Midcentury Mexican sci-fi kitsch movies: an appreciation
Over at the WIRED "Underwired" pop culture blog, Hugh Hart has an extensive post up about cheesy, low-budget Mexican science fiction movies from the '50s and '60s. Above, a scene from Santo vs. the Martians (1967), which features the famous Mexican wrestler defending nuestra planeta against space-aliens. Snip:
Vintage Mexican Sci-Fi Beams a Blast From the Past, con Queso (WIRED: Underwired)These unsung heroes of vintage Mexican cinema mesmerized south-of-the-border moviegoers for a decade in low-budget pictures that threw together science, sex and action with low-budget abandon.
"Part of the charm of these films is that they are so atrociously underbudgeted and the effects are so cheesy," said UCLA Film & Television Archive programmer Shannon Kelley, who curated the upcoming free film series "Aztec Mummies & Martian Invaders: Mexican Sci-Fi Classics."
"To make something seem supernatural, they'd just add a strange warble sound effect in the background," she said. (...) "The aliens all wore these very simple Mylar costumes," she said. "Plus you have the posturing by the actors."
And if you're in Los Angeles, every Friday in August there are screenings of these films over at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. Looks like an amazing lineup, I hope to catch at least one of them: ¡ AZTEC MUMMIES & MARTIAN INVADERS !: MEXICAN SCI-FI CLASSICS
the latest
latest episodes
I was skeptical at first, but Santo seriously kicked some alien ass. Ole!
Watched the MST3K version of "Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy" last week. Even Joel and company couldn't counteract the soporific properties of the movie. LOTS of talk, not much action.
I recall some Santo movie wherein he and his sidekick hide outside their girlfriends' window, and wait for the bad guys to show. Then, instead of opening the window, they dramatically burst through it. Well, I guess they can afford new windows. They're making masked wrestler money.
I was introduced to the ironic appreciation of bad stuff by one of these movies.
When I was a kid, maybe 10-11 years old, an old theater in the next town reopened and started showing third-rank movies, like Sunn Pictures nature documentaries. On Saturday morning they had a fifty cent science fiction show. BAD stuff. BAAAAAD stuff. Italian SF movie bad.
One week they showed a Mexican wrestler movie. The good guy was pretty much invincible, except he was vulnerable to electricity. The bad guys were kidnapping Olympic athletes, fitting them with mind control helmets, and turning them loose to Do Crimes.
During one action scene a guy a few rows ahead of my started laughing. It dawned on me that he was enjoying the movie in an entirely different way than I had conceived of before.
The folks at www.itsdeadlicious.com are into this Lucha Libre stuff too. What a nutty genre. I wonder if the films are fun to watch?
El Santo made a lot of movies, most of them having him be wrestler by day and crime fighter by night.
Thrillville in SFBay is showing some mexican monster movies September 17th.
Santa and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters (1969)
Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy (1964)
http://www.cameracinemas.com/specialevents.shtml#thrillville
Is anyone else having problems with a broken tag in this article cramming 23 articles into a tiny frame intended for a youtube video?
What? No Bumblebee guy?
This genre is being resurrected, example: Mil Mascaras vs. The Aztec Mummy (http://mmvsam.com/) It is playing in selected theatres NOW.
I've seen it and it is fantastic! I understand that the sequel, "Mil Mascaras: Aztec Revenge" should be released next year.
This reminds me of the early days of the USA Network when they'd have cheezy movies on Saturday afternoons. What was the host's name, in the Captain America getup? For a while they were doing Mexican vampire movies. Just as beautifully kitsch as you describe the SF movies.
@#3 (Fred H) - "...and we don't need a windowpane on such a sunny day!" --- from an old novelty song called "Manana (is Good Enough for Me)" - NOT a very PC song at all, as it portrays Mexicans as lazy.
@#5 (Frankieboy) - They are a lot of fun, but #2 (TulsaTV) is right about some of them: the "talky" scenes can drag a bit. The action scenes, when they happen, are worth the wait, though. And there's plenty of eye candy for the ladies and the gentlemen, of course. The acting is terribly stilted, the scripts nonsensical, the logic... what logic? Switch brain to "off" and enjoy!
Here in Mexico they still shows those movies in national TV Sunday mornings. They are more than cheesy sci-fi movies. They represent the realismo-mágico of latin america.
El Santo, by the way, is a hero in many parts of Mexico. He even has an statue in his hometown.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2635/3676443881_5acae082a8.jpg
there is a anti-homage to these pictures, a version of Cosi Fan tutte made by Mexican artists in the middle 90´s
here a fragment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOiqUcR4wdk
First of all it is "nuestro planeta", planeta (planet) being a masculine noun.
The credits in the video clip are interesting. Aaron Hernan was a classically trained actor of great fame in Mexico who had to do lots of jobs like these movies to earn a living.
In the credits you also see nicknames ("El Nazi" for example)which belong to wrestlers of the time.
Wolf Ruvinskis is a gem: the son of Latvian immigrants, he was a wrestler and via this kind of movies he became a very good character actor, his best role was as a mean spirited boxer in "Pepe el Toro", a Mexican cinematic classic.