‘That’s what I like about you; if I become a bad husband, you’ll come and kill me.’
A top psychiatrist is fronting for an international counterfeiting ring in exchange for funding to carry on his experiments with resurrecting the dead as zombies. Unfortunately, the loose tongue of a gang member threatens to bring his activities to the attention of Interpol…
Black and white, Mexican horror monkeyshines from director Miguel Morayta and producer Sidney Bruckner. Familiar faces Joaquín Cordero, Alma Delia Fuentes and Gina Romand welcome audiences to the festivities.
Clik here to view.
Experiments resurrecting the dead can be a bit of a burden on the old bank account. Hence, leading psychiatrist (and part-time sociopath) Dr. Plutarco Arozamena (Cordero) pays the bills by pushing counterfeit cash on behalf of a Parisian crime syndicate. The good news is that both enterprises are paying significant dividends, the latter in the delectable form of sexy blonde Luisa Moncelli (Romand), fresh off the boat from Europe with praise from their mysterious boss and a new assignment. The counterfeiting operation is in jeopardy, thanks to gang member Javier Rodríguez (Quintín Bulnes), whose lack of discretion has tipped off the authorities.
Cordero is only too happy to arrange for Bulnes to join his growing zombie army, but it’s a little too late. Interpol has already taken notice and despatched their top agent, Inspector Tomás Mateos (José Gálvez), to the scene, where he is partnered with local hot shot operative Nora (Fuentes). It’s not long before the dynamic duo has the sinister shrink in their sights when they trace a suspicious phone call to his office. They also find an ally in Cordero’s secretary, Elsa (Judith Ruiz Azcarraga), who is desperate to find her father (Carlos Agostí), who vanished without a trace while working with the doctor. As the authorities begin to close in on Cordero, he resorts to increasingly violent methods to ensure his safety and the continuance of his experiments.
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A near decade after the runaway success of Abel Salazar’s ‘El vampiro’ (1957) threw open the doors of the box office to Mexican film producers, the shadow of the King Vampire still hovered persistently over their horror output. Predictably many direct imitators had followed in its immediate wake, tweaking the Lugosi template that Salazar had adopted to provide more aristocratic bloodsucking action. By 1966, the monster population had inevitably diversified, taking in werewolves, mad scientists and their creations, witches, demons, mummies and the like. However, the old Count remained an ever-present touchstone, and his influence is still visible here. Dr. Satán may be meddling in things that man must leave alone, but he’s also suave, sophisticated, handsome, irresistible to women, and marshalling a growing army of the undead against the world. Officially they’re not vampires, but zombies, but the lines seem a little blurred from time to time.
It was still a couple of years before zombies developed a taste for human flesh, courtesy of George A Romero’s ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968). These undead examples bear a closer resemblance to the robotic workforce employed by the likes of Lugosi (again!) in films like ‘White Zombie’ (1932). However, there have been some interesting developments in their evolution since. These living corpses are capable of limited thought and speech, although conversation with them tends to be fairly unrewarding. The possible interaction level also tends to vary at the whims of plot convenience. As you might expect, they are impervious to revolver bullets but, oddly enough, not to salt tablets. This proves extraordinarily handy for Cordero when he needs to hide the evidence of his misdeeds, and this does play in somewhat logically to his nefarious practices rather than being as random as it first appears.
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You see, Cordero’s resurrection methods are borderline unique, being a bizarre mixture of science and sorcery. At first, it looks like just the former is involved: a quick jab of Serum XX-34 to kill the subject and then a dose of XR-6 to resurrect them. However, later in the film, we discover that Cordero has signed a pact with ‘King Devil’, a satanic entity that appears in silhouette when summoned, complete with wings and helpful nuggets of advice! The strong supernatural element is further reinforced when Cordero captures Bulnes’ soul in a small box and explains why his undead minions prefer a salt-free diet. These zombies also sleep in coffins for no apparent reason other than it’s a horror thing, and one is even repelled at the moment of attack by the crucifix around Fuentes’ neck. Perhaps they’re all just mythologically confused.
If all this sounds like it makes for 90 minutes of delirious hi-jinks, then, sadly, that’s not the case. This is clearly a low-budget production, and that’s a problem when the filmmakers are trying to present the villain’s activities as a credible threat to the peace of the free world. Cordero’s office doubles as his home (apparently!), which saves him some cash on rent and the producers some money on sets! It comes with the inevitable secret passage to a hidden lab and adjoining dungeon, though, so it’s the definition of a multifunctional property. The surprising amount of transitions filmed outside on the street, presumably in Mexico City, might suggest a bigger budgeted production if these sequences didn’t merely show characters going from one place to another, often by using long shots of cars moving in traffic.
Clik here to view.
The counterfeiting ring also seems ridiculously small-time. The fake cash is packed in hollowed-out textbooks and arrives via regular postal delivery(!) wrapped in a single piece of brown paper. The fact that it’s cleared customs in both France and Mexico isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of their security operations. It’s also telling that Fuentes can instantly identify one of these phoney bills by holding it up to the (non-existent) light in Cordero’s dungeon. The quality of the work must be terrible. To further emphasise the lack of stakes, Cordero only has a maximum number of three zombies in his army at any one time, and the climax consists of little more than the police breaking into the lab and him admitting that ‘It’s a fair cop, guv’ or Spanish words to that effect.
However, there are still a few interesting aspects to appreciate. Romance in Mexican horror of this era was almost exclusively confined to hero and heroine and would be sealed by little more than a chaste embrace after proceedings had concluded. Sex was usually so far off the table it might as well have been on another planet, but that’s not the case here. One glance at the handsome Cordero (and an appreciation of his intellect) is enough to get Romand super horny from the get-go, and it’s clear that he is more than willing to participate in what follows. Of course, nothing appears on screen beyond some enthusiastic snogging, but even that is unusual for this period. Of course, sex is the province of the bad guys, though, particularly Romand’s character, who seems to find the prospect of Cordero achieving world domination with his zombie army the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Clik here to view.
From an entertainment perspective, the worst thing is that the film feels remorselessly padded to fit the running time. The worst example is a scene where Cordero and his zombie pals break into Gálvez’s office, looking for something or other. He surprises them, and they beat him to a pulp. You would think this would be a good time to finish him off (as instructed by the mysterious crime boss), but instead, they leave. There’s no explanation; they just leave. Perhaps they felt sorry for Gálvez, who was emotionally crushed at discovering that his special combat technique of gently lobbing a chair into a darkened room is not particularly effective. The film does get some props for presenting Fuentes as a no-nonsense, gun-toting secret agent. However, after her bullets fail to stop the zombies, she disintegrates into a hysterical damsel in distress who needs to be rescued. Because she’s only a woman, after all.
Cordero manages to keep a straight face throughout all the silliness, which is admirable in a way but allows the audience to enjoy some unintentional humour at his expense. The scenes where he consults with his Satanic boss are particularly amusing, mainly because they make him look like a small boy asking for permission to go out to play and are completely pointless as he’s just told to get on with it. Romand is also great fun as the permanently aroused bad girl, and it’s a shame that she didn’t stick around for the sequel. Yes, two years later, Cordero was back as the title character in the semi-bonkers ‘Doctor Satan Vs Black Magic/Dr Satán y la Magia Negra’ (1968) when he returns to Earth from hell to battle with Lucifer’s servant Noé Murayama. Cordero is still working for ‘King Devil’, though, so his status as the film’s apparent hero(!) is a little questionable, to say the least.
Clik here to view.
Romand was born in Havana in 1938 as Georgina García y Tamargo. Her professional career began as a nightclub entertainer in her native Cuba before an assignment in Vegas eventually led to acting in Mexican films. She was only 15 when she made her big screen debut in the cross-dressing comedy ‘I Am Very Macho/Yo soy muy macho’ (1953), and further minor roles followed in comedies and musicals. Then she appeared opposite Cordero as his love interest in ‘Santo vs. Infernal Men/Santo contra hombres infernales’ (1961), which was shot in her native Cuba just before the revolution. Her association with the legendary luchador continued in ‘Profanadores de tumbas/Santo contra los profanadores de tumbas/Grave Robbers’ (1965), as the Vampire Queen in ‘The Vengeance of the Vampire Women/La venganza de las mujeres vampiro’ (1970) and as the other half of ‘Santo Vs Frankenstein’s Daughter/Santo vs. la hija de Frankestein’ (1972).
In the mid-1970s, Romand found film roles drying up as she focused more on family life. The situation changed significantly when she was cast in the musical biopic ‘Gavilán o paloma’ (1985), where her performance garnered her a Best Supporting Actress nomination in the Silver Ariel Awards, the Mexican industry’s equivalent of the Oscars. She remained in semi-retirement afterwards but took leading roles in telenovelas ‘Perla’ and ‘El amor no es como lo pintan’ around the turn of the millennium. She was married for many years to theatrical producer Salvador Varela and suffered a near-fatal heart attack just five days after he died in 2020. Although she survived, she struggled with poor health afterwards and eventually passed in December 2022.
Fans of Mexican horror will probably get a kick out of it, but it lacks the personality to elevate it above fairly minor status.