The popular mexican comedian Clavillazo, one of many mexican film comedians
along with big names asi.a. Cantinflas, Tin Tan
and Piporro, can be seen here in 2 trashy but entertaining films. Both
of them produced by the genius Jesús Sotomayor, the man
who produced the surely (i haven't seen every crazy south of the border
made genre film yet, far from it) greatest Psychotronic
Masterpiece of Mexican golden era of trash movies - La Nave
de los Monstruos from 1960 (please read more about this great
film here on my Mexican Film page).
Conquistador de la luna (Conqueror
of the moon) 1960 Direction: Rogelio A. González,
Entertaining Science Fiction where electrician and inventor
Bartolo (Clavillazo), at the start wearing his special odd triangular
hat,
somehow gets into a newly built space rocket along with Estelle (Ana
Luisa Peluffo) and the constructor of this space ship is her
absent-minded professor father. Bartolo accidently touches the instruments
and, pooof, they're on their way to the moon.
They land on the barren surface of the Moon and then go down by an elevator
to meet like shit looking aliens. They have fish
scales bodies and crocodile looking heads and their leader is a giant
brain lying in a jar.
They threaten the Earth with a bomb and an alien woman with 4 arms and
a blond hairtail falls in love with Bartolo. Will Bartolo
and Estelle manage to return to Earth and save the world ? The first
man on the Moon, a mexican, i didn't know.
For being a trashy mexican low budget sci-fi B movie
some of the scenes do look pretty great, and that shows us that the
Mexican
Golden Era film industry did have the know-how to make decent special
effects for a small amount of money. The G forces do
have an impact on Bartolo and Estelle when taking off from Earth, the
surface of the moon looks nice (maybe due to having good
pictures of the moon surface at this time) and the space walk sequence
look great (and was also used for "La nave de los monstruos"
the same year, 1960. Kudos. Mexican Golden Era films rules.
El Castillo de los Monstruos (The Castle
of the monsters) 1958 Direction: Julián Soler, Production: Jesús
Sotomayor Martínez
Horror Comedy where Clavillazo works as an undertaker
and meets the poor but cute Beatriz (played by film, TV, theatre actress,
singer and author Evangelina Elizondo). He's wearing his special thing,
a peculiar looking triangular hat and the significance of
this i don't know. His more famous comic colleague Cantinflas also wore
something odd (in the film i watched) draped over his
shoulder (maybe alluding to some sort of official, type of profession
or sorts)? Perhaps info lost in time.
Beatriz is mourning her dead auntie and she's poor and
homeless, but Clavillazo let her stay with him as he's in love and wants
to marry her. But, at the outskirts of the city there's a castle owned
by the evil Dr. Sputnik (Guillermo Orea, in a double role, also
as Clavillazo's friendly neighbour Melchor) where he, with the help
of his assistant (Carlos Ortellana) experiments on dead bodies
and has created a horde of monsters.
El Doctor Sputnik has abducted Beatriz in order to create
the perfect woman and Clavillazo has to enter the castle where he meets
an assortment of monsters as a mummy, an apeman, a werewolf, the creature
from the black lagoon and Count Dracula (German
Robles in a cameo role, famous for his portrayal of the bloodsucker
Count Karol de Lavud in the 1957 El Vampiro) and the servant
of Dr. Sputnik, the Frankenstein Monster (looking like Lurch later in
the TV series Addams Family, could it be that the creators
of this legendary series saw this south of the border film? No, probably
not).
4:3 fullscreen originalratio black & white spanish
audio mono with NO english subtitles. Biographies extra
