La Horripilante Bestia Humana ("The Horrifying Human Beast," 1968) was a part Santo-style wrestling movie-cum-horror film, part throwback to the Monogram and PRC mad scientist movies of the early- to mid-1940s. Jose Elias Moreno, who resembles a benign tailor more than crafty George Zucco, stars as Dr. Krauman, chief surgeon at General Hospital, whose adult son Julio (Agustin Martinez Solares, Jr.) is dying of leukemia. In a secret basement laboratory at his home and aided by an Ygor-like assistant, Goyo (Carlos Lopez Moctezuma, looking like a haggard Jerry Colonna), Krauman tries to save his son by replacing Julio's disease-ridden heart with that of a gorilla. This only succeeds in turning Julio into a beefy, ape-like murderous monster that quickly has the city locked in a grip of fear.

Meanwhile, professional female wrestler Lucy Osorio (Norma Lazareno) and her detective boyfriend Arturo (Armando Silvestre) are on the case, particularly after Lucy's wrestling colleague, Elena, critically fractures her skull in a match with Lucy and later goes missing.

According to the invaluable liner notes by David E. Wilt, an export version of La Horripilante Bestia Humana entitled Horror y sexo used alternate takes of actress Lazareno and the three other women in various states of undress. Where Lucy the wrestler is seen stepping out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her in La Horripilante Bestia Humana (the version released to general audiences in Mexico), she's nude in the spicier Horror y sexo. It's also in this cut that the monster's victims get their clothes torn off instead of merely rumpled.

For release in America, indie distributor Jerald Intrator took Horror y sexo and shot yet more inserts, this time shots of extreme gore: a head getting ripped from its body, open-heart surgery, an eye being poked out, etc. Intrator actually did a pretty good job integrating this footage, as the careful editing matches almost seamlessly.

The picture was rechristened Night of the Bloody Apes for release in the U.S., a clumsy grafting of Night of the Living Dead and Planet of the Apes. But rather than evoking images from those films, the title instead evokes images of a Cockney zookeeper: "How were the primates, Cyril?" "Blimey - it was the night of the bloody apes!"

The resultant film is a curious blend of innocuous Mexican wrestling-cum-horror movie with absurdly gratuitous nudity and bright-red gore more comparable with Hershel Gordon Lewis than George Romero. The crude, hopelessly anachronistic story combined with up-to-the-grindhouse-minute exploitation elements make for fascinating, if utterly incongruous viewing.

Lazareno is cute and likeable as wrestler Lucy (her wrestling alter-ego is a kind of devilish cat-woman) but both she and boyfriend Arturo are almost totally superfluous to the larger, would-be tragic story of a father unwilling to let go of his dying son. Director Rene Cardona, Sr. helms the film in a shoddy manner typical of Mexican genre films of the period. Scenes are played out in static medium shots that crudely transition to the next scene with Batman-like swish-pans. Goyo walks very slowly with a pronounced limp, and Cardona seems to delight in lengthy shots of the character struggling up and down long flights of stairs, and from one end of a set to the other, apparently for no reason other than to burn up running time.

Early scenes include dire day-for-night shots worthy of Ed Wood. Interior sets are greatly over-lit and lacking in atmosphere; sets and props are frequently inadequate. For instance the switchboard at the bustling, modern General Hospital is like something out of the late-19th century.

The monster, played in lumpy makeup that looks like carefully applied chocolate icing, only vaguely suggests an ape, and transformations are limited to the actor's head - the rest of his body remains unchanged, though a different actor (with different hair color) plays the Julio as a monster.

Curse of the Doll People, first released in Mexico in 1960 as Munecos Infernales ("Infernal Dolls") is surprisingly good, superior in every way to Night of the Bloody Apes. After a static beginning, in which a group of treasure hunters boast of stealing a Haitian voodoo idol (the theft of which Witt rightly argues should have been shown rather than simply discussed), the film gathers steam, with the unscrupulous collectors and their families murdered one-by-one by the doll people of the title, who sneak into various homes typically stabbing their victims with knitting needle-type daggers.

Though unimaginatively formatted - set-up, murder, murder, murder, murder, resolution - the film is surprising and effective in several respects. First, it features an almost shockingly sensible heroine, Katrina (Elvira Quintana), a doctor who knows what the treasure hunters are up against from the beginning, who's brave and assertive, quite unlike her ineffectual, skeptical doctor husband. She takes charge and throughout is that rarest of species in horror / sci-fi cinema, the hero/heroine both brainy and sexy at the same time. Imagine a sexy Latina in "the Peter Cushing part" and you get a pretty sense of the character.

And then there are those zombie dolls. Played by "little people" wearing creepy masks, they're like something out of a Mario Bava film, and reminiscent of the frozen-faced corpse in the "Drop of Water" segment of Bava's later Black Sabbath/I Tre volti della paura (1963). It's not clear how the masks were done, but they look too realistically human (yet impressively corpse-like) to be simple rubber masks or appliances. (They may have been made of wax, or perhaps were cast from life masks.) However they were done, they're effectively realized and put to atmospheric use by director Benito Alazraki.

Video & Audio

Surprisingly, the U.S. versions of both titles have superior video compared to the original Spanish cuts. Though disappointingly presented full frame, the U.S. cut of Night of the Bloody Apes looks fantastic; the image is sharp, the color vivid and there's almost no damage and little wear. It's a shame this wasn't 16:9 formatted because with all the empty head-room cropped to 1.77:1 the framing looks perfect throughout. By contrast La Horripilante Bestia Humana is soft and washed out, looking like an old transfer and comparable to Ventura's Santo releases. Because it's full frame, the positioning of the subtitles doesn't allow for 16:9 reframing for those with widescreen TVs.

To a lesser extent, the same holds true for Curse of the Doll People and Munecos Infernales. The Spanish version actually looks pretty bad, while the U.S. cut (which opens with an AIP-TV logo), possibly from 16mm, is a slight improvement. Again, both are full frame despite cropping quite nicely at 1.77:1.

Extra Features

Night of the Bloody Apes includes a lurid but, from an exploitation standpoint, ingeniously cut trailer, as well as gory outtakes shot by Intrator that likewise are in great shape.

David E. Witt, author of The Mexican Filmography, 1916-2001, provides the aforementioned six-page essay, which is loaded with useful, fascinating information about the films and which offers better credits than those currently offered by the IMDb.

Parting Thoughts

Though it's too bad these films aren't presented in more appropriate 16:9 widescreen transfers, especially the original Spanish-language versions, this funky double-bill makes for fun, off-the-beaten-path viewing. Recommended.

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's most recent essays appear in Criterion's new three-disc Seven Samurai DVD and BCI Eclipse's The Quiet Duel.