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.

★★

Jiu suo (1977)

... aka: 舊鎖

... aka: 古厝夜雨

... aka: 殘燈幽靈三更天

... aka: Can deng you ling san geng tian

... aka: Ghost of the Broken Lantern, The

... aka: Gu cuo ye yu

... aka: Night Rain in the Old House

... aka: Old Lock, The

... aka: Rainy Night in the Ancient House

... aka: Third Watch of the Broken Lamp Ghost, The

Directed by:

Yao Fung Pan (Feng-Pan Yao)

Director Yao's filmography is a complete mess online. It's such a mess I haven't even been able to figure out just how many genre films he made over the course of his career. Let's just say it's a lot. Thus far I've dug up over 20 different horror films made from 1969 to the early 80s, which makes him one of the most prolific directors from this time; perhaps the most prolific director that almost no one (at least outside of Taiwan and Hong Kong) has ever even heard of before. Because of that, and because he deserves better, I'm determined to try to work this all out eventually. As far as this particular title is concerned, I've found it listed on certain sites under one title, and on other sites as something completely different. I've seen incorrect plot synopses pretty much everywhere. I've seen the wrong posters being used. I've seen the release year fluctuate from 1975 up to 1979. And I've seen this being mixed up with a number of other Yao films. In fact, what I sat down thinking I was watching and what I ended up actually watching were two completely different films! I'll try my best to explain...

What I thought I had a copy of was Pao's 1979 film 古厝夜語, which translates to Gu cuo ye yu or "Night Whispers in the Ancient House." However, what I ended up with was 古厝夜雨 which also translates to Gu cuo ye yu but instead means "Rainy Night in the Ancient House." This is a re-title of Yao's 1977 film 舊鎖 / Jiu suo / The Old Lock for the home video market. At some point, a distributor swapped out the original title screen for Lock and replaced it with a plain blue screen with this new title. Why? You got me! This is also sometimes listed under the titles Ji long qi hao fang and Keelung Room No. 7 though I couldn't find an actual release bearing either title. What's kind of embarrassing to admit to is that it wasn't until about the 20th shot of an old lock that it clicked in my brain that I was actually watching The Old Lock and not the other film!

Set during the Japanese occupation, tea house worker Hsiu Tzu, whose expected duties are to perform dances and serve as a geisha / prostitute, gets an ardent admirer in the married Teng Ko Lin (Yang Yueh). Mr. Lin soon becomes dangerously infatuated with the beauty, wants her to quit and promises to take care of her if she does. He even offers to kill his own wife, Fu-Mei (Ling Fan), if she'll agree to marry him. When Hsiu Tzu rejects his offer, he goes crazy, stabs her (non-fatally) and is then beaten up by Japanese officer Ho Yeh (Yeh Tien), who's also is in love with the geisha. The officer slashes his face repeatedly with a sword, which disfigures him and ruins one of his eyes. Mr. Lin is then dragged off to the police station and thrown into prison.

A year later, destitute widow Tsu Chen (Bi-Hui Fu) and her two daughters; high school aged Mei Chih (Barbara Wang) and the younger Mei Hsing, travel by foot to the home of their grandmother-in-law Liao (Li-Yun Chen) looking for a place to stay. Unfortunately, she doesn't have the extra space for them as she runs a general store out of her home. Instead, she directs them to an abandoned hilltop home that belongs to Mr. Li, who's been in jail ever since attacking the geisha. As far as anyone knows, his wife has left him and taken their son with her. Heavily damaged since it's been unoccupied for so long, the outside is overgrown with weeds, an old rusty lock put on the front door simply falls off to the touch and the inside is covered with dust, dirt and cobwebs, infested with mice and littered with broken furniture. It looks almost as if someone has intentionally destroyed the place. Granny goes to the prison and gets Mr. Li's permission for them to live there for the time being. His only request is that they only occupy the downstairs and not go into a locked room upstairs, which he claims is full of valuables. The ladies immediately get the work cleaning it up.

Tsu quickly gets a job in town and hopes to save back so they can afford a new place. It also means she's gone a lot, leaving her two daughters alone most of the time. Mei Chih starts back at school and they seem like they're on the path to rebuilding their lives. However, strange things start going on in the home. Mei Chih is kept up late at night by sounds coming from upstairs. She hears footsteps, faint voices and creaks and bangs that sound like someone is breaking things. When she tells her mom, she's not having it. She's already stressed enough as it is. A young boy, Ah Hsiung (Ying-Hsun Huang), shows up one evening claiming to be Mr. Li's son. According to him, he returned home from a school field trip and his mother was gone. His father then sent him to live with his uncle prior to going to prison and he hasn't seen his mother since.

The tragic story of Mrs. Lin is told in many flashbacks from numerous characters. Her husband is a mean drunk and a wife-beater who pushes, slaps and kicks her, calls her "disgusting" and pawns her jewelry and other belongings; even going so far as threatening to sell their house so he has enough money to impress his mistress. They were once wealthy but he's burnt through all their money. Mrs. Lin eventually confronts the geisha / mistress, which is a pretty interesting scene in that the women aren't nasty to one another but instead have a kind of unspoken understanding as both deal with cruel men on a regular basis; one as a sex worker and the other as an abused housewife. When Mr. Lin finds out the two have met, he goes into a rage and takes it out on his wife. She ends up dead at the end of the altercation and, obviously, it's her ghost haunting the home.

This was pretty painful to watch, not because it's a bad movie but because the only available print is in terrible shape and really does a disservice to the film itself. The score and sound design are eerie and excellent. Some of the scenes, like lightning flashes illuminating a figure standing behind some curtains, Mei Chih walking down the hallway with a candle as flickering blue light behind her shows the ghost closing in and the ghost detaching its head and letting float around, are genuinely creepy. You can tell great care has been put into the lighting design (which features lots of bold blue, purple and red) and art direction to make the old house as atmospheric as possible. The director makes good use of widescreen photography as ghosts often unexpectedly appear on the periphery of the frame; the same place he often places his actors. Unfortunately, most of the above is diminished (if not completely lost) due to the poor quality full screen print, which is all that's currently available. If someone bothered to remaster this I bet it would look amazing.

The strength of the visuals unfortunately isn't entirely matched by the script. This has a real tendency toward melodrama and the weepy Mrs. Lin character is "virtuous" to the point of implausibility. Modern audiences are likely to find her annoyingly weak, pitiful and subservient, though that's at least counterbalanced somewhat by making the leads four strong ladies of varying ages, which you don't see too often. There's also the predictability factor: We figure out what's going on well in advance of the characters (removing the element of surprise). A dumb (though brief) comic subplot involving an escaped convict comes from out of nowhere. Knowing he'll be executed if he's caught, he breaks into the home, tries to spend the night upstairs, has an encounter with the ghost and then flees because he's rather take his chances with the Japanese! Still, if by chance this ever gets restored, I'd recommend giving it a look.

★★1/2