‘Later, I’ll turn you into a toad with a tarantula’s head.’
A mortician’s assistant falls in love with a young woman who has come to town to arrange her aunt’s funeral. Unfortunately, she is kidnapped by a mad scientist who plans to transform her into a perfect woman…
Good-natured movie vehicle for popular Mexican funnyman Clavillazo. Julián Soler directs while Evangelina Elizondo and Carlos Orellana co-star and wrote the script together from a story by Fernando Galiana.
It’s a slow day at the funeral home for the mortician’s assistant, Clavillazo (his name in the movie, too), when in walks love in the beautiful form of the grieving Beatriz (Elizondo). She’s in town to bury her recently deceased aunt but has no money for services. Clavillazo is immediately smitten and pays for everything by borrowing money from friends Gargle (José Wilhelmy) and Popsicle (José Luis Moreno). As she has nowhere to go, he even moves out of his small home so she can move in, and he stays with blind upstairs neighbour Don Melchor (Orellana).
However, there has been a spate of grave robbing in the area, and locals are fearful of hunchback Licenciado (Alejandro Reyna), a recent arrival who never speaks to anybody. In reality, he has been brought back from the dead by the mysterious Dr Sputnik(!), who lives in a nearby castle with some monsters (just go with it!) Sputnik is tired of his failed experiments with dead animals and human bodies and wants to experiment on the living. Using his hypnotic powers, he lures Elizondo to his lair. Clavillazo follows, desperate to rescue his lady love.
Abbott and Costello really have a lot to answer for, don’t they? Some say that just meeting up on the big screen with the classic Universal Monsters alone is enough to condemn them. However, those ventures had a less obvious consequence: international copycats. Although this effort is not a direct rip-off of ‘Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein’ (1948) like ‘Frankestein el vampiro y compañía/Frankenstein, the Vampire and Co.’ (1962), it’s glaringly obvious where the inspiration lies. Surprisingly, though, it was released barely a year after the Mexican horror boom began with ‘El Vampiro’ (1957) rather than at the end of such a cycle when its popularity was in decline.
It’s also unusual that the monsters only feature heavily in the last thirty minutes or so. Indeed, we only visit the castle twice in the film’s first half, and then quite briefly. Instead, the focus is mainly on the romance between Clavillazo and Elizondo, and, although it would be stretching it a little to describe these early scenes as character development, Elizondo is a skilful actress and the two work well together. There are also plenty of opportunities for Clavillazo to present what was likely his trademark screen persona: the socially awkward, big-hearted clown barely hidden beneath a harmless, slightly blow-hard exterior.
The latter part of the proceedings is, of course, what horror fans will come for, although you probably won’t be surprised to learn that most of it involves Clavillazo running around the castle dungeons and screaming a lot when he encounters its various occupants. There’s a handyman who looks suspiciously like Frankenstein’s Monster, a Beast Man in a cage, a werewolf (Vicente Lara), a Mummy and a cut-price ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ (1954)! Best of all, there’s a bloodsucker in a dinner suit played by Germán Robles, reprising his starring role from ‘El Vampiro’ (1957). Sadly, it’s only a brief cameo, but it must have been fun for audiences of the time.
All of this does call Dr Sputnik’s working practices into question, though. Did he create these creatures in his laboratory? Are they the ‘failed experiments’ he refers to early on? And what is he actually doing anyway? After kidnapping Elizondo, he plans to use mind control to turn her into the ‘perfect woman’; his ‘Galatea’, as he puts it, with a nod to George Bernard Shaw. This is a little weird as he’s already informed us that ‘women are the worst thing in nature.’ What all this has to do with a basement full of monsters, bringing his assistant back from the dead, keeping a pit filled with crocodiles, and grave robbing is anybody’s guess. If I may make a suggestion, the good doctor needs to focus his energies a little more and concentrate on just one area of research at a time.
Delivering laughter is top of the agenda here, and Clavillazo and the filmmakers amp up the energy in the final third and even include a couple of fourth wall breaks. The references to the classic Universal horror films may not be subtle, but they are sometimes vaguely amusing. It’s always nice to see the heroic couple trapped in the room with the crushing walls at the climax, seemingly a nod here to ‘The Raven’ (1935). Gustavo César Carrión’s musical score is impressively gothic at times, too, although obviously, there are a fair amount of wacky cues in the later stages to try and sell some of the gags. Similarly, the sets and Soler’s direction create a bit of atmosphere in the moments between the jokes, and the monster makeups aren’t as tragic as you might expect.
Elizondo was a multi-talented individual with more accomplishments than there is room to list here. Born in Mexico City in 1929, she was working as a dancer when she won a national contest to provide the voice of Walt Disney’s ‘Cinderella’ (1950) for its Mexican release. Becoming a successful actress on stage and screen over the next few years, she mainly concentrated on comedies and musicals. She married engineer José Luis Paganoni in 1959 but separated shortly afterwards. In May of the following year, Paganoni shot the well-known actor Ramón Gay outside Elizondo’s home in a fit of jealousy. Gay died of his wounds in hospital, and Paganoni was sent to prison.
The following year, Elizondo began a complementary music career, releasing the album ‘La sensacional Evangelina’ to great success. Several albums followed, ranging from religious to children’s songs to opera. She also led her own orchestra for 12 years. Scaling down her film career in the 1970s, she studied under some of Mexico’s most notable artists at the National School of Painting and held her first of many solo exhibitions of her work in 1973. There was also time to qualify for a degree in theology before she resurrected her screen career in the late 1980s, which included a featured supporting role in ‘A Walk in the Clouds’ (1995) with Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn. She passed in 2017 at the age of 88. Oh, I forgot to mention that she also wrote a couple of books. Because, of course, she did.
Harmless but forgettable horror comedy.