Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary

This one was surprisingly good. A night, a woman's VW van breaks down near an apparently deserted house. She's grabbed by someone and runs, but then ends up staying the night. There's a flashback to her having seduced and killed a computer operator who worked at the American embassy in Mexico who bought one of her strange paintings. She kills by removing a hairpin from her ponytail, then drinking all the blood.

She meets a young guy she likes, while continuing to kill other people. Meanwhile, a man in giallo garb (black trenchcoat, black gloves, black broad-brimmed hat, plus a black handkerchief over the face kills a morgue attendant to get a look at one of her victims, killing him in the same way.

Regrettably, the videotape I rented blacked out during a couple of the seductions scenes! What the heck!

Carradine has a small role, but a good one.

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.

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...

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary (1975)

** (out of 4)

Forgotten Mexican horror film about an American painter named Mary (Cristina Ferrare) who is living in Mexico where she sells her works and also kills people for their blood. It turns out Mary is a vampire but not the traditional one with fangs. Since she has no fangs she must stab or slash the throats of her victims but soon she has a new man (David Young) in her life as well as a mysterious man (John Carradine) in black who appears to be doing the same type of murders. The term "less would have been more" certainly applied to this film because somewhere in this mess there's a good movie but sadly the direction is so poor and the film goes off in so many directions that you can't help but loose focus on the majority of everything going on. If you read the film details you're going to be reminded of George Romero's MARTIN, which would follow a few years later and it's pretty fair to say that the Romero film is a remake of this, although it's certainly much better done with many of the weak points left out. The film's screenplay never really makes anything clear including what's going on with Mary. We never really learn why she has no fangs or why she needs the blood at all. We never figure out why she keeps this guy in her life when he could have made another victim. There's a lesbian art seller who comes in then out of the movie without too much explanation. Even worse is that the film runs an incredibly overlong 91-minutes and while so much plot is left missing we get other scenes that just drag out for no reason. There's one sequence where a woman is hitchhiking yet it takes nearly two-minutes worth of screen time before she finally gets in the car where the action then starts. Why on Earth did they drag this out so much? The entire time of her waiting to get in the car adds nothing to the film other than the extended running time. Those wanting gory violence will probably have a smile on their face after the first murder, which is quite graphic as Mary is having sex with a man only to then cut his throat and out comes the red stuff. This first murder has a ton of gore in it but from this point on the murders become less gruesome and there are a few where no blood is shown. Those wanting nudity will find some here but it's mostly un-erotic stuff including the bit where the lesbian finally gets Mary in the bathtub. Ferrare isn't too bad in the role of Mary but she certainly can't compare with previous female vampires from the 70s. Carradine only appears in a few scenes as he apparently left the film before shooting was complete, which means we get a much younger stunt double running around with a cape over his face. MARY, MARY, BLOODY MARY has some very interesting ideas but sadly none of them ever come together. There's way too many dry spots but I'm sure with a little editing this thing could have been a little better. Romero's MARTIN certainly got the job done much better.

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!