Las vampiras

Vampiras, Las (1969)

* (out of 4)

One of four Mexican horror films that Carradine made in a row features him as a Count ordering vampire brides to get new victims but there's a masked wrestler to the rescue. If you're coming into this expecting an out and out horror film then you're going to be disappointed but the majority of the action takes place with the wrestler, which is certainly just a rip on the Santo series. I wasn't a fan of that series and I'm not a fan of this movie, which drags itself out to 90-minutes and really doesn't have much going for it. This is obviously a very low budgeted movie so we get all sorts of bad special effects including the scenes where the bats transform into the women. The effects used here are so incredibly bad that I'm sure filmmakers from the 1890's would be laughing at them. There's another funny sequence where there's suppose to be a car crash but it's obvious the cars are driving incredibly slow so that they can avoid any damage to the cars. What does work are all the unintentional laughs, which there are plenty of. Carradine's performance, dubbed by a Mexican man at least thirty-years younger, offers up some goofy fun in his over the top performance. There are scenes with Carradine locked in a cage acting like a gorilla, which have to be seen if you're a fan of his. The rest of the cast are all forgettable, which is pretty much the one word for this film. I had to view the film in Spanish without any subs but I doubt the dialogue would have helped any.

1967's "The Vampire Girls" (Las Vampiras) began shooting Aug. 28, third in the John Carradine Mexican quartet for producer Luis Enrique Vergara (following "Jekyll and Hyde: Pact with the Devil" and "Madame Death"), the first of two vehicles opposite masked Luchador Mil Mascaras (Spanish for 'Thousand Masks,' in one of his first screen appearances), as renowned for his championship prowess in the ring as El Santo and Blue Demon but, thankfully, featured in just a single bout in the opening reel. Santo had faced off against a similar threat in his first starring feature in Mexico, "Santo vs. The Vampire Women," an early vehicle for recording star Maria Duval (first seen in K. Gordon Murrray's 1958 import "The Living Coffin"), seen here as Countess Veria Alucard, widow of the legendary Count Dracula, while Carradine's red lined cape is that of Count Branos Alucard, not Dracula but still in his mind 'King of the Vampires.' The cult of female vampires alternate in rubber bat form when smashing up one car after another, all wearing one piece leotards with wings under the arms, literally flapping their arms as though they were comically trying to fly. Their self appointed leader is Aura (Marta Romero), denying Branos his rightful place on the throne by imprisoning him inside a cage while she must defeat his devoted Veria to retain her position of leadership. Mil Mascaras lives up to his billing by wearing a different mask in every scene, paired with a reporter played by Pedro Armendariz, their use of silver bullets rather ineffective so humdrum fisticuffs are necessary, neither side much of a threat to the other. Carradine's voice is dubbed in Spanish, ranting and raving with great elan even confined to a cage, finally sporting those sharp fangs denied Bela Lugosi even if he is a relation of Dracula rather than the actual Count, just over 17 minutes screen time and almost completely absent until the 40 minute mark. Federico Curiel replaced Jaime Salvador in the director's chair, his career kick started by German Robles' infamous Nostradamus quartet, with Italian import Maura Monti as Pedro's girlfriend, soon to play Boris Karloff's scarred assistant in Vergara's "Incredible Invasion." One more Mil Mascaras adventure to complete Carradine's Vergara pact, "Secret of Blood" (one single outing as Dracula upcoming in the 1978 disco comedy "Nocturna").

One of the best 60's Mexican lucha libre movies I have watched, but still silly, naive and full of technical drawbacks: overacting, shallow solutions in the script, inconsistent characters... The vampires swinging reccurently their arms as if they were bat wings was a particularly ridiculous element. The wrestling fight between Mil Máscaras and Black Man in the beginning was nice, but eventual action scenes are poor. John Carradine as Count Branos Alucard was surprising, as I would never expect him to portray a senile vampire! Italian Maura Monti has a very small role here, nothing to be compared to her pretty decent and amusing Mujer Murciélago, from previous year (1968). Among the she vampires on this Mil Mascaras's movie, my favorite one was Married with Children's Peggy Bundy, that is, María Duval's Countess Velia Alucard (the widow of Count Dracula!).