El mundo de los vampiros (1961) was written by Alfredo Salazar, and directed by Alfonso Corona Blake who went on to bless the world with Santo Versus the Vampire Women and Santo in the Wax Museum. In the case of Sr. Blake I can assert that this movie right here was the greatest thing he ever did, probably. I have seen more vampire movies than I can count and I have never seen one quite like this. Filmed on the startlingly large and elaborate well-lit sets of Churubusco Azteca, it has a great look from the very first shot of a hand groping out of a slowly opening coffin. Multigenerational family curses seem to be a feature of Mexican horror stories, and this one is the three hundred year vengeance curse of Count Sergio Subotai, Vampire, against the descendants of the Colman family, and if he doesn't get his vengeance venged right now he will have to wait another hundred years. Another feature of these stories is hairy-handedness - when you get vampire bit the first sign of impending vampirism is you get hair on your hands. That is the universal sign of something going wrong in your life, when you get hair on your hands, because the next thing you know you are going to get claws and probably a big hairy pig nose and soon you will be running around in a cape and top hat going RAAAAAR! That doesn't happen in this though, I am just talking. You can forget about the plot and just watch the crazy things happening - the Bone Organ, the Pit of Impalement, the mob of stupid looking masked sub-vampires and spooky looking she-vamps, the fortuitous appearance of an expert on the psychological effects of music. And this:
I like to fell over when I saw this insanely wonderful human-headed bat. I have never seen that before ever. I have also never seen the main vampire suddenly in the middle of the big fight inexplicably grow big furry bat ears. To help him fight. Every minute of this movie is full of great stuff to see, even if it is just the imaginative way the big fancy set is lit - it's as gorgeously filmed as any great Hollywood b-movie of the 1940s. This is going on my list of all time favorite horror movies, second only to El espejo de la bruja (The Witch's Mirror). I have used up all my raving and will just fill this out with absolute proof of my assertions in the form of these images:
The lovely Erna Bauman, who went on to grace El vampiro sangriento
and La invasion de los vampiros with her solemn beauty.
Go and do likewise.
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