Assembled by Something Weird Video back in its VHS heyday, the bottomless bowl of queso known as Mexican Monsters on the March is a compilation of 10 black-and-white schlock classics from Mexico heavily edited into featurettes. Basically, all the dull parts have been excised, leaving you, dear viewer, with what has to be the ultimate party tape to feature fake-looking monsters, sexy señoritas and lots of trilled Rs. Short of swimming naked in a room full of Takis Fuego, what could be more fun?
The 1958 Western The Rider of the Skulls stars a hooded hero dueling a wolfman, a batman and a headless horseman amid tumbleweed, while 1959’s The Return of the Monster features a fazed, Frankenstein-like creature kidnap a child, roar and find his head smoking, all while his creator (whose assistant is a talking skeleton) goes loco, prior to an assault by pitchfork.
From 1960, the space-themed The Ship of Monsters introduces us to the lovable “monstruos de las galaxias“: Uk, Utirr, Tagual, Tor and Zok — or, to lessen confusion, a cyclops, a belching alien, a robot, a hairy tarantula-man and a set of dinosaur bones. Together, they turn a woman into a vampire; she provides an incredible musical interlude; then one of the creatures get a slingshot to the eye.
Straight from 1965, Adventure at the Center of the Earth offers cardboard bats, rat-devouring gargoyles and other assorted cavern-based beasts, while ’62’s The Baron of Terror — better known as The Braniac, he of the forked tongue and pulsating cranium — administers a kiss of death to the bare necks of various lovelies.
Also abridged within are 1966’s Dr. Satán; comedian Tin-Tan’s 1961 melting-skeleton epic, Madness from Terror; the House of Wax-esque Museum of Horror, from 1964; the 1958 Zorro-like Scarlet Fox vehicle, Vengeance of the Hanged; and 1965’s self-explanatory She Wolf.
None of the condensed films are dubbed or subtitled, nor do they need to be, as the comp swings a purely visual punch. For the ultimate in old-school, south-of-the-border trash peliculas, settle down with an appropriately chintzy Patio dinner or two and revel in Mexican Monsters on the March. —Rod Lott