Wow, already a week plus since T(ween) Fest 14. As veteran readers–i.e., all of you–will have gleaned by now, we start watching movies before the actual Saturday fest. We didn’t watch anything in Houston this year, but as soon as we hit Dallas on the Fest eve the films started.
The first was the Mexican horror flick La Marca del Muerto, better known to the Monster Kid generation as Creature of the Walking Dead, the American dub that played on TV back in the day. This version was overseen by Jerry Warren, not K. Gordon Murray, but it’s not as dire as that fact makes it sound. I’d say my major memory of the film from my salad days was the booming, constantly recurring score.
It’s about as silly and predictable and fun as you’d expect. Back in the Oldy Days a mad scientist is draining (of course) the blood of beautiful young women to create a process for eternal youth. After kacking his latest victim the police crash into his hidden lab and drag him off. He’s hanged for his crimes.
In present day (well, present day as represented by when the film was made), the scientist’s inevitable identical-looking grandson finds the lab and his ancestor’s notes and, needless to say, revives him. The best part of this part is that when he discovers the lab, the desiccated corpse of his grandfather’s last victim is still there on the slab. Apparently none of the cops saw to the body after they dragged Grandad out of there. As you’d expect, the grandfather requires frequent new injections of blood to keep young.
The film is partly inspired, it seems, by Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, with a modern day man mentally subjugated by an malevolent ancestor, and a bit of Bava’s Black Sunday, with the identical guy (the two not only look alike, but of course the grandfather when revived is the exact same age as the grandson) sporting a convenient neck burn from being hanged that allows him to be identified in the end. Black Sunday, of course, was also a much more prominent influence on the Mexican gothic horror flick The Curse of the Crying Woman, which is pretty great itself.
If you think of a cornier Mexican version of the Kolchak telemovie The Night Strangler you’d be in the right ballpark.
As usual for Mexican gothics of the period, the cinematography is wonderful. This is the sort of film dying for a nice Blu Ray with both versions on it. Somebody really needs to revive the old Casa Negra label.
