We return to the Golden Age of Mexican horror cinema in the 1950s and 60s, and to the work of producer-actor Abel Salazar, who we last saw in the bizarre brain-sucking Dracula-alike The Brainiac. As I said in that write-up, the defining features of this era of Mexican horror film is the influence the movies take specifically from the classic Universal horror cycle of the thirties and forties (and their imitators), with classically supernatural stories and moody black-and-white Gothic visuals. This is very evident in The Man and the Monster (El hombre y el monstruo), a film produced and starring Salazar and directed by the prolific director-actor Rafael Baledón—in particular, this takes cues from The Wolf Man, as well as the various film adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (of which Universal produced exactly zero), with a little bit of Faust for good measure. But this movie is more than the sum of its influences—and is a relatively more subdued affair than the off-the-wall Brainiac—learning all the right lessons to give this seemingly familiar story a unique sense of pathos and well-honed filmcraft that transcends any budgetary limitations it might have.
Two movie posts in one week?Yes, I had so many things I wanted to write about that I’m starting my double features a bit early this summer. In June, you’ll be getting a new millenniumsubject early in the week, and something more vintage on Thursdays.
I was already planning on writing about this movie at some point, but the passing of Roger Corman (a few weeks ago as of this posting) made it a top priority, and I’m hoping to cover more of his movies in the near future. Of course, Corman had a big impact on the entirety of Hollywood film with his prolific filmography, general eye for talent, and, let’s say, economical methods, but the many monster movies he either directed (I’ve writtenabout a few of them) or produced do have a special place in that vast filmography—with all their B-movie qualities, there were a few that offered genuine innovation in the category, or at the very least were uniquely bizarre and entertaining. There are also the times where he provided a starting point for filmmakers who would go on to become some of the biggest creative forces in monster movie history, including Joe Dante’s big break with Piranha. In a career that spanned everything from Edgar Allan Poe adaptations to women in prison movies and eccentric comedies, the monster movies are a crucial part of his legacy—beginning with Corman’s first-ever film as a producer.
As the story goes, Corman was irritated after seeing a script he wrote altered by the studio, so he decided to start his own production company to have complete control of the movies he worked on. Monster From the Ocean Floor was the first film he produced, and its six-day, cost-saving-whenever-possible production (the budget is somewhere between $12,000 and $35,000 depending on who you ask) was the beginning of the patented Corman method that would serve him for the rest of his career. The money he received up front from Lippert Pictures for Monster was used to fund his next movie, something called The Fast and the Furious(!), which was the first movie he worked on with distributors Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, the founders of his longtime distributor American International Pictures.
On a pure film history level, Monster From the Ocean Floor is actually significant, even if it is rather unassuming as a low budget fifties monster movie that could be best described as “quaint.” I would also argue that it, in its unassuming way, it’s also a fairly forward-looking piece of fifties creature feature history—released between more famous big studio fare, specifically Creature From the Black Lagoonand Them!, it gets into some of the major themes of the era early, signalling the specific form of nuclear paranoia that haunts a large number of these movies. Corman and his crew were not establishing their own distinct brand of monster movie, but developing the entire genre as a whole without really trying—and that’s a very Corman thing to do.
Beginning here, I’ll be running what I’m going to call “Drive-In Summer”, where we focus on B-movies or films with a B-movie spirit. As part of that, every other week will be a Double Feature, with a second monster movie write-up on Friday. To fully embody the experience, go get a bag of the least healthy popcorn you can find.
The last Mexican creature feature from the sixties we discussed was the delightful Ship of Monsters, and The Brainiac (originally titled El Baron del Terror, or The Baron of Terror) is from around the same time period. It is, however, an altogether different beast—for one, it was actually seen outside its home country thanks to an English dub that was run on television. Interestingly, the producer of the movie, Abel Salazar, also stars as the titular Baroniac of Terror—that would usually be a bad sign, but not so much here. The creative heads of this movie had long and varied careers, but notable for us, Salazar had produced several monster movies, including the vampire flick El Vampiro in1957, while director Chano Urueta had helmed the Frankenstein-esque El Monstruo Resucitado in 1953, all of them considered part of the Golden Age of Mexican horror movies, which was built on homaging the style of classic Universal films of the thirties and forties—that is also quite evident in this movie, from the black-and-white photography to the booming score. Of course, it is made painfully clear at all times that The Brainiac did not have anywhere near the budget of those older movies—everything in this is an obvious studio set, some fairly detailed while others are just an image projected onto the background—but at times it more than makes up for it in strange B-movie energy.
There’s very few things as enjoyable as discovering another good vintage B-movie—the quaintness that can be found in the best low budget flicks from the fifties and sixties has a special feeling all its own, which is why I’m always on the lookout for ones I’ve never heard of. As a Mexican Sci-Fi comedy musical creature feature, because it is indeed all those things, The Ship of Monsters (Le nave de los monstruos) is another great find, a film that revels in the silliness of its genre and the limitations of its own budget in a way that’s difficult not to admire. I usually wait until the second paragraph to outline the plot, but I feel it’s necessary to get that out early in order to really get you on board: after atomic radiation kills off all the men on the planet Venus, two bikini-clad saviours are sent to scour the galaxy for male specimens of different species to help repopulate the planet with the best combination of genes, and after picking up several monsters and putting them on a ship (they are certainly open-minded) as well as a lone robot, they have to make an emergency landing on Earth for repairs, and then meet up with a singing cowboy. Are things like this not the reason we have cinema?
One could easily classify Caltki as an Italian rip-off of The Blob—which it is, but there’s more to mine here than just that. At least from a historical perspective, it is significant as an early work by cinematographer/director Mario Bava, whose stylistic horror and cult films in the sixties and seventies (like Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace, and Planet of the Vampires) are highly influential the world over—apparently, the primary credited director of this, Riccardo Freda, intentionally abandoned the film before finishing it so Bava could take over and get more credit, although how much of the final product either of them directed is still up to some debate. So, what we have here is a rip-off of The Blob that is low budget, Italian, and shot by one of the masters of heightened atmospheric horror—a combination that, even if it doesn’t elevate it to the highest of highs, still leads to a fifties monster movie that goes places you wouldn’t expect a fifties monster movie to go.
REVIEW ALL MONSTERS 