El vampiro

This is probably the best Mexican vampire movie. The sets are great(Azteca Studio).The atmosphere is dank with swirling fog and mist. A young girl returns to her childhood home with a doctor she met on a train. The doctor holds a secret. The girl's family has an aunt under the spell of the vampire. The Count sets his sights on Marta and plans to resurrect his long dead brother. The mood and the music are fantastic. Only thing keeping this from a 10 is the cheesy dubbed dialogue. Hard to find but well worth it.

I had heard a lot about this Mexican horror classic and cult film by Fernando Méndez: that it was a remarkable B&W production, that it established the vampire genre in México, that it was the first movie in which the vampire had fangs and –most of all- that it was intentionally funny in parts. I had seen its sequel, "El ataúd del vampiro" (The Vampire's Coffin) when I was 8 years old, of which I have a vague memory. Now, after 47 years of its release, I've finally seen "El vampiro" and to my surprise it is better than what I expected. Producer Abel Salazar knew what he was getting into –as probably did Luis Buñuel when he made "Abismos de pasión", adapting Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights"- and decided not only to approach the tale of an Hungarian vampire in México with humor, but to play the leading part of the doctor with comic touches, as a cynic and fearful hero. Beautiful Ariadne Welter (Tyrone Power's once sister-in-law, sometimes credited as Ariadna) is the young heroine who returns to her family hacienda in Sierra Negra (Black Sierra) and meets Salazar on her way, while they are followed by her aunt (Cuban soap opera superstar Carmen Montejo), a spinster under the spell of Count Duval (Germán Robles), the local vampire. The initial situation reminded me of the Hammer Films production "Kiss of the Vampire", which was made a few years later: a young woman being observed and chosen to be part of the undead, though in this case the open setting is darker and in obvious decay. What was surprising to me was the plot's twists, which seem quite original for its time and probably not yet equaled, mainly the introduction of a woman buried alive (Alicia Montoya) –whose appearance predates Myrna Fahey in Roger Corman's "The Fall of the House of Usher"- who protects the heroine and has a decidedly active part in the conclusion. Although screenwriter Ramón Obón takes many elements from Bram Stoker's classic novel, he introduces clever touches, immensely helped by Rosalío Solano's cinematography, Gustavo César Carrión's eerie score and Méndez' firm direction. As a research, it's also interesting to see another movie by Méndez, "Ladrón de cadáveres", which paved the way for a unique Mexican cross of genres: the wrestler and horror films.

I have just seen El vampiro during a Latin American Film festival held in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, where its protagonist German Robles was present as guest of honour.

El vampiro is imaginative rather than talkative and has imagery no American fifties vampire flick can match. The story, of course, is lame and predictable, and, as Latin movies go, there is a lot of supernatural hokum coming with it. The overriding presence of Robles, together with the humor and the menacing, beautiful atmosphere, make up for it.

Vampiric action is kept to a bare minimum and the man-to-bat-metamorphosis (and vice versa) challenges in no way the 1932 standard. Nevertheless, it is one of the classics of the genre.

If you want to know how a vampire lady looks when she tries very hard to look like a vampire lady - well, the film gives you ample chance. One last thing: the soundtrack, however primitive, is a revelation: good vampire music and sound effects culminate in the humorous ending, when the leading man's words are drowned by the departing train's whistle. Nearly perfect.

A young woman (Ariadna Welter) arrives at the isolated town of Negro Sierra at the same time as a wooden crate full of Hungarian soil and a happy-go-lucky salesman (co-producer Abel Salazar) after being summoned by her uncle to the sickbed of one of her aunts. Hitching a ride with the strange man who arrives to collect the crate, the pair arrive at her family's grand hacienda to find it in a state of disrepair and her aunt already apparently dead and buried. The woman's other aunt, however, seems unchanged since the girl's visit as a child and is strangely lacking a reflection…

El Vampiro was my first taste of Mexican horror, and for some reason I was expecting some low-budget, low-talent effort. While this flick from Fernando Mendez clearly doesn't have the kind of budget enjoyed by the contemporaneous Hammer films, it certainly is the work of a decent talent. Read most of the reviews on this page and you'll find one word that keeps popping up again and again: atmosphere. This film has got it to spare with good use of light and shadow - and lashings of misty smoke - giving it a real touch of class. The film doesn't exactly gallop along, but its never dull, and overcomes the drawback of a hero who initially seems irritating but actually ends up being quite likable.

The storyline follows pretty much the same template as the Hammer flicks: virginal heroine, in danger of seduction and/or death by suave but evil vampire, is saved by dashing, heroic type (even though the hero here has a touch of the comical about him). If you're not a fan of old horror films you're not likely to be impressed by this example of the genre: by today's standards it's very tame (even though it was rated 18 on the DVD), and unlikely to scare even a ten-year old.

Another film I have watched as part of my Halloween marathon was EL VAMPIRO/THE VAMPIRE (1957), recently released by Mondo Macabro on R0 (PAL) DVD. As I have already written in an earlier post in this thread, I was not familiar with this title outside of Carlos Clarens' book on horror movies; the very positive 'Monsters At Play' online review, then, was the factor which drove me to purchase it - and I am glad I did!

Perhaps the most influential aspect of the film is that it presents us with what is probably the screen's first fanged vampire. I have no idea whether anyone at Hammer had watched this prior to making Dracula (1958) - Terence Fisher certainly said he deliberately avoided watching the Browning/Lugosi version so as not to let himself be influenced by it - but it's rather regrettable that the later film is given all the credit for it, when it is clearly not the case.

As a matter of fact, EL VAMPIRO was a bit like the bridge which lead the genre away from the Universal style and towards Hammer horror - the look of the film was certainly inspired by the former but here we have no cutaways during vital moments (one attack by the vampire on a small boy [!] is particularly vicious), while the busy climax (a' la Hammer's Dracula) only disappoints because Count Lavud is dispatched in the conventional manner typified by the Universal films!

The plot of the film offers no surprises and even incorporates a Poe-inspired subplot, involving a premature burial, for good measure. The special effects (the vampire turning into a bat or materializing out of nowhere, only to vanish into thin air again) are well done in spite of the modest budget, providing a few undeniably effective frissons. Despite its deliberate pace (not unusual with horror films dependent on atmosphere), the film is never boring; in fact, it is quite a treat. German Robles cuts a dashing figure (much like Christopher Lee, as opposed to the likes of Max Schreck or even Lugosi) but is appropriately menacing when the moment calls for it. He makes a perfect vampire count, though his screen-time is relatively brief; producer/actor Abel Salazar (a bumbling Van Helsing-type role) is no Cushing, however, but the film does not really suffer for it. The ladies are decorative if nothing more and, thankfully, very little footage is devoted to frightened villagers or sinister-looking acolytes. If I had to classify the film in comparison to other vampire movies, I would say that EL VAMPIRO is just a few notches below the 1931 Spanish Dracula (which is appropriate as it's the one I was most reminded of when watching it).

The film's presentation on DVD is unfortunately less-than-stellar: there is a constant hiss on the soundtrack which can become annoying and the print, while far from pristine, is certainly watchable; the 22-minute Documentary on Mexican horror films was quite interesting, although I suspect few of the films mentioned are really worth looking into apart from curiosity value (THE BRAINIAC, anyone?); the film's sequel, THE VAMPIRE'S COFFIN (1958) - presented in the form of a photonovel (a nice touch) - looks a bit contrived but is, perhaps, a reasonably adequate follow-up to the original.

The other Mondo Macabro titles on DVD are even more obscure: ALUCARDA (1975), at least, looks intriguing - reminiscent of Alejandro Jodorowsky's work (it was in fact directed by Juan Lopez Moctezuma, producer of FANDO & LIS and EL TOPO) which, in view of the adult nature of the film, would probably not go past the local censors (!); AWAKENING OF THE BEAST (1970) - one of the 'Coffin Joe' films; BLOOD OF THE VIRGINS (1967); and DR. JEKYLL VERSUS THE WEREWOLF (1972) - one of the 'Waldemar Daninsky' films written by and starring Paul Naschy.