Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary

Of all the films that my buddy and i rented (back in our high school days) for our late night horror movie marathons, this one stands out as the most memorable.

To this day we still discuss the bath scene, the chase-scene set to bongo music where the characters run in entirely opposite directions yet meet each other, and the classic (and i mean CLASSIC) scene where the two main characters are walking along the beach, and a bunch of mexicans can be seen kicking the hell out of a SHARK in the background..

Was it a fake shark? Was it real? What the heck was it doing there?

Who knows...But it WAS there.. My friend and i rewound and watched it about 27 times.

Mysteriously, after we rented this film, it disappeared from our videostore.. I had been worried that we had dreamt the whole thing.. Nice to know there are others who have seen it!

MARY, MARY, BLOODY MARY stars Cristina Ferrare as the serial exsanguinator of the title. All is well with her thirst-quenching endeavor, until she happens upon Ben (David Young), who sets her heart aflutter. Thankfully, romance doesn't slow her down one bit. The police are on the case, but there might also be a copycat on the prowl.

Director Juan Lopez Moctezuma presents us with a unique twist on the modern vampire tale. Instead of the usual trappings and tropes, he gives us a bizarre story of true bloodlust. This was a perfect Drive-In movie in its day, and still holds up well for Late-Night viewing. The grisly finale is a real grabber!

Watch for John Carradine in a small, but important role...

Actually I am surprised at the lack of comments on this one. I rented this late one night after eyeing the video box for months. I hesitated because I had never heard of the director/cast w/ the exception of the late John Carradine. I was more than happy with this picture. Mary has more than her share of nudity violence and gore. The paintings are weird. Some of the editing is ahead of it's time. I highly recommend this picture to anyone looking for cool low budget horror.

Ben Ryder (David Young) is hitchhiking across Mexico when he meets Mary (Cristina Ferrare) at an abandoned house on a dark 'n stormy night. The two hit it off and begin travelling together. But Ben doesn't know about Mary's insatiable need to drink blood, which leaves a path of corpses in its wake. Grabbed this one randomly to watch and it was pretty good. It can never live up to its amazing theatrical artwork, but what film could live up to that poster? One of the most interesting aspects of it is that it shot in Mexico. That doesn't really matter for the first hour or so, but toward the end director Juan Lopez Moctezuma starts to use the Mexico setting better. Especially good is a section in a Mexican parade where Mary is attacked by a stranger. The stranger is played by John Carradine and his face is cover 90% of the time, allowing the filmmakers to do lots of Lugosi/Plan 9 moments with the character. Also good is a chase in the finale the ends in a barren area that is perfect for the downbeat ending.

It was OK. The lead actress is beautiful. The story was a little hard to follow but at the end it all makes sense. Is she a vampire? what the heck is she? Are there more like her? What is the background? These questions were never answered. To me because the story just didn't have enough substance, I have to rate it low. I was asking questions the entire time and never got answers. The last 10 minutes pretty much sums up the entire movie, the rest of the movie is a lot of drama with some bloody scenes. Its really funny how the 70's treated bisexuality, there was one scene that kind of explained the bisexual summary but in today's time, its just laughable. The actors were OK, the direction was good, there was some nudity which added to the score. The story was short and lacked any substance. Just overall an OK movie in my book.