austin Chronicle . 08-18-97

Mexican Monsters on the March

DIRECTED BY: Señor Various

REVIEWED: 08-18-97

This anthology of highlights from various Mexican low-budget horror and sci-fi films from the Fifties and Sixties includes a lot of stuff that is beyond cheap, beyond cross-cultural differences, beyond any kind of reason; in other words, just plain weird. Highlights include The Brainiac, a vampire (chupacabra?) with two hairy pincer claws per hand that presumably sucks out brains with a long anteater tongue; The Baron of Terror, whose device melts people down to skeletons with living heads; Return of the Monsters, involving a guy with a big head, patchy hair, and oversize teeth wearing plaid shirt and running amok (he also turns up in Vengeance of the Hanged) and Dr. Satan, a fairly conventional vampire who puts together a platoon of pie-eyed, slack-jawed zombies to carry out his reign of terror. A standout is She-Wolf, involving a sexy blonde werewolf who is eventually brought down by a German shepherd; this scene was obviously done by simply turning a mean-ass dog loose on an actor in a padded suit! The real highlight, though, is Ship of Monsters, with two curvy space babes landing on a planet and recruiting four bizarre creatures to do their bidding. There's a jug-eared cyclops, a fright-wigged spider monster, a macrocephalic, exposed-brain midget monster and what appears to be a donkey skull with fangs set on a piece of PVC pipe. Eventually the midget monster gets shot with a slingshot, causing his latex head to collapse and spew forth pudding. As my friend and video trading partner Dave said, I think if I could go back in time to anywhere I chose, it wouldn't be the Boston Tea Party, it wouldn't be the JFK assassination, it would be back to the set of this movie so I could see how the hell they did it. You may have to rewind the tape as many as three times in sheer disbelief as this one flies plum off the cool meter. Guaranteed to stop your brain dead in its tracks.

It all just makes me wish to hell that I understood Spanish better and that I had some better knowledge of Mexican culture, because I have the feeling that a lot of these images are tied to Mexican folk beliefs and have a different significance to the original audiences than they would for us. Or maybe it's just that the writers and directors were wildly creative to the point of bordering on psychosis. So the next time your friends come over for videos `n' vittles, chill some cervezas, cut up some limes (a bottle of Herradura is advisable), and serve up this steaming platter of south of the border cinematic delights, suitable as appetizer or main course. Just be prepared to clean up when your pals blast Tecate out their nostrils when they get to Ship of Monsters.

--Jerry Renshaw

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