The Vampire/The Vampire’s Coffin

The Vampire/The Vampire’s Coffin
Blu-ray – Import/Region Free
Powerhouse
1957, 1958 / 84, 82 min
Starring Germán Robles, Abel Salazar, Ariadne Welter
Written by Ramón Obón
Photographed by Rosalío Solano, Víctor Herrera
Directed by Fernando Mendez

Early American horror films usually favored human monsters over the supernatural variety, and it wasn’t till the arrival of playful agitators like James Whale did Hollywood drop its shackles and, in David Skal’s words, “embrace the fantastic.” The public did too—monsters took control of the movie house and ticket buyers were happy to finance the invasion.

Things were different south of the border—horror shows were not only slow in coming, they were distinctly mild-mannered in comparison, resembling bleak folk tales rather than primal shockers like Whale’s Frankenstein. Directed by Ramón Peón,1933’s La Llorona was more mystery than ghost story, and 1934’s El fantasma del convento, directed by Fernando de Fuentes (“Mexico’s John Ford”), was a glorified, if ornate, campfire tale—each were diverting curiosity pieces but no match for Universal’s blood and thunder melodramas.

It wasn’t til the 50s that Mexico got serious about their scares, even if the films themselves resembled a patchwork creation worthy of Mary Shelley’s mad scientist: 1954’s La Bruja was a grisly blend of superstition and science-fiction, and Fernando Mendez’s Ladron de cadaveres was an unholy hybrid of Island of Lost Souls and a luchador film. Once Mexican horror films gained traction, they would run on two tracks, one a gonzo roller-coaster ride for thrill-seeking film fans, the other a slow-moving train that coddled its passengers and shied away from the more grotesque aspects of Mexico’s heritage.

Poverty and despair ravaged Mexico before and after its war of independence, a bloody trek to freedom that took a not-unexpected detour through Mexico’s religious art (it was a rebellious Catholic priest who helped foment that civil war). Filled with nightmarish images like spontaneous combustion or encounters with demons, 19th-century “ex-voto” art didn’t stint on blood and guts to tell the tale, this was folk art as a document of everyday horror or occasional salvation—storyboards for horror films never made. But when Fernando Mendez and producer/actor Abel Salazar got around to making their own monster movie, they ignored the past: instead of honoring the country’s  macabre history, the filmmakers stayed close to the Universal rule book.

In 1957’s El Vampiro, producer Salazar casts himself as the hero, Enrique Saldívar, a physician who finds himself stuck on a train platform in the lonely village of Sierra Negra—there are no cabs in sight but pretty Marta Gonzalez (Ariadne Welter) is a consolation prize—after a decade’s absence she’s come home to arrange her aunt’s funeral and make amends with the family she left behind.

Salazar, not the most subtle of actors, is equally clumsy in romance, and he’s instantly, eye-poppingly, smitten with Marta who succumbs in record time. So invested in their own passion play, the lovebirds are oblivious to the coffin-shaped crate being loaded onto a waiting coach. In it waits the man of the midnight hour, Count Karol de Lavud (Germán Robles), a vampire with designs on Marta’s family—he’s already destroyed the young woman’s aunt and vampirized the beautiful Eloisa (Carmen Montejo), a blood relative in more ways than one, and ready to do Lavud’s bidding. It’s up to Salazar’s junior league Van Helsing to destroy the creature.

Tod Browning’s Dracula is criticized in some (most?) quarters for its glacial pace and stage bound framing, but patient movie fans are happy to be hypnotized by the film’s otherworldly stillness and Lugosi’s imperious bloodsucker. El Vampiro is equally static but should only be prescribed as a substitute for sleeping pills, the lack of action suggests directorial uncertainty, not creeping dread. Ramón Obón’s screenplay feels so paint-by-numbers that it highlights a great irony: Fernandez and Obón had already been handed the perfect blueprint for a Mexican vampire film, George Melford’s Spanish language Dracula, filmed parallel to Browning’s classic and on the same sets (they shot in the evening during the crew’s absence).

Spanish cinematographer Rosalío Solano is one of the saving graces of El Vampiro, his shadowy dreamscapes—there are plenty of strange figures emerging from dark corners—are comparable to the work of George Robinson, one of Universal’s most evocative cinematographers—thanks to Solano, El Vampiro is a black and white feast. But does film itself have to be so colorless?

George Robinson was a master of the clock as well as the camera, with little time and less money he could transform a bottom of the bill product into an A-list production. In 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Robinson enjoyed what might have been his finest four minutes and fifty seconds—a post-title sequence involving a crow-infested graveyard, two crooks, and Lawrence Talbot’s corpse. Directed by Roy William Neill, it’s one of the studio’s most spine-tingling moments and refutes the notion that Universal’s beloved monsters were naught but toothless bogeymen.

Fernando Mendez can be forgiven for recreating Neill’s graveyard tour de force in El ataud del vampiro, the 1958 sequel to El Vampiro. The hulking Yeire Beirute plays Barraza, a broad-shouldered galoot hired by Dr. Mendoza (Guillermo Orea) to steal the corpse of Count Lavud: he’s planning to use the undead body in some obscure medical experiment but the Baron has other ideas.

Salazar and Ariadne Welter return as Dr. Enrique and Marta, both associates at Mendoza’s clinic, now the Count’s de facto base of operations. With the help of the zombiefied Barraza, Lavud renews his mission to turn Sierra Negra into a playground for bloodsuckers.

Mendoza, Salazar, Ariadne Welter appeared to be a close-knit team and would join forces again in 1962 for one of the great moments in Mexico’s Theater of the Absurd, The Brainiac (Spanish-speaking audiences saw it with the bland title, The Baron of Terror). For old time’s sake Germán Robles returns as the magistrate who sends the diabolic Baron (Salazar) to the stake and happily, the gregarious actor is one of the featured commentators on Powerhouse’s terrific new Blu ray set, El Vampiro: Two Bloodsucking Tales from Mexico.

Along with the superb transfers of the films, the extras are more than enough reason to grab this set, beginning with an expansive and detailed booklet about the films. The Mark of Abel is a new documentary about Abel Salazar featuring his daughters Claudia Salazar Arenas and Rosa Salazar, and Who’s Afraid of Carmen Montejo? is a 31 minute feature about the venerable Cuban actress. Robles himself is the center of attention in The Great Mexican Vampire in which horror specialist Roberto Coria discusses the actor and the vampire myth in Mexican cinema. There’s plenty more where that came from and you can see the complete list of extras at Powerhouse’s site.