La casa del terror

House of Terror (1959)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mexican horror film has a group of thieves stealing a mummy (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and handing it over to a weird scientist. The scientist removes the mummy's bandages, which causes it to turn into a werewolf (also played by Chaney). This is the complete, unedited Spanish film but clips of this were used in Jerry Warren's American film Face of the Screaming Werewolf. This version I had to view without subtitles so I'm sure I missed some of the jokes going on inside the museum but even with the lack of subs the film wasn't too bad, although I prefer the American version due to how crazy it is.

A totally daft horror/comedy from Mexico that exists only in its original Spanish language version, but that hardly matters -- even if you don't understand what they're saying, the film is a hoot. Lon Chaney starts off playing a rather rotund mummy (in makeup that looks like a second-grade class attacked him with their paste jars) who is stolen during a press conference by a mad doctor, played by Boris Karloff-lookalike Yerye Beirut. The mummy miraculously gets revived and essentially turns into Larry Talbot, right down to the black clothes, and therefore into a wolf man (he is actually announced as "el homre lobo" while still in mummy form at the press conference, though no one appears particularly suprrised at this). Now add in a scared wax-museum caretaker (the funny German Valdes, aka "Tin-Tan"), wax figures that are really dead bodies, ala "House of Wax," spooky graveyard shots, a secret laboratory, a hirsuit Chaney chasing Tin-Tan around the lab, ala "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," a musical number (why not?) and a King Kong-like finale that has the werewolf climbing up the side of a building with the girl over his shoulder, and you have a film that manages to be like a lot of others, but at the same time unlike any other. Chaney's wolf man makeup is fairly good -- certainly better than the mummy makeup -- and his silent performance (apparently he didn't speak Spanish, either) provides occasional echoes of his younger, better days at Universal.

A trivia note: Footage from "La Casa del Terror" was cut into a mid-sixties Jerry Warren mess called "Face of the Screaming Werewolf," and a recent book on the notorious Ed Wood, Jr. states that it was Wood who directed Chaney dragging the girl up the side of a building in full werewolf regalia. A subsequent book on Chaney rationalized that claim by postulating that it had to be Warren, not Wood, who really directed the scene. But the sequence is there in the original Mexican version, which was filmed five years before Warren shot his new scenes for "Screaming Werewolf."

This film essentially begins with a mad scientist by the name of "Professor Sebastian" (Yerye Beirute) attempting to reanimate dead corpses but finding absolutely no success in his endeavors. To further complicate matters, a large police effort recently been initiated to find the culprits behind the removal of those corpses from the local cemeteries. So, recognizing that his main source of supply has been temporarily negated, he quickly decides to steal a mummy from a local exhibit in order to continue his research. What he doesn't factor into his equation, however, is that this particular mummy had been previously infected with a form of lycanthropy and, when brought back to life, immediately goes on a killing spree. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this basic horror film tried to infuse a little comedy into the mix--with rather limited results as most of it wasn't really that funny and only detracted from the overall movie. At least, that's how it seemed to me. Even so, although it wasn't quite as good as it could have been without the comedic effect, I don't consider this to be a terrible film by any means, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Lon Chaney Jr. must have been at a low point when he agreed to appear as a "mummified werewolf" in this Mexican-made movie. Since he didn't speak Spanish, he doesn't even have lines! The main star is a comic named Tin Tan. The version I watched on YouTube had an English subtitle option but the words used to translate the Spanish made no sense so I mostly ignored them. Truth to tell, there was nothing funny nor scary here making this a complete waste of time for me. But, despite that, I'm next gonna see and review Face of the Screaming Werewolf which has scenes from both this and another Mexican-made movie called La momia azteca dubbed in English...

The first thing I have to say is I don't speak Spanish and the version I saw had no subtitling but I read the summary of the film so I knew pretty much what was going on - from everything I saw and understood about the movie it's actually a decent werewolf (& mummy) film.

Chaney gets a fairly good amount of screen time although he has no lines (from my understanding it was simply because he didn't speak Spanish). The role he was playing (the way the film played out) he didn't have to speak because he was a mummy that became a werewolf. He does get action - lots of jumping around as the werewolf.

Even if you can't understand a word of Spanish but enjoy Chaney then it's a good film to watch - just veg out in front of the TV with it.

Side note: I might have rated this film a bit higher if I understood Spanish. - Also see: Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1964)

6.5/10