Aventura al centro de la tierra (1965)

... aka: Adventure at the Center of the Earth

... aka: Adventure in the Center of the Earth

... aka: Adventures at the Center of the Earth

... aka: Adventures to the Center of the Earth

... aka: Adventure to the Center of the Earth

Directed by:

Alfredo B. Crevenna

Mexican genre movies from the 1960s have maintained a certain level of interest over the years, but most of the focus seems to fall on the camp appeal of their wrestler movies featuring Santo, Blue Demon, Mil Máscaras, etc. While a lot of those are certainly fun, there are quite a few other worthy titles that often get lost in the shuffle. Take this one, for instance. Doing IMDb and Letterboxd searches, about 90 Mexican horror films turn up for the decade and Adventure is definitely not among the more popular ones. In fact, it barely ranks above a bunch of movies no one has had access to for over 50 years now and may even be lost forever. Maybe this one has been forgotten because of direct competition from the multitude of other, older, typically much higher budgeted "Center of the Earth" / Jules Verne, or Verne inspired, films?

The most likely culprit though is availability issues. While most other Mexican genre films from this era have a wealth of posters, lobby cards, production stills, etc. available, ones for this title are exceedingly rare; a strong indicator that the original theatrical release was either extremely limited or somehow compromised. It never played theatrically outside of the Americas to my knowledge and also hasn't been well served on home video since then. Despite being technically released, none of the official home viewing releases were in English. Some bootleg copies on DVD-R (like the one found on Trash Palace) have English fan subs but, as you can probably tell from the many slightly altered alt titles listed above, no one seemed to even be able to agree on a title translation.

Sneaking away from their tour group, love birds Julia (Carmen Molina - THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE) and Pedro (Carlos Nieto) fall into a deep hole and end up in the bowels of an elaborate underground cave system. Unable to climb out, they're then attacked by something with a clawed, reptilian-like hand. The two are eventually found; she frozen in a state of shock and he frozen in a state of death after having his throat ripped out. Julia is taken to the hospital and administered sodium pentothal to induce a responses while under hypnosis. While she recalls most of the events, what she actually saw down there she's a little more vague about and too terrified to speak of.

Word gets around to the esteemed Profesor Díaz (José Elías Moreno) about what's occurred and he promises to get to the bottom of things. An expedition is organized and the participants are announced. Along with Díaz, there will be physician Dr. Peña (Carlos Cortés), geology professor Laura Ponce (Columba Domínguez) and speleologist, adventurer and hunter Jaime Rocha (David Reynoso - NARCO SATANICO). All of those names are given in rather flat fashion but then we enter into more problematic territory, which may be another of the reasons this has been kind of buried! The professor's assistant, Hilda Ramírez (Kitty de Hoyos), is called "beautiful" but it's assured that will in no way inhibit her "efficiency" in case you believe a woman's looks have anything to do with job performance. Even more jaw-dropping is the announcement that "The black servant of Dr. Díaz" will be joining them. Another guy asks, "Why a black man?" with an incredulous look on the face. Response: "He's the cook."

The team are all shown movie clips from One Million B.C. (1940) and Unknown Island (1948) to give them some idea of the types of giant lizards and dinosaurs they may encounter while underground. There's also a late addition to the group not initially announced; writer Manuel Ríos, who's played by Javier Solís. Solís was a very popular Mexican singer at the time and even randomly breaks into song during one of the slower moments! Tragically, the singer / actor died at the age of just 34 during gall bladder surgery just a few years after this was made.

Arriving at the caves, they're joined by a local guide named Apolinar (Ramón Bugarini), his brother and some other men and everyone ventures inside and set up base camp. Even before running into anything too freaky, dangers in the cave system are everywhere. Of course there's always the possibility you could slip while climbing or fall into a hole or get hit with a falling rock, but there are also a lot of other living hazards around, like snakes, lizards, "billions" of bats and even a random armadillo or two. During one very surprising scene, a slew of real snakes are covered in gasoline and set ablaze! (Note: I couldn't 100% tell if this was real or a really good superimposition effect due to the quality of the print I viewed but it certainly looked real and there were no other visual effects of this type in the movie.)

After a pair of eyeballs are photographed peering from the darkness, everybody is instructed to continue exploring... well, almost everybody ("You, Hilda, and the black man must return to the camp!") Laura proves to be something of a schemer and was only interested in getting into geology to strike it rich finding precious gems. Once she locates a diamond in the government-owned caves, she and Manuel plot to secretly swipe a bunch while they're there. She wanders off by herself while the others are sleeping to take a look around and runs afoul a man-in-a-suit cyclops lizard monster thingy with sharp teeth, sharp claws and a tail. She gets roughed up but survives the attack. Apolinar's brother isn't so lucky in a follow-up attack and becomes the first casualty. Unperturbed by these incidents, everyone agrees to continue deeper into the cave until they finally reach the center of the Earth, where more horrors are discovered.

If you can look past some seriously questionable character actions (like setting off a huge bundle of dynamite underground without a care in the world), preposterous bits (dangling right over a bubbling "river of lava" without so much as breaking a sweat) and the aforementioned casual sexism and racism, there's plenty of stuff to enjoy here. For starters, it was filmed at Grutas de Cacahuamilpa in Guerrero, Mexico (one of the largest cave systems in the entire world), and you really couldn't ask for a better, more atmospheric setting for a film like this. 

The director is also able to keep things tense most of the time and even manages to generate some genuine excitement and suspense in certain scenes. It's fast paced, doesn't wear out its welcome at just 78 minutes, offers up a few surprises and is entertaining throughout.

The effects are typical of a low budget Mexican film from this same time (i.e. pure cheese) but at least there's some monster variety going on with the addition of a winged creature and a giant spider. The best make-up job on one of the monsters (seen only in extreme close-up) appears to have been taken from another film entirely, and some other shots (like the lava) are clearly from another source since the aspect ratio is completely different than the rest of the film. There's a surprisingly high body count and a decent amount of blood for a 60s film.

Presumably, this was released to U.S. theaters in 1966 by Columbia Pictures (the b/w lobby card seems to prove this), but only the Spanish language version. IMDb claims it was given a Spanish-only VHS release by Something Weird Video in 1996, though I couldn't find a single copy of that video cassette to verify this and the title isn't currently listed on their website. What I can verify is that the same company used footage from the film (which they titled "Adventures at the Center of the Earth") on an earlier video release titled Mexican Monsters on the March (1994). In 2004, the company Xenon officially released this on DVD but, again, only in Spanish.

★★1/2

Bisikan Setan (1985)

... aka: Satan's Whisper

Directed by:

B.Z. Kadaryono

Vina Mintaraga (Lia Waroka) is the latest pop sensation to hit Indonesia by storm. Her tapes are quickly flying off the shelves, she packs venues (well, not very big ones but they're still venues!), she's constantly swarmed by photographers, she's on the front page of newspapers, she has an adoring public hunting her down begging for her autograph and she's just recently scored a top-selling gold album. While her professional life couldn't be better, her personal life has its problems, namely in the form of Antoni (Leroy Osmani). Back when Vina was still struggling, Antoni was a frequent collaborator. He thinks he made her and deserves compensation. She thinks she made herself and he deserves nothing. Either way, she feels she no longer needs his services and continuing to associate with him is only going to hold her back. She finds his band subpar and opts to use another, and also rejects any song he submits to her manager and refuses to record it. Another sore spot is that Antoni is secretly in love with Vina, but she's dating a college student named Baskoro (Bagus Santoso) instead.

Even Vina's relationship with Baskoro is strained. Not that the two don't love each other and want to be together, but Baskoro's wealthy and powerful parents have set him up in an arranged-marriage-to-be with Rini (Yenny Farida - MIDNIGHT THUNDER). Thus far he's rejected the union; no surprise considering Rini is an unpleasant, materialistic spoiled brat, but his parents keep insisting. That means he has to keep his relationship with the pop star a secret for the time being. When Rini catches the two out in public together, she immediately rats him out to his parents. The father, Kang (Doddy "Wijaya" / Sukma - SATAN'S SLAVE), then goes to Vina's home and demands she end the relationship, which results in a heated argument and Vina's wheelchair-bound mother (Tien Kadaryono) kicking him out of the house.

As that's going on, Antoni gets even nastier. He and one of his band mates attack Vina and Baskoro and attempt to kill him with a switchblade. For some reason, the police are never called and this attack isn't mentioned again. Antoni then starts stalking her around town and at her shows. He and two other thugs eventually kidnap her after a late night performance, drag her back to their home and gang rape her. Afterward, she's tricked into driving a sabotaged car, crashes and is killed.

I'm sure you can guess just what happens next. Yes, it's ghostly revenge time. In the cemetery, the ground cracks open, Vina (now alternately seen looking normal in her white burial clothes and as a bloody-faced ghoul) levitates out of her grave, floats through the graveyard and then immediately gets to work. She first visits one of her rapists, making him puke up worms, trapping him in a wormy (acidic?) blood shower, pelting him with levitating furniture, clawing him and then knocking him out a window. Later we get to see eyeballs ripped out, a hand cut off with a cleaver and people getting thrown off bridges, drown, run over and some other stuff.

Not only is Vina out to avenge her own death, but she still wants to intervene in Baskoro's life to help him out. She finds out that Rini isn't in love with him and she and her mooch parents are simply scheming to get their hands on all of that money. Vina would much rather he get together with the sweet, shy Astuti (Dina Mariana), a girl he casually knows from college. Coincidentally, Astuti is also an aspiring singer and, even more coincidentally, Antoni has also weaseled his way into her life as a new "mentor." He then tries to destroy the romantic relationship the ghost is trying to facilitate using the same techniques he used on Vina (namely blackmail and rape).

Even though the first half of the movie plays out entirely serious, this includes quite a few silly, lighthearted scenes of Vina using her supernatural powers in the second half that throw the tone off balance. The ghost helps Baskoro's basketball team win and ruins a date he has with Rini by pulling the seat out from under her and splashing a drink in her face. She also protects Astuti from being beaten up, pulls ears and hair, slaps people in the face, knocks people into a pool, makes someone envision worms in their noodles and pushes Rini's face into a cake at a birthday party then rips off her dress. It's all enough to finally convince Baskoro's parents that Rini is too crazy to be their daughter-in-law and they call off the arrangement. Not that they shouldn't have been controlling assholes and just let their son pick his own girlfriend to begin with but, ya know, different cultures and stuff.

This never really rises above being merely average, with scattered fun moments mingling with dull, soapy familial melodrama. I've seen far worse produced, acted and directed films from this time than what we get here, but that still doesn't make up for the fact there's nothing new plot-wise, too few surprises and too few outrageous moments. The biggest hurdle for most will be that it takes time to actually get to the horror content. In fact, the first 40 minutes would lead you to believe this wasn't a horror film at all. Once the genre trappings finally do set it, the results are mixed but it's at least a lot more entertaining then.

Also thrown into the mix are a few uninspired fight scenes, a brief and blurry "erotic" bathing scene with Farida looking directly at the camera making come hither faces and half a dozen stage performances and recording sessions featuring Waroka lip syncing her way through "Pesona" ("Charm") and "Nayalakan Lilin Dihatimu" ("Light a Candle in Your Heart"), a couple of cheesy ballads written by Gatot Sudarto, who also scored the film. The vocals were provided by Yenny Sri Wahyuni, a complete unknown here in America but, judging by her extensive discography in the 70s and 80s, apparently a popular singer in her home country at the time.

Small roles are inhabited by Baron Hermanto, Cherry Ivonne, Lina Budiarti, Eddy Bakar Pare and other familiar faces. For being the fourth most populated country on the planet (over 165 million when this was shot), Indonesia sure seemed to have tiny talent pool to pull from in the 80s since the same exact folks always pop up in these things. Not that I'm necessarily complaining either. It gives off a close knit family type of appeal similar to that of the concurrent U.S. B-movie industry.

As far as I know, this title was only released on VCD a single time but a decent widescreen version (day scenes are too soft / overexposed but night scenes look good here) is around now and it has played on Indonesian television. It's also currently available on Youtube. No real English subs are available to my knowledge but you can follow the plot easily enough translating the auto-generated subs.

★★