The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A real oddity among the Batman animated films – one where the basics of the Batman mythos are translated into Aztec culture at the time of the arrival of the Conquistadors
This was made as a quickie cash-in on Irwin Allen’s big-budgeted bomb The Swarm. Cheap effects and ridiculous plotting cause it to topple well over into bad movie stakes
A film made to tap the 1970s fascination with the so-called Bermuda Triangle mystery with a name cast lost at sea on a ship as mysterious happenings start to occur
Bizarre Mexican film about a resurrected warlock who transforms into a bat creature to take retribution against the descendants of those who burned him at the stake
The very first film from Guillermo Del Toro, a unique take on the vampire film concerning an aging antique dealer who finds a clockwork device that rejuvenates but leaves him with a taste for blood
Fascinatingly torrid Mexican-made film about voodoo, which prefigures much of The Serpent and the Rainbow with striking effect
This sold itself as the first Iraqi horror film, which it isn’t quite (more accurately a film made by an expatriate), although it is rooted in the mythology of the region
The second of the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy films. The film has cheap, dreary set-ups and the running time is padded by footage from the first film. This does have the novelty of being one of the first Mexican films to feature a masked wrestler hero
Film about an expedition through the jungles of the Yucatan to investigate a Mayan pyramid that is revealed to contain alien artefacts. This ventures well inside wacky fringe science theories
A Mexican entry in the haunted house genre, featuring a group of girls who inherit a place haunted by an aunt and her black cat. Strikingly rich in terms of set design
A Mexican-made variant on one of the Saw films where a group of diverse people are locked into a room and must select one of their number to die otherwise everybody will be killed
Alfonso Cuaron’s son Jonas makes a film about Mexican illegal immigrants being hunted by a white vigilante in a Most Dangerous Game scenario. The film came out just after Trump’s famous wall campaign speech
A possession and exorcism film from Mexico, this draws on the same tired and overly worn clichés that have been around since The Exorcist but offers some interesting twists
An acclaimed surrealistic film from Luis Buñuel in which a group of people attend an upper-class dinner party but then find themselves inexplicably unable to leave the room
Painfully dull film edited together from two unrelated Mexican films ending an incomprehensible plot featuring a revived Aztec Mummy and another mummy that transforms into a werewolf played by Lon Chaney Jr
The first film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, more like a student film that seems a rehearsal for the surrealistic and outrageous imagery of El Topo, although no less uniquely Jodorowsky-esque for all that
A zombie film (of sorts) from Mexico, although it could just as easily be about a man infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. A zombie film in which almost nothing happens, we just sit watching a man getting ill
A key work in the cult of Alejandro Jodorowsky in which he plays a character called The Alchemist who guides a group on a mystical awakening. Surreal, challenging and mind-expanding
One of four cheap Mexican films that were the last works an 81 year old Boris Karloff appeared in. Here he presides over relatives gathered for the reading of his will as they are killed by malevolent toys
Fascinating Mexican film in which characters become trapped in the same limited stretch of space. It is striking watching them forced to repeat the same things over and over
One of four cheap and tatty Mexican films made by Boris Karloff just before his death. Here Karloff plays a Caribbean plantation owner obsessed with voodoo rituals
Charming and delightful Mexican venture into Magical Realism concerning a daughter frustrated in finding her true love who throws herself into cooking that brings out her suppressed emotions
Mexican film made to celebrate the Day of the Dead wherein Death befriends a poor peasant and bequeaths him a gift of a gourd of healing water. While not terribly sophisticated, this works as a pure and simple fable
A standout adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether where a visitor to an asylum discovers the patients are masquerading as the doctors
A Mexican film about a scientist who turns his son into an ape man that goes amok. A 1940s mad scientist film with the addition of modern exploitation elements. Listed as a Video Nasty in the UK.
Obscure, little seen but beautifully made Magical Realism film set amongst witches and romantic rivalry in Mexico
A standout adaptation of a classic work of Mexican literature in the Magical Realist tradition. This creates an incredibly haunted mood as it follows a man’s quest for his past to a town that seems to exist inside a twilight zone
A bad movie classic. As the title explains, we get a revived mummy pitted against an actor in a ridiculously clunky tin man suit. Third in the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy series, the biggest ripoff is that 3/4 of the film consist of footage recycled from the preceding films
Near indescribable mix of horror, hallucination, surrealism and tormented sexuality – quite possibly cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky at his best
One of the better films from Santo the Mexican wrestling superhero, quite an atmospheric work where Santo and his friend Blue Demon faces Dracula and his werewolf acolyte
Another of the films from the Mexican wrestling superhero Santo where he and his friend Blue Demon encounter assorted Famous Monsters raised by a mad scientist
In something like his 30th film and amid the tatty production values of a Edward D. Wood Jr film, El Santo fight mobsters who have employed alien monsters that look like giant ambulatory bean bags
One of the films featuring the Mexican masked wrestler Santo. A rehash of Mystery of the Wax Museum/House of Wax with Santo facing a mad waxworks curator who is using human bodies as exhibits
Another of the films featuring Santo, the Mexican masked wrestler superhero. In one of the duller entries, Santo here travels to Spain and is pitted against a mad scientist operating an artworks theft operation
The Mexican masked wrestler superhero Santo faces Frankenstein’s daughter who wants his blood to perfect her rejuvenation serum in this entertainingly madcap outing
In this rather shabby effort, Santo (in the sixteenth of his 52 films) takes on invaders from Mars whose entire plan seems to hang on the need to have to defeat Santo in the wrestling ring
This is the most famous of the Santo films, one that evinces an often crudely effective poetry out of its assemblage of B movie elements as he goes up against a vampire priestess and her minions
Isaac Ezban makes another conceptually out there film about people trapped in a bus station who all start transforming into the likeness of the same man. Much has been modelled on The Twilight Zone and this has a fascinating weirdness
One of the better killer shark copycats made in the immediate aftermath of Jaws, this approaches the familiar in unexpected ways
Cult film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surrealistic Western that comes with an incoherent mishmash of symbolism, Zen mysticism and 1960s raised consciousness
There are few films that you can accuse of crossing over taboo lines and keeping going without compromise. This Mexican film has been construed as a catalogue of depravities; on the other hand, the lack of even a nominal plot soon causes this to lapse into repetitive tedium
Grimly fascinating Mexican film about the activities of a family of cannibals. The film keeps you intrigued because it only drops suggestions about what is happening, leaving it up to us to piece solutions together, although the eventual lack of answers is frustrating
This is surely one of the great exploitation titles of all time. Another Mexican wrestling superhero film where a duo of woman wrestlers take on the Aztec Mummy from another Mexican horror series