El Vampiro: Two Bloodsucking Tales from Mexico (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jan 09, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Fernando MéndezRelease Date(s)
1957/1958 (October 29, 2024)Studio(s)
Cinematográfica ABSA/Alameda Films (Indicator/Powerhouse Films)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A
Review
If your exposure to Mexican fantasy cinema has been limited to Aztec Mummies and the wild and wooly wrestling movies of masked icon Santo and his friends, you’re sure to find The Vampire (El Vampiro, 1957) and The Vampire’s Coffin (El Ataud del Vampiro, 1958) a big, pleasant surprise. Both have a stateliness utterly lacking in the anything-goes world of Mexican horror-fantasy of the 1960s and ’70s. Both show a lot of imagination and are especially intriguing in that they bridge the gap between the classic Universal horror films of the 1930s and ’40s with the Hammer Gothics that immediately followed. Previously released to Region 1 DVD in 2006 by CasaNegra/Panik House Entertainment with good-for-the-time video transfers, Powerhouse Film’s new Blu-ray discs present the films in much-improved high-definition versions, and they’ve packed them with fascinating extra features.
The Vampire predates the release of Hammer’s seminal Dracula aka Horror of Dracula by almost eight months, yet in many ways it anticipates the Christopher Lee-style vampire that broke from of the Bela Lugosi mold. (Though some may find lineage with the Dracula played in several ’40s films by John Carradine.) Count Karol de Lavud, alias Mr. Duval (German Robles), is much more physical like Lee than Lugosi, and like Lee is dashingly handsome and erudite.
The picture successfully integrates two disparate elements: the German Expressionist influence of the Universal films with its rural Mexican setting. The Vampire, though not its sequel, also set its story in the same kind of timeless Never Never Land of the Universal films. Though its leads are clearly contemporary, the area around the hacienda where most of the action takes place could be late-19th century Mexico, and the Count rides around in an even older horse-drawn carriage, though none of this seems particularly strange.
The story has Marta Gonzales (Ariadna Welter, sister of Linda Christian) rushing home to the family’s palatial but now partly dilapidated hacienda where her beloved Aunt Maria (Alicia Montoya) lies gravely ill. On the way she meets Dr. Enrique Saldívar (Abel Salazar, also the film’s producer); he’s been invited by Maria’s brother, Emilio (Jose Luis Jimenez), who’s concerned about his sister’s hallucinatory claims that the estate is being overrun with vampirism.
The pair arrives to find that Aunt Maria has died and entombed only the day before. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that Maria’s other aunt, Eloisa (Carmen Motejo) is herself a vampire, and that her undead status has washed away the years and restored her youthful beauty. Callously she presses Marta to sell the property to mysterious stranger Duval (Robles), actually the resurrected Hungarian Count Lavud. His alias adapts the oft-used ruse of Dracula, who in the movies frequently reverses the letters of his name to become “Alucard.”
The Vampire doesn’t particularly add to the genre so much as refine it. (Mild Spoilers) Other than simply being a very well-made, atmospheric vampire movie its major contribution to the genre is the addition of poor Aunt Maria. Entombed with a large crucifix she later turns up as an emaciated, ghostly figure—still holding that large crucifix—silently warning Marta of the danger all around them. These scenes are still pretty creepy a half-century later, and actress Montoya, in fact only 36 years old at the time, visually is just right as is her earnestly panicky performance.
Overall, the film’s main asset is Fernando Mendez’s inventive direction and Rosalio Solano’s superbly atmospheric cinematography, with extreme, noirish shadows. (And, like Lugosi’s Dracula, little spots on the actor’s eyes add an eerie effect.) The ability of Lavud and Eloisa to materialize in and out of scenes via simple jump cuts isn’t particularly original (and it betrays the accepted limitations of vampirism), but Lavuds transformations into bat form is expertly edited, despite some highly visible wireworks used to show the creature in flight. Also good is the strong emphasis on how the vampires’ reflections don’t appear in mirrors, an attribute usually underplayed or ignored all together in most other films of this type.
Overall, it’s much superior to the American-made The Vampire released that same year, and which cautiously incorporated science fiction elements to explain that title character. The Mexican El Vampiro is a little pokey; it seems much longer than its 84 minutes, but it mostly impresses. In the end it’s not really imitative of earlier Hollywood films so much as come into existence simultaneous and parallel lines as nascent vampire features made in other parts of the world.
The Vampire’s Coffin isn’t nearly as ambitious, playing much like a Universal horror film from that studio’s “second cycle” of the 1940s, with a greater emphasis on blood and thunder action in place of subtle atmosphere, but it’s still a lot of fun in its own way and offers yet more great cinematography.
Recuperating at a peculiarly deserted hospital—much like the later Halloween II—under Dr. Enrique Saldívar’s care, Marta is nearly fully recovered from her terrifying ordeal, and ready to resume her career as a dancer in a big variety stage show. Meanwhile, one of Enrique’s colleagues, Dr. Mendoza (Guillermo Orea) foolishly (and without a lot of motivation) steals Lavud’s coffin with the help of wild-eyed grave robber Barazza (Yerye Beirute) to study it. (In a mirror, the perfectly preserved corpse appears only as a well-dressed skeleton.) Removing the massive stake from Lavud’s body, Manson accidentally revives the Count, who immediately makes Barazza his Renfield-like servant. Lavud sets up shop in the basement of a nearby wax museum, quickly learns of Marta’s whereabouts, and becomes determined to make her his bride.
The Vampire’s Coffin has a greater emphasis on humor and action, with Enrique less the roguish leading man of The Vampire and more a bumbling comic type bordering on Bob Hope in his horror-comedies, a role apparently more in line with the Salazar’s usual screen persona. There’s also the obvious addition of elements lifted from House of Wax and Phantom of the Opera, the latter with Maria’s career on the line (“C’mon kids! Three minutes till curtain time!”) while Lavud stalks her from the wings. (Welter is clearly no dancer, however, with a lack of grace that borders on the absurd.)
That said, the film has its share of terrific set pieces, particularly when Lavud chases a dancer through the empty city streets, with the vampire’s enormous shadow threatening to swallow her whole.
Indicator’s El Vampiro: Two Bloodsucking Tales from Mexico impresses in every way. Both black-and-white films, 4K restorations from the original camera negatives (by Alameda Films) with the first 1.37:1 standard format and the sequel 1.85:1 widescreen, are very strong transfers with excellent detail, inky blacks and free of damage. The lossless LPCM audio is likewise very good, with each film offered in its original Spanish with excellent English subtitles, and in English-dubbed versions (with slight differences in the dialogue), also offered with optional English subtitles.
The bountiful supplements are terrific. Robles himself (who died in 2015) provides an audio commentary recorded in 2007. There are outstanding featurettes on actor-producer Abel Salazar, made with the participation of his family and supported by great film clips and images; a similar featurette on actress Carmen Montejo, hosted by Abraham Castillo Flores, programmer and Mexican horror film expert, also with great clips and images. Each is highly informative.
Also included is a new Interview with Juan Ramón Obón, the writer sharing memories of his esteemed father, the prolific screenwriter Ramón Obón; a new interview with Roberto Coria, the horror cinema and literature specialist examining the life and career of actor Germán Robles and the representation of the vampire myth in Mexican cinema. Finally there’s an interview with Elisa Lozano, the film historian and curator discussing the work and impact of the production designer Gunther Gerzso. Also included on the two Region-Free discs are trailers, image galleries, publicity material, and even a French photo-novel version of The Vampire’s Coffin.
Alas, The Digital Bits was sent only check discs, and we were thus unable to examine the Limited Edition exclusive 80-page booklet featuring new essays by Jesús Palacios and David Wilt, archival essays by Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro and Carmen A Serrano, cast interviews, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits.
For classic horror fans, this is a must-have, an outstanding release of its type. Highly recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV