I just saw this on TV, and I feel the need to make all of you suffer like I did. You’re welcome.

I was asked this question in a radio interview very recently, and since I got a chance to give the URL to this blog, I figured people might be arriving here curious about it. Hello, Norwegian P3 listeners! So, there’s a small essay on the Mexploitation genre and its history up. I might add images and whatnot later, but for now, that’s where to go. It also contains some links to the most relevant mexploitation-themed posts on this blog.

The short we did post on for Atole Metafilms a few months back is now on YouTube, after being shown at parties and other improvised screening locations around Mexico. The sound is sadly not great, but apart from that, it turned out fairly ok.

This is a bit late, really, but you can see a short movie we did (very hurried) post on tonight, at a party at a pool hall (yeah, I’m not sure I get it either). It’s directed by our friend Elías Herrera Zacarías, who also directed the Sussie 4 video we did. The short’s called “Vi tu cel”, and the party starts at 10 (the movie likely shows a bit later). There’ll also be DJs and stuff. It’s in Colima 55, esquina con Frontera, in Roma Norte. Entrance is 50 pesos. Oh, and our names are on the poster, I think it’s the first time that’s happened.

This was on the street not so far from my house. It says “Weight control with laser - 100% natural“. That is, laser dieting. I could see some surgical uses, I suppose, but 100% natural?

This is a special treat. This amazing poster belongs to my girlfriend Aline, who lent it to me for scanning and touchup. Her copy has a bad tear down the middle, as well as other defects, but I fixed it up pretty decently, I think.

This is “El fantástico mundo de los hippies“, a 1972 movie that’s the only example I’ve seen of Mexican hippiesploitation. The poster is pure exploitation, the stuff the genre is made of. Check out the breathless descriptions, as well as the priceless addition to the cast in the bottom right corner. Also, I don’t know if it can be seen, but the plot seems to involve some straight-laced detectives or something solving murders amongst the hippies, judging from one of the photos… I’ve added translations for the texts, have a look.

Wonderfully cheesy Mexican movie channel De Pelicula is running a Halloween horror movie marathon. All Mexican horror movies, all the time, this whole weekend. It’s not as bad as you think… it’s much, much worse.

I just watched Vacaciones de terror, a movie considered something of a classic by people I know (who never call it just by the name, but always say “Las vacaciones de terror, con Pedrito Fernández“). It’s directed by René Cardona III, grandson of legendary Cuban-born Mexploitation director René Cardona, who directed almost 150 movies, including several Santo movies, the Luchadora movies, and La horripilante bestia humana (aka. Night of the Bloody Apes), as well as acting in El Barón del Terror (aka. The Brainiac), amongst others. René Cardona Jr., father of the director of today’s movie, worked on more straight up trash cinema, including the entire series of La risa en vacaciones, one of the most successful lowbrow comedy series in the history of Mexican cinema. So René Cardona III is the last in a long line of schlockmeisters, as well as having some sort of family obligation to deal with vacations in his movies.

The story of the movie is fairly straightforward. A family gets a cheap fixer-upper summer house in the Mexican countryside, but all is not what it seems, as the youngest daughter finds a diabolical doll who takes control of her and supernaturally attempts to kill the rest of the family. The doll accomplishes this mostly by moving its eyes, which is always accompanied by a “scary” synth chord, and mostly makes furniture topple over slowly, or in some cases, cutlery fly about. The aunt falls mysteriously ill and has to go to the hospital, accompanied by the uncle, leaving the now demon-possessed kids in the hands of their niece and her eighties-haired boyfriend. The boyfriend has come upon the one thing that can stop the diabolical doll, namely a shiny medallion. Being Mexican, he’s done the obvious with the medallion: Hanging it from the rear view mirror of his crappy truck. This turns out to be fortuitous, since the doll remote controls his truck and tries to kill him with it, but the medallion stops it (after he stupidly tries to outrun the truck for a while). He then gets back into the truck and drives it through the wall of the house, which does no good at all, since he’s soon impaled by several pieces of levitating cutlery, and then sucked into a smoking mirror (well, he’s pressed against the mirror for a while, then disappears).

The girlfriend hangs around for a while screaming, the uncle tries to return from the hospital, but has diabolical car trouble, and then the idiot girlfriend remembers that the boyfriend said something about the medallion being their only hope, so she gets it and presses it against the doll, then throws the whole thing in the fireplace. This makes the house catch fire, and then explode several times, while everyone barely escapes alive. The final scene shows the house for sale, now in its original dilapidated but not burned down and blown up condition, and the diabolical doll reveals itself to another little girl.

This movie was incredibly horrible, like some sort of retarded, slow-moving version of The Evil Dead, without anyone being raped by trees. Lucky for me, there’s a sequel, which I might get to see some time, called Vacaciones de terror 2: Noche de brujas, and as a bonus, that one features children’s artist Tatiana. I can’t wait.