‘The influence of the moon exerts great power over the cellular anatomy.’
A young scientist travels to the isolated home of an older colleague to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. However, his arrival coincides with an outbreak of sudden, violent deaths that seem to be the work of a savage wolf…
Black and white werewolf fever dream from Mexican director Rafael Baledón and screenwriter Ramón Obón. Stars Kitty de Hoyos, Joaquín Cordero and José Elías Moreno do their best to fight the moonlight.
It can be ticklish asking your prospective father-in-law for permission to marry his youngest daughter. It’s a particular problem for dashing scientist Dr Alejandro Bernstein (Cordero), as Professor Fernandez (Moreno) has yet to learn that Clarisa (de Hoyos) and Cordero are even acquainted. Fortunately, the two men can bond over their work, comparing notes on their separate studies of Lycanthropy. In a complete coincidence, a woodcutter, his wife, and a local labourer have all had their hearts ripped out by a savage beast in the past 24 hours.
Given their shared interests, Moreno suggests a working relationship rather than a family one, asking for time to consider the young lovers’ request. Meanwhile, his other daughter, Alicia (Adriana Roel), confesses to her mother, Marcela (Columba Domínguez), that she’s bothered by nightmares of running through the forest with blood on her hands. Initially baffled, local law enforcement, led by Inspector Ramón Bugarini and coroner Dr González (Roberto Cañedo), catch a break when they apprehend a strange man in the woods and his special dog.
For many filmmakers, a ‘guess who the werewolf is’ would be more than enough of a story for a feature running only 76 minutes. In the frame are Morena’s two beautiful daughters, one a probable killer by moonlight and the other a virtuous heroine and potential victim. But which is which? Throw in some possible red herrings, like the mother and the housekeeper (Hortensia Santoveña) and the story almost writes itself. But Baledón was not that kind of filmmaker, and this was Mexican Horror Cinema in the middle of the 20th Century.
For a start, one lycanthrope isn’t enough; we get two. Also, Moreno has a fully equipped laboratory in his isolated home. He’s experimenting with cryogenics as a possible cure for Lycanthropy in a room he calls the ‘Chamber of Miracles’. Lurking in the forest is globetrotting werewolf hunter Noé Murayama with his ivory dagger and his Licar named Jack, a dog specially trained to fight and kill the beasts. As well as Cordero and de Hoyos being in love without Moreno’s knowledge, so are Cañedo and Roel, who teaches speech therapy in her spare time to Santoveña’s little girl, Adelita (Judith Dupeyrón), who cannot hear or talk.
Also hovering in the background is silent, bodybuilding gipsy, Crumba (Crox Alvarado), who acts as Moreno’s manservant. He sucks on a long, hooked, thin-stemmed pipe like Sherlock Holmes and doesn’t care for the melancholy workouts on the piano practised by the moody de Hoyos.
In addition, Cordero chatting up our heroine under the stars takes an odd turn when he starts talking about ‘the region without dimensions’ where ‘our love will last forever.’ He’s not your typical solid husband material.
Rather brilliantly, the subsequent events and the characters get hardly any backstory or setup at all, which only adds to the constantly surreal vibe. The audience is thrown into the middle of the action and must try to make sense of what they can. For instance, there’s no explanation of how the werewolves came to be. One seems quite aware of their lycanthropic status; the other is entirely ignorant. The makeups are wildly different, too; male-wolf gets the typical Lon Chaney Jr to look with furry face, hands and feet, whereas the she-beast sports a far more ambitious full-body suit with long, silken hair.
The motivations of some characters are a complete mystery, with manservant, Alvardo’s presence explained away with a brief comment from Professor Morena that he saved the gipsy’s life once, so he pledged himself to the scientist’s service. Whether the lifesaving incident had anything to do with werewolves is likewise obscure and doesn’t begin to explain Alvardo regularly assisting the she-wolf by opening a secret panel behind the fireplace in her room. And why is there an underground tunnel that leads from the fireplace to the cemetery in the woods anyway?
Given that the script piles absurdity upon absurdity without much justification and the actors are playing it entirely straight, this is a fine recipe for some comedy gold. And yes, some moments are inclined to provoke howls of laughter (sorry!), but, in the end, the film is not a ‘so bad, it’s good’ experience. There are several reasons for this, not least the violence and prolonged nature of the werewolf attacks. There’s a surprising quantity of chocolate sauce on display (it was filmed in black and white, remember!), and there’s even a scene in the jailhouse where we see close-ups of where the hearts have been ripped from the chests of the initial victims of the she-wolf’s rampage.
More importantly, however, there’s a fair bit of evidence of some genuinely good filmmaking. One scene features cute kid Dupeyrón sneaking out of the house in the dead of night to play with a wind-up toy she has hidden in a skeleton of a tumbledown building. She can’t hear the noise of the clockwork drummer boy, of course, but mimics the movement of its hands as they get faster and faster, her face transfixed with an angelic grace. However, only a few dozen yards away, Licar Jack and one of the werewolves are engaged in a vicious fight to the death, which increases in savagery as the drummer boy’s hands speed up and Baledón cuts furiously between the two setups. Given that the whole film plays like a half-melted mixtape of Universal classic horrors, there’s a strange echo of Boris Karloff and Marilyn Harris playing with flowers by the side of the lake in ‘Frankenstein’ (1931).
There’s also the presentation of the lycanthropes as they attack, sailing through the air in slow motion from one side of the shot to the other with the camera down low at a slightly tilted angle. It bestows upon them an almost supernatural grace, creating such an impression of other-worldly power that it’s hard to believe that better-known filmmakers haven’t harnessed such an effect so successfully. However, amongst these outstanding moments, there are also some of borderline ineptitude. The very first scene best sums up this odd dichotomy. The film opens in the hillside graveyard, with isolated tombs scattered among the trees. Whether an actual location or created for the production, it’s undeniably striking. Then the stone begins to lift on the crypt in the foreground, and claws appear around its edge. The werewolf emerges, face averted, and begins to climb out. It’s great. And then, the stunt guy in his furry costume runs up the hill with his limp tail flapping between his legs, and the illusion is completely shattered.
Elsewhere, the transformations are achieved with the usual dissolves and are fairly well-realised, considering the vintage of the project. Until you get a shot of what looks suspiciously like someone wearing a pair of hairy slippers. Similarly, some of the facial close-ups of the actors in furry faces are likely to provoke a healthy smirk; others work pretty well. Everything about the film is oddly schizophrenic, with some fine technique mixed in with obvious hack work. It’s possible that the film was mutilated in post-production, of course, and extra shots added, but over half a century later, it’s unlikely we can ever know for sure.
The cast contains a lot of seasoned veterans, and they produce solid performances all around. The surprising standouts are supporting players Dupeyrón and Murayama. The former displays a natural, unaffected innocence that more experienced child actors struggle to capture, even though she’d already appeared in a few films. On the other hand, Murayama was a familiar face in Mexican horror cinema, often playing evil roles, such as the king vampire in the enjoyably silly ‘Doctor Satan Vs Black Magic/Dr Satán y la Magia Negra (1968). Here, Baledón moves in tight on his face as he monologues about his mission to rid the world of lycanthropes, and the actor delivers a finely judged mixture of sadness and absolute intensity. Sadly, there were no further cinematic adventures of the travelling werewolf hunter and his faithful Licar, which is a great shame.
Born in 1919, Baledón began his directing career in 1953, after a successful period as a screen actor over the previous fifteen years. A notable early credit was the highly successful series of films starring ‘La sombra vengadora’ (1956) which helped establish the Mexican Masked Wrestler as a crimefighting screen hero, and were written by Ramón Obón. The explosion of horror as a box office winner that followed shortly afterwards found the director delivering such features as ‘El pantano de las ánimas/Swamp of the Lost Souls/The Swamp of the Lost Monster’ (1957), ‘Orlak el infierno de Frankenstein/The Hell of Frankenstein’ (1960), ‘La Maldicion De La Llorona/Curse of the Crying Woman’ (1963) and ‘Museum of Horror/Museo del horror’ (1964). Afterwards, he diversified into many other genres, including Westerns, Musicals, Comedies, family films and serious dramas. His final work was in television in the 1990s and he passed away at the age of 75 in 1994.
Mexican horror cinema of the mid-20th Century was certainly a strange place. Strange, but kind of wonderful.
Mark David Welsh 