Tales Of The Shadowmen 19 - Demi-Monde

What They Did
In The Shadows

Tales Of The Shadowmen
19 - Demi-Monde
edited by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier
Black Coat Press
ISBN: 9781649321770

Just a very quick mini review of what is, alas, the penultimate collection of stories in the much loved Tales Of The Shadowmen series, Volume 19 (of 20), Demi-Monde.

For those unfamiliar with these collections or with any of my previous reviews of those in the series, the two editors Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier have created, for Black Coat Press, a series of collected stories all of which mix up famous genre characters of pulp literature and film (including lots of French pulp characters, of course, these are French collections translated into English) and written by various writers... some famous and some not.

Now, a quick note about the editors, both of whom, once again, have a written story each in this collection... I’ve known about these two for years since first spying Jean-Marc’s name on the original editions of the two volumes making up The Doctor Who Programme Guide in the early 1980s. I’d always assumed from their names that they were brothers but, it turns out (the clue came, less than subtly, in the Rick Lai introduction to this tome) that they are, in fact, husband and wife. So I assume a very happy and long marriage steeped in creating and organising genre concoctions.

As in pretty much any portmanteau of collected stories, the tales in here are a bit hit and miss (and all very differtent hits and misses to each individual reader, I’m sure) but this one has the usual mix of genre mash-ups and a fair bit of intrigue. The Brasher Bat by Tim Newton Adenrson which opens the volume, for example, tells of what happens when Billy Bunter’s cricket team are taken over by vampires and various future detectives and others, as schoolboys, are there to investigate.

Another very interesting tale by Matthew Dennion, The Worthiness of the Wielder had Dumas’ Milady DeWinter, in her usual nefarious manner, hiring the blade of Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane in order to stop D’Artagnan and Constance from finding various accoutrements once belonging to Thor, including his hammer Mjölnir... she's, of course, acting on the orders of Cardinal Richelieu... this was easily one of my favourite tales in the book.

Other genre interpenetrations include a bunch of Spaghetti Western characters, one teamed up with Josephine Balsamo of The Black Coats and another tale of The Phantom Angel teamed up with... Hopkirk (Deceased). Other attractions include a story where Jules Verne pits his wits against Professor Moriarty and a wonderful account where John Buchan’s Richard Hannay is teamed up with Arsene Lupin against the Germans during the First World War, that I found quite entertaining.

My favourite story in the tome was Matthew Baugh’s Hercules and Samson VS The Russian Vampire and the Zombies of Frankenstein... a title which is as partially accurate as the internationally marketed versions of the Mexican Lucahdore movies it’s inspired by and which features such characters as Maciste, Santo, Blue Demon, Mils Mascaras, The Bat Woman and even mention of Satanico Pandemonium... so this one was easily worth the ‘price of admission’ for me.

And that’s me done with, as I said, another short review of a book in this series. Tales Of The Shadowmen 19 - Demi-Monde is another fascinating and diverse read for those who are smitten by the legacy of international pulp fiction and it is with a bitter-sweet feeling that I look forward to the final, double sized tome in this well regarded series (which was, alas, also twice the price but I picked it up pretty quickly because, I fear, these books might now be an endangered species in terms of availability in the not so distant future).

The Mexican Masked Wrestler And Monster Filmography

 

Luchadorian Gray

The Mexican
Masked Wrestler &
Monster Filmography
by Robert Michael “Bobb” Cotter
McFarlane Press
ISBN: 9780786441044

Just a very quick ‘shout out while I’m passing’ review of Robert Michael ‘Bobb’ Cotter’s refreshingly entertaining book The Mexican Masked Wrestler And Monster Filmography. This book is not, as the writer rightly states in his introductory paragraph, an exhaustive tome covering absolutely everything in that, admittedly, very wide category but, it has to be said, it covers all the important ones (at least that’s how it seems to me).

The book is split into themed sections so, rather than just go through each movie one by one, he groups everything into themes. And that’s not as problematic as you may think because, as in the case when two or more wrestlers shared billing and performances in the same movie, at least two alternate looks at the film in question appear in two or more sections, where relevant. So, for instance, when Santo, Blue Demon and Mil Máscaras take on the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle in Misterio en las Bermudas (aka Mystery In The Bermudas 1977), you will find a wealth of information for the film in both the Santo section, the Blue Demon section and, possibly, still more mention in the Mil Máscaras section.

The ten chapters which make up the book are as follows... 1. The Bat Flies South - Early Mexican Fantasy And Horror, 2. Who Was That masked man? - The Spirit Of The Serials, 3. Universal Con Carne - New Lives For The Old Undead, 4. Santo and Son - The Legend of the Silver Masked Man, 5. Devil With A Blue Mask On - The Life And Films Of Blue Demon, 6. Man of a Thousand Masks - The Life and Films of Mil Máscaras, 7. Glorious Luchadoras of Wrestling - The Lives and Films of the Wrestling Women, 8. The Undercard - Second-Banana Masked Men, 9. Vampires Not Named Drácula and Other Assorted Creatures - The Wide, Wide World Of Mexican Monsters and, lastly,  10. Men Can Die But Legends Live Forever - The Legacy Of The Silver-Masked Man.

The book starts off by giving a history of the background to wrestling and monsters in movies. So, coincidentally, Lucha Libre (Free Wrestling) was introduced as a phenomenon in Mexico in the early 1930s and, of course, the Spanish version of Dracula made by Universal simultaneously with their American version in 1931, on the same sets (reviewed by me here) also made a big splash in Mexico. So it wasn’t long before the wrestlers started appearing in films (and movie characters started also appearing in the wrestling ring) and, not too long after that, than they started facing various Universal style monsters and other supernatural villains in their big screen adventures. And also in their comics, it would seem, as there was often a big crossover with characters appearing in wrestling rings, in comics and in the movies.

Each movie covered is a very humorously written explanation of the film and what happens but it also is very illuminating as to various things the casual viewer like myself was unaware of. So I now know about the ‘private detective’ version of Fu Manchu from a series of Mexican movies, for example. I now know male wrestlers are luchadores and female wrestlers are luchadoras. I know which actor from The Aztec Mummy Trilogy was shot by his lover’s estranged husband a year after making the film and, similarly, which actresss’ career was thwarted by her father shooting her boyfriend after discovering they’d had pre-marital sex. It’s all here and written in a breezy but also very respectful manner.

So I was surprised to learn... because I’ve not seen many Mil Máscaras movies... that the origin of that particular character on screen was pretty much cribbed from the Doc Savage novels. And also that the one time the Mexicans made a theatrical serial (as opposed to a feature), it was only shown in serial form when it was distributed in America... in Mexico it was a, presumably cut down, feature length version.

So, yeah, lots new to me here and my one caveat emptor warning on this would be... the book was written around twenty years ago. So every now and again you wil find the author unable to review a film because it’s a ‘lost film’ or a ‘lost cut’. Well, in the two decades since this was written, a lot of headway must have been made because, I certainly have a few of these ‘lost prints’ as bootlegs and I even have a nice, officially released Blu Ray of at least one of them.

But don’t let this detract you because, for sure, if you are a beginner in the genre or, like me, just want to dip your toes in every now and again, you wil certainly find The Mexican Masked Wrestler And Monster Filmography an invaluable and illuminating treasure trove of information, with a big injection of humour added into the mix too. Definitely a big recommendation from me.

The Mansion Of The Seven Mummies (La Mansion De Las 7 Momias)

More Superzan You...

The Mansion Of The Seven Mummies 
aka La Mansion De Las 7 Momias
1977 Mexico
Directed by Rafael Lanuza
Olympia Classics DVD Region 0

Blue Demon was a popular masked Mexican wrestler who, although he made nowhere near as many films as his contemporary Santo, still managed a respectable 29 movies playing pretty much himself... and he even partnered up in some with Santo (I’ve seen a few of these but I think I was watching these before I started writing this blog so I suspect I haven’t reviewed them here).

It’s easy to laugh at movies like this, and I often do... it’s over half the fun of tracking them down. However, I have to say that out of all the Mexican masked wrestler movies I’ve seen (and the Turkish knock offs, for that matter), that this one is exceptionally well made, relative to the others, and maintains a certain tone throughout which is genuinely haunting and watchable.

Okay, so we do also have all the atrocious acting and wafer thin plotting you come to expect and love with these kinds of movies, but you do get a real sense that everyone is trying their best and there’s even a twist near the end that I didn’t see coming. Also, although it is typically Scooby Doo in its approach to the material, the idea is better than the usual “find the villains, run up and punch them, repeat” content of the majority of the films I’ve seen in this genre. Having said that, of course, there is lots of punching and fighting in store but one of the things that strengthens this movie, compared to other luchador films, is the lack of spontaneously erupting, ringed wrestling matches interrupting the narrative flow. There’s one near the start which is alluded to but not shown and it seemed strange to me that the whole movie wasn’t filled with these scenes like normal for these affairs.

The story line is a little stranger than I was expecting too, but most of the movies I’ve personally watched in this genre range from the late fifties to late sixties, so it might be endemic to these kinds of entertainments of that particular late seventies time frame, perhaps. What I’m talking about here, though, is the fact that you have a good guy and his girlfriend and, when his girlfriend has to face “three supernatural challenges” to inherit her recently deceased fathers horde of treasure, he calls in his two wrestling hero friends, Blue Demon (played by Blue Demon) and Superzan (played by... um... Superzan), to help her. However, after being grabbed by evil forces, he then becomes one of the villains intent on stopping them and, surprisingly, doesn’t return to the side of the heroes once all the fighting is done. Just goes quietly mad and wanders the streets grabbing his box of charcoal (don’t even ask).

So anyway, the girl who’s name I forget (and the IMDB is absolutely no help with films like this, it seems... shame on them) has to complete three tasks around and about The Mansion Of The Seven Mummies which involve grabbing a sceptre, burying a skull and finally freeing a sparrow. Of course, all her efforts are impeded by the devil, some reanimated ancestors and a bunch of mummies. Luckily, Blue Demon, Superzan and their new companion, a comic-relief postman with all the funny expressions and reactions in the world, are there to fight the mummies.

There’s also a voyeuristic hunchback who stalks the lady in question throughout the movie and gives advice when the skull she is trying to bury starts moving around and trying to bite her in, it has to be said, typically ridiculous, unintentionally funny shenanigans. The hunchback character is kind of interesting because he brings to the ending a genuine twist which I’d not seen coming. Now it’s not exactly a clever twist, and if it had been in any other venue than a late 70s Mexican wrestling movie, I would have seen it coming. I think because I wasn’t expecting this to have any kind of script logic or follow through ensured I was not on the lookout for that kind of thing and, while it’s not as blistering a revelation as it could have been, it’s certainly took me unawares and I think people who enjoy these kinds of movies will probably get a kick out of it.

One of the things which make this so much better than some of the entries I’ve see in this genre is the make up effects on the mummies. They’re quite atmospheric and are similar, in some ways, to the work being done on Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters (reviewed here) in terms of quality. There’s no goriness to them, don’t get me wrong, but they do look appropriately dusty and decayed and, although not really a danger to anyone at any point in the narrative (in credibility terms, that is), I was still quite impressed with these and the sinister atmosphere they help create. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say regarding Mansion Of The Seven Mummies. A very slightly less thin plot than others in this genre, lots of punching/romping around with mummies as our masked heroes take on evil and even a slight twist near the end. Not as completely ludicrous as some of the luchador movies I’ve seen but certainly worth a watch and, honestly, not without a little of its own share of side splitting hilarity in the right places for all the wrong reasons. If you’re a fan of these kinds of movies, this one should be hovering near the top of your ‘to watch’ list.