Metaxploitation and Mexican horror
I apparently own the term “mexploitation” on Google. The only other contender is a porn movie of the same name – “They did it all for the American cream!” – and some talk about a book called Mexploitation Cinema: A Critical History Of Mexican Vampire, Wrestler, Ape-man And Similar Films, 1957-1977, which actually looks pretty interesting, so I’ve added it to my list of books to get the next time I order.
The definition of mexploitation, of course, is exploitation cinema from Mexico (as opposed to many other -sploitation cinema genres, where the prefix names that which is exploited). So we’re talking Mexican B-movies here. The all-time king of the genre is of course El Santo, the silver-masked Mexican wrestler who became the star first of comic books, then of a long series of movies. Sometimes alone, sometimes teamed up with other wrestlers like Blue Demon, he generally fought monsters and evil masterminds. Even though he died in 1984, he’s still a folk hero in Mexico, and his son now wrestles under the Santo name (he was known as Son of Santo for a long time before that, a name that in itself is very B-movie like).
An interesting thing to note here is that the Santo movies, (and other Mexican monster movies, like The Robot versus the Aztec Mummy) are the only real examples of horror in Mexican cinema. Santo versus the Vampire Women, in particular, is an honest attempt at gothic horror, at least in parts. Disregarding the fact that the horror of the antagonists is somewhat diminished by it being possible to defeat them by body-slamming, it’s obvious that the intent of especially the opening sequence in the crypt was to horrify. But apart from these movies, and especially after them, there have been very few attempts at working within the horror genre in Mexican cinema. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is the work of Guillermo Del Toro, but only Cronos is really a Mexican movie (and a quite good one, definitely worth watching). His other work has been in American or Spanish productions.
That’s curious to me, since Spain has produced a fair amount of horror movies, especially lately, by Guillermo Del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone), Jaume Balagueró (Darkness), Alejandro Amenábar (Tesis, The Others), Álex de la Iglesia (The Day of the Beast), etc., and it would seem that Mexico has the same potential, if not more, for telling good horror stories. In fact, with the exception of The Devil’s Backbone, not many of the Spanish horror movies are typically Spanish. Mexico, on the other hand, has a rich mythology and a grim history, which should be perfect as a foundation for horror stories. Mexico even has La Llorona, a folk tale that has elements that seem straight out of J-horror (the ghost of a woman who killer her children, dressed all in white, walking around weeping, those who see her are marked for death, her eyes are empty sockets). It’s a waste that noone’s done anything good with that story. I actually sketched out a simple story outline around it about a year ago; if there’s no good Llorona horror movie by the time I finish up other projects, I might well try to write it.
Of course, Mexico also has the Day of the Dead (not the movie), a whole holiday dedicated to dead people. That in turn has its roots in prehispanic festivals celebrating the dead. Of course, the history of the conquistadors, the war of independence, the revolution, and the more-or-less dictatorship of the 20th century is also steeped in blood. This whole country is flush with the macabre. But yet, not a single serious or semi-serious filmmaker has seen fit to make a horror movie in Mexico in the last 10-15 years.
I don’t know why that’s so, but if I get my way, I’m going to try to change it.