Cien gritos de terror

Costa Rican Ramón Obón scripted some of the best Mexican horror films, including the classics "The Vampire" and "Misterios de ultratumba" (The Black Pit of Dr. M), and little known effective works as "The World of the Vampires", not to mention the countless stories written for film series of charros, mounted avengers, masked wrestlers and other assorted idols of the Mexican audience. A year before his untimely death, Obón made his only film, a departure from those hurriedly-made products into which his scripts were turned. Made in the vein of the anthology films of the day, as Roger Corman's "Tales of Terror" and Mario Bava's "I tre volti della paura" (Black Sabbath), the 95-minute film tells two long stories in equal time, "Panic" (a story of adultery) and "Supreme Fear" (a tale of claustrophobia), both dealing with the concepts of terror, fright, anxiety and dread, and how they manifest and can be manipulated, especially to intrigue an audience through visual red herrings. It is also much influenced by the art films of the early 1960s, as Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'eclisse" (The Eclipse), suggesting a relation between alienation and death with landscape and structures, especially in the second episode, "Supreme Fear". Although the tone and feeling of the images are somehow betrayed by Rafael Carrión's trendy jazz score, as if it were a French New Wave film, for a first work Obón handled his script very well. It is a pity that he could not continue his career as director, when he was about to embark on a project with independent producer Antonio del Castillo to make 26 television movies for American television.

1964's "100 Cries of Terror" is apparently one of the least seen Mexican imports so popular in the 60s, courtesy of Florida's K. Gordon Murray, from the prolific pen of screenwriter Ramon Obon ("The Vampire," "The Vampire's Coffin," "The Swamp of the Lost Monsters," "The Black Pit of Dr. M," "The Living Coffin," "The World of the Vampires"), finally achieving his directorial debut on this two-part anthology, both stories running about the same 40-plus minute length (considering the morbid subject matter he sadly died shortly afterwards). The spirit of Edgar Allan Poe definitely thrives as we kick off with "Panico" (Panic), featuring a husband and wife spending a night in their new home, a deserted old mansion previously owned by a widow whose husband and three children were killed in a car crash. slowly going mad and dying in chains five years earlier. The possessive wife (Adriadne Welter) steadfastly refuses to part from her philandering husband (Joaquin Cordero) and suffers from a weak heart, easy prey once she's left alone with the eerie sound of rattling chains, hubby gone to fetch the doctor despite her insistence that she doesn't need one. It appears obvious as to what's going on, an unknown intruder witnessing their arrival through a window to later pose as the owner's ghost, yet a satisfying double twist worthy of Alfred Hitchcock keeps things honest (on location shooting in a real house also helps). "Miedo Supremo" (Supreme Fear) opens with a New York doctor (Jorge Martinez de Hoyos) visiting the grave of his late sweetheart, gone nearly 6 months, during the entombing of a young woman (Monica Welter) who inexplicably begins screaming from within her newly sealed crypt (cries of terror indeed). The doctor's untimely fainting spell had left him locked inside for the night, freeing his unlikely companion, obviously a victim of catalepsy, and offering a sedative to ease her growing loss of sanity. This tale tends to drag as she fails to come to grips with spending only a few hours in the darkness, believing that the dead are determined to claim her permanently no matter how much comforting knowledge the doctor possesses. Walter Stocker's 1972 "Till Death" would expand on this story, now a husband grieving for his newlywed bride (Belinda Balaski), killed in a car crash on their honeymoon six months before yet somehow alive and spending the night together in her locked crypt. Both tales served their purpose as neither could have sustained feature length, probably one of Murray's better imports with the emphasis on atmosphere over dialogue. As the clinging wife in story one, Adriadne Welter was no stranger to Mexican horror, previously the ingenue in both "The Vampire" and "The Vampire's Coffin," a small role in "The Brainiac," even costarring with elder sister Linda Christian in the ultra cheap US title "The Devil's Hand."

'100 Cries of Terror' (1965) aka 'Cien Gritos de terror' remains an unduly obscure, enjoyably twisted Mexican Gothic terror two-fer from Costa Rican-born writer/director, Ramón Obón. For the sake of transparency, I have to profess to having a yielding soft spot for vintage, creepy-creaky Mexican horror; as, for me, even the hokiest, profoundly penurious schlock-fest from south of the border is frequently imbued with an amiable eccentricity that greatly increases the psychotronic elements, and Obón's thrillingly strange, morbidly magnificent, shriek-slathered '100 Cries of Terror' is unlikely to disappoint fans of scintillatingly skewed 60s shudder! This atmospheric, creep-laden compendium comprises two grave, coffin cool, bone-rattlingly bonkers supernatural doom-fests, with the latter tale clearly being spookily inspired by Poe's classic 'Premature Burial'. Both of these eerily exquisite, perfectly pulpy horror tales still retain much of their macabre majesty, but the ominous 'Cripta De Terror' is a manifestly unusual, eerily effective, fabulously fright-festooned foray into sinister, ice-veined sepulchral shock! Ramón Obón's Cien Gritos de terror' (1965) comes very highly recommended indeed!

this is one of the more rare south of the border horror films and one the few that contain episodic tales of horror.i.v only seen the English language version and of course it was done by k.Gordon Murray and you know what to expect from that. unintentional laughter from dialog and translation differences and the obvious same flat voices used for the characters. this aside, "the 100 cries of terror" is not a bad excursion into the world of terror and horror as reflected in the two stories' the first one is on the idea of "angel street", "diabloque" and "what beckoning ghost", but has it's own special twist and the second one of course borrows from Edgar Allan Poe's "premature burial". but again it has it's own special twist of surprises to make it special for the viewer. the director and writer Ramon ob on gives us a rather nice atmosphere of dread with a regulative small cast to deliver the goods and it's well worth seeing. perhaps one of these days they'll release the original Spanish language version so one can see what originally was intended for us to enjoy.....