Having determined to regale my small but sporadic readership with my experiences in enjoying a week of thrills from South of the Border, I promptly disabled myself in the middle of the first movie with a medical error. I took a migraine pill the wrong way at the wrong time and put myself down for about five hours after the damnedest physical reaction I have ever had. However I pulled through and here I am to do my duty.
Il mostruoso dottor Crimen (1952) a.k.a The Revived Monster, is
said to be Mexico's first Mad Doctor movie. [
Addendum: the correct Spanish title is El monstruo resuscitado - I was watching an Italian print of the film with dual Italian/Spanish audio and English subtitles.] A jaded journalist answers
an enigmatic advertisement which leads her into the bizarre domain of a
masked doctor in his gloomy mansion between the cemetery and the sea.
His hideous countenance and social rejection drove him to become a renowned
plastic surgeon and amateur sculptor of waxen beauties, but naturally
his inner conflicts and isolation from humanity have deranged him.
She
becomes the first person ever to show him kindness or encouragement,
inducing him to unmask, but when he learns that her true motivation is
to get a great story he contrives a convoluted revenge. This involves
the inexplicable revivification of a handsome corpse by somehow
transferring into it the life force of the beast-man he keeps caged in
the basement, the resulting revenant being operated by the remote power
of his insane mind. This is really a gothic melodrama with plenty of
appeal for the ladies - a strong independent female falling into a
relationship with a pitiable but creative soul who ultimately becomes
too crazy to endure. How many times has that happened to you? It
happens here every day.
This was filmed at the Churubusco Azteca
studios, the RKO of Mexico, on a couple of very nice elaborate interior
sets and some strange little exterior ones the size of a garage with a
rear projection screen at the end showing the sea or the city. It is a
realm of endless night and one thing I love about these Mexican horror
movies is their dark beauty. The scenes are often staged with a truly
artistic eye for lighting and the striking forms of arches and
silhouettes, as these images reveal:
Despite its thrifty and slightly primitive origin it achieves a powerful mood and its melodramatic and sentimental nature becomes quite affecting. Its formulas and cliches are not of the Mad Doctor variety, but more of the Doomed Romance style of older horror films, the pathetic situation of a gifted man who is too ugly and crazy to live, and an endangered woman whose error was in showing kindness to someone too poorly socialized to understand it.
YES, it's the hideous story of my OWN TERRIBLE LIFE!!!!
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