Museo del horror

More south-of-the-border insanity set at the turn of the last century; young girls are abducted and covered with boiling wax by a misshapen phantom in a mist-enshrouded blend of HOUSE OF WAX and THE BODY SNATCHERS that's more of a murder mystery with horror trappings than an outright fright film.

The action centers around a boarding house full of suspects- Is it the former actor, disabled by a limp, who is now the caretaker of a majestic theater where famous actresses in their greatest roles are replicated in wax? Is it the handsome young doctor who resorts to unorthodox methods of obtaining cadavers for his medical studies? Or is it the woman-hating professor whose secretive obsession is taxidermy? There's also a pretty young nurse who spurns her childhood sweetheart, the doc, by falling for the actor and a buxom music hall entertainer who sings a couple of songs before becoming a victim herself.

The body count's fair (the women waxed, the men killed by curare darts) and the ending's obvious, but there's lots of spooky tableaux along the way. Graveyards, crypts, and laboratories were a common sight in Mexican horror films but there was no religious symbolism this time. Odd.