Los Vampiros de Coyoacán – review

Director: Arturo Martínez

Release date: 1974

Contains Spoilers

I’ve wanted to see Los Vampiros de Coyoacán for some time. Indeed I have the film a couple of times on DVD as I’ve attempted to get hold of the fabled subtitled version – to no avail. Indeed, I had given up on it when I stumbled across subtitles and, well, this will be an unusual review as I am not going to score the film. The reason? The absolutely awful subtitles. Sentences appear minutes before the dialogue (to be fair they remain until the next piece of dialogue, timed correctly, if they fall consecutively), there is no attempt to indicate separate lines of dialogue, so two characters' subtitles merge into a stream of consciousness and that consciousness is pretty darn literal (or even just very poor). Over all, these are some of the worst subtitles I have ever had the misfortune to come across and yet they allowed me to piece the film together.

tag team

The film stars the wrestlers Mil Máscaras (Las Vampiras) and Superzan, and the first 15-minutes or so of the film is a tag team match featuring them. It isn’t the greatest match. The end of the match has the camera cut to another luchador preparing for his bout. His fiancé asks him not to fight – she has discovered who his opponent is – but they need the money to marry. The opponent is the sinister looking El Espectro (Nathanael León, Santo en la Venganza de las Mujeres Vampiro & El Camino de los Espantos).

murder in the ring

The match is over pretty soon with El Espectro killing the wrestler. He is sent to see a judge and then we see a bat fly into the locker room, where the dead wrestler’s body is laid out, and turn into a cloaked figure that leans over the body (feeding). No wonder the fiancé was worried as we then discover this is the third opponent that El Espectro has killed but nothing can be done and charges are not laid because they are all “sporting accidents”. Meanwhile the medical examiner has hit the sticky fact that the dead wrestler has no blood left in his body. Mil Máscaras and Superzan muse about the issue, realising anyone could be next.

Mario Cid as Baron Bradok

They go to see Dr Thomas (Carlos López Moctezuma, El Pueblo Fantasma & the Curse of the Crying Woman), at his request. Also attending is Dr Wells (Germán Robles, El Vampiro, El Ataúd del Vampiro, The Nostradamus Series & El Castillo de los Monstruos), and the reason for the meeting is that Thomas’ daughter, Nora (Sasha Montenegro), is ill with an unusual ailment – she seems to have no energy and the only thing they can see are two red marks on her neck. Whilst they are at the house the Baron Bradok (Mario Cid) arrives. It doesn’t take long for Wells to realise that she is the victim of a vampire and he suspects Bradok… Now they have to prove it…

vampire cousin

The Baron is indeed a vampire who sometimes transforms into a furry-looking bat-headed version of himself. He is playing host to two vampire cousins, who he hasn’t seen for 2000 years, and who like to snack on ladies of the night. El Espectro and four little people are his henchmen but they are also all vampires. There is some use of eye mojo and some coffin burning going on (as well as dying either in sunlight or because they couldn’t return to the destroyed coffins by daybreak – that wasn’t too clear). The end of the film has a dour note through it that separates it from some of the more famous vampire luchadore films. I suspect that, despite a stellar cast, properly constructed subtitles wouldn’t have saved this but there are plenty of crap bat moments for the discerning genre fan.

The imdb page is here.