El vampiro acecha

A rather tepid thriller from Argentina, one I wouldn't call noir despite the Criterion Channel designation, that's centered on a boy who comes to know about a creepy man preying on kids outside his school. The man literally gives candy to one girl to earn her trust, about as cliché as you can get, and we really don't see much of him until the very end. While an unknown malevolent presence could have worked, the trouble is that in the middle of the film we get too many mundane scenes between the boy and his father, a police officer, making this feel longer than its 71 minutes. Even a brief dream sequence felt forced and unimaginative.

For context, the dad's views are decidedly conservative: he fears that even if the killer is caught, he'll just be declared insane and sent to a sanitarium, he complains that the modern generation is "soft," and he's not one who believes in "sparing the rod" when it comes to disciplining his kid. It is 1952 Argentina but these things felt regressive, especially when some heavy-handed religion was tacked on at the end. Thank god (literally), the film seems to say, that the father toughened his son up so he could face the killer, and that he had instilled religion in him too.

At first the boy doesn't tell what he knows because he's made a promise to a girl (and even after she's disappeared!), then a couple years later he tries to tell what he knows but is disregarded by his teachers and locked up by his father for being expelled. It's all a pretense to get him into the position of going after another girl who has gone missing on his own, tying back in to the fairy tales mentioned in the prologue and the need for innocent children to stand up to evil. All of that felt pretty contrived, and it didn't help that the child actors still hadn't developed their skills.

I did like the tension in the final five minutes, making me glad I stuck it out. When the little girl says the man's gone off to "dig a hole" it was quite a chilling moment. But when the resolution comes, helped along by repeated prayers, it felt awfully syrupy, and there's not even a nod to the greater evil the man might have perpetrated. This one felt like a great concept, but not all that well executed. I'd recommend Fritz Lang's film M (1931) instead.

This film has a great reputation in Argentina as one of the better from its director, Carlos Hugo Christensen. As an adaptation of the nice Cornell Woolrich short Story, "If I Should Die Before I Wake", it has all the elements generally found in the works of this author: suspense, interesting characters, atmosphere. It is - in this reviewer's opinion - the Argentinian counterpart of the best American adaptations of Woolrich: Hitchcock's Rear Window, Ted Tetzlaff's The Window, Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady. Curiously, due to a letter published many years ago in a monster-magazine, this movie is sometimes listed in reference books as "El vampiro acecha / The Lurking Vampire" (perhaps its Mexican title ?) and generally with a wrong cast (Abel Salazar and German Robles). Neither Robles nor Salazar are in this film, but ALL you can like in Woolrich's novel and short stories ARE in it. The same year, Christensen made another Woolrich adaptation, "No abras nunca esa puerta", also a superior movie with two parts. The adapted stories were "Somebody on the Phone" and "Hummingbird Comes Home". Other Woolrich stories were adapted in Argentina, Mexico, and of course in France where ALL the books of this author are regularly reprinted.

Admittedly, it's a small sample size...maybe four or five entries...but this 1952 film from Carlos Hugo Christenson is definitely the tense-ist (is that a word?), darkest and creepiest Argentinian noir that I've seen. The final twenty minutes or so will leave you pretty darn close to the edge of your seat, metaphorically if not literally, and the buildup, while on the restrained side...the first child murder occurrs offscreen...is quite disturbing, with an atmosphere of Peronist Fascism permeating the proceedings (i.e. The authoritarian school with those eerie white, surgical uniforms on the kids, the sighting of the child murderer in broad daylight and that horrible dream sequence involving merry go rounds, prison bars, dog like beasts and phallic hands with lollipops emerging from trash). So, aside from a couple story problems in either Cornell Woolrich's original or the adaptation, like the fact that the hero's PTSD radar would and should have been instantly aroused when the second victim announces that a man gave her a gift and the needless coincidence of having both victims sit in front of our hero in school, two years apart, and the fact that Nesator Zavarce's performance will not exactly make you forget Dean Stockwell (in other words, it's way over the top, even in the calm scenes) this is highly recommended. B plus.

(1952) If I Should Die Before I Wake/ Si muero antes de despertar (In Spanish with English subtitles) THRILLER

Adapted from the short story by William Irish aka Cornell Woolrich it centers on a young boy, Lucho/ Luis Santana (Néstor Zavarce) interacting and bonding with the little girl student sitting on front of him. Started as soon as he purposely dipping her ponytail into an ink jar, we find out her name is Alicia Miranda (Marta Quintela). On the very next day, Luis then notices Alicia eating some sweets and wanted to have some as well. And before she hands him some, she then makes him swear to never reveal to anyone who she got it from. And then on the day after that, she then ends up missing. Detectives then go to the class to ask for any leads, except that Luis had remembered what he had promised, as he may have remembered the man who was hanging around in the school yard, and may have seen Alicia walk away with him. He then tries to make sense of it from his father, (Floren Delbene) who happens to be an inspector. And on the following day, he then bonds with the next student, Julia (Maria A. Troncoso) who coincidentally happen to also see the same man.

Although, this movie could be the base from "The Window" from 1949, it also has familiar rings to another movie called "M" from 1931 directed by Fritz Lang.

Saw this on TCM as part of a series on Christensen films and was impressed. Great film noir atmospherics and cinematography, and acting all around excellent, especially the blind mother. She does her best to protect her son but is torn when realizes he is broken, but her instincts, both maternal and moral, play out to the ironic end. Besides the twists and turns of crime, refuge, protection, and justice, this film had incredibly modern style...a clue to how Argentina was and must still be a very sophisticated society and culture. The sets, art, and look felt ahead of it's time compared to US films of the same era.