Curado de Espantos – review

Directors: Adolfo Martínez Solares & Gilberto Martínez Solares

Release date: 1992

Contains spoilers

This is a fichera, or Mexican sex comedy, which gives it a degree of bedroom farce but the sex element is not gratuitous or overstated, though it may be wildly inappropriate. In fact, one might think around the British Carry On films – see little but have hinted at sex and sexual commentary. I have to admit that, whilst watching it, it felt more 80s than 90s.

aged Dracula

It starts with a vampire, later discovered to be Dracula (Roberto 'Flaco' Guzmán), though also revealed later to be of Jewish heritage, chasing after a young woman, Chenaria. He is really quite old (in aged makeup) and is accused of being a lustful old man. He chases her into a building and up some stairs. Chenaria ends up trapped at the top of the stairs and starts beating him with a stick and then throws him down the stairwell.

green energy

We see an ambulance going through the city and then, in a hospital, a couple of doctors and a nurse start to examine the old man. The thermometer in his mouth goes from shooting mercury out of the end to registering no heat and the blood pressure monitor explodes. They hurriedly leave the room. Whilst they're out, we see green tendrils of energy come to him (this is also seen at the end when he dies – which isn’t really a spoiler – and is not explained). The nurse comes back in to try and attach a line to him and he grabs her and bites – once he has drunk some blood he looks younger. He then flies home (still in human form) but his servant Igor (José René Ruiz) has closed the window, because he is cold, and Dracula crashes through it. In their exchange we discover he is 1500 years old.

spell casting

A voice over by Magdalena Santos (Lina Santos) then seeks to explain why there is a vampire in Mexico City. She is an archaeologist and is due to go on a dig with professors from the university – quickly putting them in their place when there is commentary about her looks stating that she is there to work not socialise. We then cut to the self-styled exorcist Hippocrates (Alfonso Zayas) who is trying to cast a spell (made up of quite silly nonsense words) over a shrunken head. His sidekick Jacinto (Alfonso Zayas) is making noise and distracting him so he uses the same nonsense words and turns him into a toad.

looking like a mummy

We go to the excavation (allegedly beneath a pyramid but looking like a cave) and Magdalena choses a place to excavate a wall that the professor worries over. However, it is hollow behind the stone and they manage to get into a hidden chamber that is empty bar a coffin with a bat-winged skull motif (we saw it as Dracula’s coffin earlier). They open it and there is a skeletal corpse, wrapped in bandages with a cross in its chest – which Magdalena removes (it is a blade at the bottom). We see the face reform as they look elsewhere. Magdalena finds an Aztec picture depicting someone being stabbed in the chest and then tells a story based on it of the Aztecs killing a man who was murdering women – no explanation there regarding the crucifix, of course. Meanwhile we have seen the corpse reform (in a not bad effect for the time), get up – looking for the world like a moustachioed mummy with fangs – and then kill the two workers and the professor. He comes towards Magdalena who holds up the cross and escapes.

Dracula with brides

Back in Mexico City no one (her audience being just a doctor and a cop) believes her about a vampire, though they do return to the cave – but the wall is solid and the chamber now gone. Magdalena is committed to the hospital as delusional (and possibly homicidal) and has to pretend she's mad to be 'cured' and then released. She starts looking for the vampire, enlisting the help of the exorcists. Meanwhile Dracula now owns a nightclub where, if he fancies a woman, he has bouncers eject the man with her and swoops in, controlling the woman with eye mojo and then feeding and creating a vampire bride. That is until he sees Magdalena again and decides he wishes her to be his actual bride – we get the idea of biting three times to turn with this, lifted from Love at First Bite.

becoming more vamp

I mentioned some inappropriate moments. The sex comedy side was fairly tame with the two exorcists horny, misogynistic and happy to spy on Magdalena in the bath. That said there is one scene with a client, a young woman, coming for help because the man she loves doesn’t even notice her. Hippocrates has her strip to her underwear (for the spell to work) anoints her with oil (that seems to control her), turns Jacinto into a toad again (to get him out of the way) and proceeds to get it on (because, the oil). It felt of an age and it felt like coercion. The worst ‘joke’ was when Dracula is in Magdalena’s house (which she has invited him into, doubling his powers a variant of the Lost Boys lore) and a cross is held up by Jacinto. Despite it working earlier in the film, Dracula is unaffected because he is Jewish. Therefore, Jacinto holds up a swastika (not a Star of David) and that repels him. I don’t have words for how inexcusably offensive that felt.

fire from sun exposure

Inappropriate moments aside this was mostly not too bad. That said it wasn’t a great film – I mentioned Carry On films at the head and, truthfully, though dated I can watch them all day but that doesn’t make them great films (with the exception of Carry on Screaming) just really entertaining, watchable movies that I grew up with. I wouldn’t score them really high and I won’t with this. 3 out of 10 is despite the absolutely awful moment I have mentioned.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US – warning, no English sub or dub

On DVD @ Amazon UK – warning, no English sub or dub