El charro de las Calaveras (1965) a.k.a. The Rider of the Skulls looks like it was meant as a pilot and two episodes of a kids' TV show, but judging by the online evidence of posters and lobby cards it was released as a movie. The Charro was orphaned when his parents were killed by bandits and he dedicated his life to Justice, remaining anonymous and masked because Justice is faceless. I'd like to point out though that recent history has shown that being masked or anonymous does not make you automatically Just. Sometimes it only makes you one of the monsters. Social commentary aside, in the first episode the Charro confronts a werewolf which has a transformation style I have never seen before - the guy falls in a faint and his fully clothed body fades into a naked skeleton, then back into a fully clothed werewolf. I have never understood the supernatural influence on attire and the way clothing tends to transform with the body. In defeating the lobo humano the Charro acquires a cowardly and foolish sidekick, and an orphan boy. In the second episode the Charro's costume undergoes significant changes, and the boy is replaced by a different boy but the cowardly foolish sidekick remains the same. They go on to encounter two more episodes, a vampire and a headless horseman, both of whom are among the lousiest looking monsters I have yet seen. I hate to stigmatize an entire people but in general Mexican movie monster makeup and masks are terrible.
Charro Mk. 1 meets the Old Witch in the abandoned cemetery:
Skull and crossbone logos on arms and back, cloth face mask.
Crummy looking vampire.
Charro Mk 2 - logos on chest and plain skull on back, full head mask
Idiotic looking headless horseman head in box.
The monsters are intentionally not very scary because this is standard kids' show stuff - chase around, fight the monster, happy ending. What interested me was the rural settings and decaying brick farm architecture of the locations where all the chasing and brawling was filmed. Scholars of the Cinema should note that it was directed by El maestro de los Monstruos, Alfredo Salazar, who as writer created the most outrageous monsters of the Mexican cinema. Name a famous Mexican monster or masked wrestler movie and chances are, Salazar wrote it. As director, maybe not so good.
El grito de la muerte (1959) was renamed The Living Coffin for its U.S. release, but there are more screams of death than there are living coffins in it. There are strange doings on the old rancho, with a murderous Crying Ghost weeping over the deaths of her children in the quicksand swamp and clawing up the faces of her victims, and it has something to do with a fortune in gold. Luckily along comes Gaston Santos, Cowboy Detective, and his stupid lazy sidekick Crazy Coyote - the same sidekick known as Squirrel Eyes in Swamp of the Lost Monsters, but wearing a coonskin cap this time. The dancing horse doesn't do any dancing in this one but it does pull Gaston out of the quicksand and show him where the secret panel is that the ghost comes out of. Swamp of the Lost Monsters was mostly filmed in rural locations, but except when Gaston is riding around the countryside or falling in the quicksand this is filmed in the gloomy arched sets of Churubusco Azteca. In fact the street scene set looks like a rusticated and expanded version of the one in The Monstrous Doctor Crime:
When Gaston Santos takes a hand in things you know there aren't really any monsters, just criminals in monster suits, and everything will turn out okay after a lot of chasing around and brawling. So, nothing really exciting here but I got these out of the way at least.
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