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Mexican comedian Germán 'Tin Tan' Valdés made dozens of horror and science fiction comedies from the 1940s until the 1970s. Many of them have the feel of the Abbott and Costello 'Meet the Monsters' series, but are much more wacky... and quite honestly less funny.

This one sees Tin Tan get himself deliberately checked into a mental hospital because his mother-in-law plans to move in with him and his wife (Verónica Loyo). He pretends to be Tarzan, and is cared for by Dr. Lucas (Manuel 'Loco Valdes' - Tin Tan's real-life brother) who is even more insane than any of the patients.

After 45 minutes of musical numbers and madcap tomfoolery, such as crawling on ceilings and climbing trees, we're eventually introduced to the horror part of the story, as mad old Dr. Ivanov (Andrés Soler) and his Dr. Cyclops look-a-like assistant, Dr. Jones (David Silva) steal the bodies of dead patients for experiments.

Dr. Ivanov has created a cell regeneration formula than re-grows flesh onto bones and even restores life. However, the face flesh mutates, causes his basement laboratory to fill with crusty-faced monsters. The experiment process is the highlight of the film - a body is stripped of its skin and muscle in a horrible, drawn-out sequence which includes the victim's eyeballs dropping out, until there is nothing but bones. Reversal of this process creates the monsters, who make useful servants for the mad doctors.

Shortly after this, Tin Tan's little deceit backfires as, when playing Tarzan, he falls from a tree to his death. Naturally, his body is soon exhumed by the mad doctors and he is put into the regeneration machine - however, this time the doctors protect the head with a giant metal helmet. This brings Tin Tan back to life with his head in tack, but with a skeletal body!

Tin-Tan's boney body is soon covered up by a mack and boots, but there's still comedy to be had with his skeletal hands. The mad doctors decide they need children's brain for their experiments so kidnap a couple of kids off the street; then they go after Tin Tan's wife and Loco and his blonde nurse girlfriend (Sonia Furió), and it all leads to a battle in the cellar lab for the showdown, which also included an unconvincing tarantula.

The comedy is often excruciating, but the horror elements are imaginative and memorable, so check this out - but you can probably skip the first half of the film.

Cantinflas, the Mexican Charlie Chaplin, is a lazy administration at a lookalike agency. When a weary spiritualist (referred to throughout as "a magician") wants to take a holiday without abandoning his regular customers, he hires a double from the agency. However, the double gets spooked when gangsters show up at the spiritualist's temple, but he somehow manages to sucker the hapless Cantinflas into taking his place.

Meanwhile, it turns out "the magician" really is from the mysterious east, and is the rightful ruler of the kingdom of Arichi, following the death of his father. A group of missionaries are sent out to find him, but they of course pick up the clueless Cantinflas instead. To add to the intrigue, one of the missionaries is actually a traitor who supports the late king's brother, and intends to finish off the true heir. Add the mob (who want to use the spiritualist's skills in their crimes) and a gold digging temptress (Leonora Amar), and hilarity soon ensues...

The comedy relies heavily on fish-out-of water antics, as the classless Cantinflas presides over his cringing subjects and makes nonsensical comments to the international media. He comically fawns after the beautiful Amar, and a drink with the mob ends in chaos.

Cantinflas' comedies are always worth a watch (if you understand Spanish or can find a subtitled version), and 'El Mago' is no exception. As usual, it's the charisma of the star that is the main drawing point, but there's also a madcap creativity behind his films that put them at least on par with many contemporary American comedies. The fantasy elements are minimal though, pretty much amounting to the real magician's fortune telling abilities not actually being discredited – but that's not really surprising since he's not in it much.