Las momias de Guanajuato (1972)

... aka: El santo contra las momias (Santo vs. the Mummies)

... aka: Guanajuato's Mummies

... aka: Mummies of Guanajuato, The

... aka: Santo contre les momies de Guanajuato (Santo vs. the Mummies of Guanajuato)

Directed by:

Federico Curiel

Because of a burial tax, the bodies of many deceased in Guanajuato, Mexico (ones which were either unclaimed or had relatives who couldn't pay to keep them buried) were dug up and then stored in a building. There, the bodies went through a natural mummification process. Due to the amount of tourists flocking to the area to get a look at the mummies, a museum (El Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato) was finally opened in 1969 to display the well-preserved corpses in. Now many of them stand around in well-lit glass cases. Well, except for the dead babies, which sit in their own case. Some are still dressed. Others aren't. Some still have hair while others are bald. Many have their arms crossed and a good number of them have hauntingly agonized looks on their faces (supposedly many had died of cholera). Among the mummies is a woman who appears to have been buried alive, a mummified fetus taken from a pregnant corpse's womb and corpses that have been taken out of their cases and posed on benches so visitors can take selfies with them (!!)

The museum is still open to this day and remains a popular tourist destination but I've gotta admit I'd never personally set foot in this place. While I'm not religious myself, the over eighty percent of Mexicans who identify as Roman Catholic are, so you'd think the concept of putting corpses on display and then charging money to see them would be considered a bit, I dunno, blasphemous, right? After all, these are bodies that should have never been taken out of the ground in the first place. They are not intentionally-preserved mummies like in Egypt but corpses that have only been disinterred because their families didn't have the money to pay an annual tax. It's on those grounds I have an issue with the museum. It seems like just another way; a very, very tasteless way, to exploit poor people even in death.

Speaking of exploitation, the museum had barely been open for a year when this film went into production. It starts out as an advertisement / endorsement for the place and presents it like any other spook show attraction. We follow a tour group on a bus as they travel through Guanajuato all the way to the museum. We get some nice looks at the city and it indeed appears like it would be a cool city to visit. An alcoholic dwarf tour guide named Penguin (Jorge Pinguino) leads the group through a cemetery (where the "mummies" should be!) to the museum while trying to scare them with stories about how some visitors have died of heart attacks while viewing the exhibit. He claims some may have been buried alive and explains how the cities dry climate mummified the corpses but leaves out that little detail about how the bodies ended up there in the first place. We get plenty of leering shots of the corpses as they pass through while spooky music plays.

The tour group then enter into another room where (fake) mummies line the walls. One of these is a 7'2" former wrestler named Satan (an uncredited Tinieblas) who is rumored to have made a pact with the devil to become a world champion wrestler back in 1871. He ended up being defeated by a wrestler named Santo but swore he'd return a century later for revenge. A squeamish woman (Mabel Luna) who sees Satan's body move passes out and then, after the tour group angrily leave, Penguin himself faints after witnessing the same. When he awakens, Satan's mummy has disappeared.

Taking a break from the mummy stuff, we visit a nightclub where singer Martha Angelica (playing herself) performs for three minutes. Penguin shows up, has a bunch of drinks and convinces singer Lina (Elsa Cárdenas) and cigarette girl Alicia (Patricia Ferrer) to accompany him to the museum so he can show them that Satan is gone. That's followed soon after by an eight-minute-long wrestling match with the undefeated tag team duo of Blue Demon and Mil Máscaras taking down their competitors. Afterward, Lina (who's the fiancée of Mil Máscaras) and Penguin try to warn them there's a mummy on the loose, but Blue Demon doesn't buy it. His skepticism doesn't last long however after he's knocked out by the mummy and finds the night watchman dead. A wino is then killed, which pulls the obligatory police inspector (Juan Gallardo) into the story.

Other mummies are resurrected and kill off some of the supporting cast in bloodless attacks (necks are broken). Satan gets his hands on Blue Demon's mask and outfit, lures cops to a location at night and then frame him for killing a bum. Next thing Blue knows, his name is all over the evening news as the killer and he's forced to go into hiding. Santo, who just happens to be passing through on his way to a match in San Luis with his agent Mr. Gonzalez (Carlos Suárez), stops in Guanajuato to get a hotel and ends up figuring in the finale, which includes lots of clunkily-choreographed fighting and flamethrower pistols. Despite his third billing, Santo is only seen one other time in the movie when the mummy has a flashback to losing his wrestling bout with Santo's ancestor.

Granted, someone returning from the dead for revenge because they lost a wrestling match 100 years earlier isn't the most compelling plot line in the world but this at least has a few fun elements. The mummy make-up and masks are pretty good (some even look pretty scary!), travelogue footage is decent and there's some amusing teasing about the wrestler's masks being removed, plus some truly amazing outfits, with Mil Máscaras' pink and yellow mask, red vest, animal print trunks and gold tights and cape ensemble being the "best" of the bunch. On the down side, this never generates much in the way of excitement, scenes involving the police are boring (numerous other scenes also drag) and they give Blue Demon an annoying adopted son named Julio (played by Julio César, the son of producer Rogelio Agrasánchez), who, along with not being able to act, does the usual dumb little kid things like trying to follow his dad around and getting himself kidnapped.

While most earlier Mexican wrestling movies were produced cheaply and turned a nice profit, the zenith of all that is right here. This is rumored to be the highest grossing film of them all and it's not too difficult to see why. While this is a pretty mediocre offering, the casting coup of the three most popular Lucha Libre legends in one film, plus capitalizing on the fame of the Guanajuato mummies / museum just as it opened, brought audiences in droves.

There were two follow-ups from the same producer: El robo de las momias de Guanajuato / "Robbery of the Mummies of Guanajuato" (1972) and El castillo de las momias de Guanajuato / "Castle of the Mummies of Guanajuato" (1973). Both of these were directed by Tito Novaro and filmed in Guatemala. Before all of that there was the telenovela Las momias de Guanajuato (1962) produced by Telesistema Mexicano, which eventually became Televisa; the largest mass media company in all of Latin America. And there was the comedy Capulina contra las momias (El terror de Guanajuato) / "Capulina vs. the Mummies: The Terror of Guanajuato" (1973) and the semi-recent animated kid's movie La Leyenda de las Momias de Guanajuato / "The Legend of the Mummies of Guanajuato" (2014).

There were actually two VHS releases for this one (1986 and a 1991 reissue) in the U.S., both on the Mexcinema Video Corp. label and both in Spanish with no subtitles. The Mexican DVD release from Distribuidora Virtual Digital de Mexico comes with both English and French subtitles.

★★

Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990)

... aka: Baile de Formatura III (Graduation Dance III)
... aka: Dernier baiser avant l'enfer (Last Kiss Before Hell)
... aka: El último beso (The Last Kiss)
... aka: Escuela de terror (School of Terror)
... aka: Noche de graduación 3 El último beso (Graduation Night 3: The Last Kiss)
... aka: Prom Night 3
... aka: Suudelma ennen kuolemaa (Kiss Before Death)

Directed by:
Ron Oliver
Peter Simpson

I've noticed that many fans of the pretty straightforward slasher Prom Night (1980) didn't much care for the more comedic / supernatural route the first sequel, HELLO MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT II (1987), took. Well, bad news for you if that's the case cause Mary Lou's back. Shackled up in torn stockings and forced to do an eternal Rockettes-style dance in hell (?), Mary Lou (Courtney Taylor) manages to saw through her chain with a nail file. Next thing we know, her tombstone blows up and she's back at her old haunt, Hamilton High School, and ready to indulge in a comic-gore killing spree with her array of corny, Freddy-inspired one-liners. "Mama said I'd be a heart breaker," she smirks after electrocuting the overnight janitor with a jukebox until his pacemaker explodes. Unlike with entry #2, where Mary Lou was resurrected wanting both revenge for her fiery death and to finally get the prom queen crown she was denied in 1957, in this entry she just wants... love.

Alex Grey (Tim Conlon) is your average high school student. Average height, average shoe size, average intellect, average looks, average athlete and as colorless as his last name. The only above average thing about him is that he somehow happens to be dating the beautiful "nerd" Sarah Monroe (Cyndy Preston). Alex's goal is to go to medical school, but due to a lack of drive and his C-grade high school career, bitchy guidance counselor Miss Richards (Lesley Kelly) recommends he look into fast food or janitorial work instead. Aside from that, the biggest drama in his life is deciding whether to spend the summer on a farm with Sarah or go on a road trip with his curiously possessive best friend, Shane (David Stratton). That is until a late night trip to the high school to retrieve his books finds him bumping into Mary Lou, which leads to a fall down the stairs and then sex on top of an American flag. Mary Lou's found her man.

In order to improve Alex's chances at success, Mary Lou starts doing nice things like changing failing test scores and trying to get him off of the second string on the football team. Problem is, she can't help but kill anyone who gets in her way. After he gives Alex a failing grade, she kills his biology teacher (former Canadian heavyweight boxing champ George Chuvalo) with ice cream cones and a hand mixer (!) and then turns him into an ice cream sundae. When Alex ends up on the top of the honor roll and threatens to join other "yuppies in training," Miss Richards decides to investigate. She's intercepted by Mary Lou, who kills her with battery acid out of a hairdryer while pretending to be Madge from the Palmolive commercials. (That joke's dated really well!) And when detestable jock Andrew (Dylan Neal) petitions to remove all "dweebs, dorks and geeks" from the football team, he's killed by a football that turns into a drill. Mary Lou uses her seductive charms on Alex until he tires of always having to clean up her mess. Besides, there's only so much room on the football field to bury corpses.

Having already estranged both his girlfriend and his best bud, Alex decides to call things off with Mary Lou, but she isn't going to go away that easily. Instead of helping Alex, she turns even nastier and starts stalking and terrorizing him, plus threatens his family and kills off his friends, turning this into a sort of supernatural Fatal Attraction ("If I can't have you, nobody can!"). She shows up on a TV as a newscaster and in a "social disease" scare film being screened in sex ed class and impersonates Alex's kid sister (Juno Mills Cockell) to seduce and then rips out Shane's heart. After the buried corpses are discovered and neighbors spot Alex leaving Shane's house after he's been killed, the police hunt down and arrest Alex. Mary Lou kills two cops and springs him from jail long enough for the big finale, which takes place in hell.

From the style of the murder sequences and hallucinations to the leads entering Mary Lou's colorfully-lit alternate domain right down to equipping Mary Lou with retractable claw-like fingernails (she also sometimes boasts a burnt face), this has clearly been heavily influenced by the then-insanely-popular Nightmare on Elm Street series. Mary Lou is basically positioned here to become some kind of female heir to the Freddy Krueger throne. She always finds some kind of creative (usually silly) supernatural way to kill and always follows that up with a "witty" one-liner.

While this continues on in the spirit of the second film, it's not as good and there are a number of reasons why. First, while part two gave Mary Lou plenty of amusing dialogue, it was mostly out-of-place 50s lingo used in a contemporary setting and clever, sarcastic lines instead of the hokey quips used here. Second, Mary Lou was portrayed as sophisticated and intelligently evil in the previous entry, while here she comes off like an immature, spoiled brat. And then there's the change in the physical look of Mary Lou. Part 2's Lisa Schrage was an elegant, classical beauty, while here Mary Lou is more of a heavily made-up, voluptuous 50s pin up type. That isn't really a big deal except for the fact Taylor isn't nearly as good in the role as Schrage or Wendy Lyon, who played the character possessed by Mary Lou in the previous film.

There's more humor here but it's very hit-or-miss and sometimes rather embarrassing. Worst of all are the constant dumb lines read over the intercom at the high school ("Attention girl's weight lifting team, the clinic on facial hair removal will be held in the east gym"). What's doubly annoying is that this film didn't even need any of that as the casual banter between the normal characters was fairly well-written and amusing all on its own, more so than the overt, forced comedy elements. It's also pretty much impossible to like the lead character. I can almost deal with him covering up the murders, but to then have the audacity to cheat on, lie to and mistreat Cyndy Preston? Unforgivable! Speaking of Preston, her casting as an unpopular, undesirable girl whose only other prom date option is the biggest nerd at school (who's obnoxious to boot) is a very hard sell. And the fact she even tolerates Alex's shit to begin with ("I don't get mad, I bake."), let alone goes to hell to try to save him / get him back, is even sillier than the jukebox slinging razor-sharp 45's.

On the plus side, things move along fairly quickly and they've packed this with plenty of entertaining nonsense. The production design and lighting used to turn the high school into a hell landscape at the finale was fairly well-done. You also get a nightmare featuring zombies, more (talking) zombies in hell, Preston running around with a flamethrower torching said zombies, a hair metal band performing a terrible song called "Do the Bump N Grind," a finger accidentally cut off with scissors, several unfortunate rap songs and a bunch of attempts to try to convince us this is an American production instead of a Canadian one filmed in Toronto.

Also in the cast are Roger Dunn (who voiced the dad on the Beetlejuice animated series) as the principal, Jeremy Ratchford (Junior:A Cut Above) as a nerd and Brock Simpson (who appears in all four Prom Night films) as a police officer. Co-director Simpson, producer Ray Sager and composer Paul Zaza all returned to work on the next sequel: Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil (1991). It drops the Mary Lou character in favor of a killer priest and returns to a more routine slasher formula a la the original. The full screen copy I viewed, which looks no better than a decent VHS transfer, was the 2003 DVD distributed by Alliance Atlantis Home Video out of Canada. I don't know if the other DVD releases look any better or not.

★★