The Demon Rat (1992)

Original title: Mutantes del año 2000

aka La rata maldita

In the near future, humanity’s epic struggle for the destruction of our planet is nearly won! To wit: staying outside without wearing huge filter masks is so unhealthy, even the dumbest parts of society are apparently wearing them. Many animal species, apart from insects, reptiles and everything else many people don’t like, have died out, too.

The local situation in Mexico is certainly not improved by evil industrialist Roberto Cervantes (Gerardo Albarrán) who proceeds to dump radioactive waste and whatever else godawful stuff his factories produce wherever he damn well pleases. Cheap horror movie or documentary?

Ironically, Roberto’s company isn’t quite his, but was actually owned by the father of his wife Irina (Rossana San Juan). Since the beautiful Spanish teacher has copped to quite how vile her still-husband is, she’s living separated from him. For once in a movie, a husband actually wants a divorce, but our heroine refuses because that would leave him in complete control of the company she already has no control over. In the future, law and logic work differently.

Still, Irina does have vague plans to stick it to Roberto somehow, plans that will take actual shape thanks to her new flame, beautiful biology teacher and ecologist Axel (Miguel Ángel Rodríguez), a guy who may have a doctorate, but doesn’t know what the buttons on his shirt are for, and believes string vests are the sort of thing you wear on a teaching job. Again, the future, ladies and gentlemen!

Things are further complicated by the fact that Irina’s house has become infested with rats. Or rather, as it turns out, mutated humanoid giant rats represented by guys in godawful costumes that look not at all similar to rats – or look like anything but crappy costumes.

Which isn’t to say there’s nothing to love about Rubén Galindo Jr.’s Demon Rat unless you are a lover of particularly embarrassing monster suits. In fact, I found myself rather smitten with it in many regards. At the very least, it’s a film that’s bound to teach a viewer how much certain preposterous low budget movie tropes about evil industrialists, ecological destruction and the unwillingness of the powers that be to actually make needed changes even when people have to run around with gas masks on their heads have become more than just a little plausible. Though guys like the misogynist evil industrialist shit in this particular film do still have one leg up on the real versions when it comes to actually lending a physical hand in the execution of their own evil plans.

Obviously, if you’re coming to this looking for believable character psychology or other bizarre nonsense like it, the film does not have you covered. Roberto is vile and pretty dumb and clearly fated for either ending up in the fangs of a mutated rat or a vengeful Axel, Irina is hot, hot-blooded and well-meaning but also pretty ineffectual, and Axel is a studly macho with a heart of gold, a two-fisted teacher who most certainly will not treat Irina just as badly as Roberto does now a couple of years and a lot of six-packs later. I’m not complaining, mind you, for the film presents its characters and their travails with complete earnestness. Which is also the way the actors are playing it, and probably the only way they know how to do it. Half of their time, they’re wearing masks and sun glasses while doing this. Again, I’m not complaining.

Galindo Jr. is often a rather competent director for his budget and script (of course also written by him) bracket, making effective use of the handful of locations and effects he can afford, simulating the foggy outside with dry ice and chutzpah, while also making good use of the bits and pieces of proper production design he could cobble together. So the internal air filtration systems and the masks are all used well in the film’s suspense sequences. One can certainly not blame the filmmaker for not having put any effort in.

Rata’s biggest problem, apart from the monster suits and the monkey-ish (certainly not rat-like) arm waving the actors inside them get up to, is that would should be its final act, when everyone is trapped in Irina’s roomy home – practically devoid of furniture because Roberto took that, apparently – is simply too long. I do like a good scene or four of people and monster suits fighting inside of a house, but even my patience grows a bit thin once they spend half of the damn movie doing it.

Still, while I can’t help and see this tiny structural problem, I find myself looking at La Rata Maldita rather positively as the sort of film that has taken on such curious elements of topicality and turned them into the lowest (and therefor the best) kind of art, it becomes easy to ignore a bit of a structural boo-boo.

In short: Don’t Panic (1987)

Late teen Michael (Jon Michael Bischof) has just moved to Mexico City with his mother. Still, his birthday party is quite a large one, though mostly filled with kids he neither really knows nor likes, or virtual strangers like his instant crush Alex (Gabriela Hassel).

One of the local idiots, Tony (Juan Ignacio Aranda), brings an ouija board (as always, for reasons I’ll never understand, pronounced by everyone as “WeeGee”) to the festivities. Using it apparently awakens some kind of evil force, and so Michael soon has a whole load problems of the sort teenagers outside of horror movies usually miss out on: his eyes turn a merry red at times, and he has visions in which some of his class mates and acquaintances are stabbed to death with a dagger. It may or may not be some sort of mental connection to the supernatural killer – the film sure isn’t going to tell. Later on, there’s also a head made out of TV static making regular appearances, warning Michael who the next victim is going to be, and asking him to get them out of town. When he tries, he can add psychiatric attention to his problems.

Despite all the murder and mayhem around him, our hero still finds time and mind space to successfully romance Alex, of course.

Just having watched Rubén Galindo Jr.’s somewhat insane and most certainly insanely entertaining Grave Robbers some weeks ago, I was going into this earlier piece of Mexican 80s horror by the same director with particularly high hopes. Unfortunately, they weren’t really fulfilled, for where the Galindo’s next movie reaches some remarkable heights of individual, late 80s-tinged craziness, Don’t Panic is a rather less exciting mix of 80s horror cheese and variations (he said politely) on scenes from other, more popular horror movies of the decade. There’s rather a lot of the first two Nightmare on Elm Street movies in the film, but really, if you made a successful 80s teen horror movie, you’ll probably find elements cribbed from it, or at least played with in an obvious manner, in here, too.

Though, to be fair, there’s a certain amount of visual flair to the supernatural set pieces here that does stand Galindo Jr. in good stead, even if none of the ideas in the movie are actually his. Alas, the film does take its time getting there, frontloading the terrible teen romance and dire scenes of improbable teen interactions before the going gets good, so a viewer will have to keep awake by critiquing 80s fashion and counting very slowly to one thousand through the film’s first third or so.

But hey, we will always have Grave Robbers.

Grave Robbers (1989)

Original title: Ladrones de tumbas

Centuries ago. The inquisition (heroes for once, if only in a movie!) just barely manage to thwart the plan of one of their own executioners (Agustín Bernal) to beget the Anti-Christ via the icky ways of ritual and virgin rape. On the torture rack, just after he has cursed everyone involved and prophesied his eventual return, he is dispatched via his own axe in his chest. 

Today, well, the late 80s. A group of teenage grave robbers – one of whom apparently finds their targets through a psychic gold finding sense – really appear to hit it big this time around. They find their way into a secret crypt below a grave, where a lot of very old corpses wear a lot of jewellery. Alas, dire warnings by Psychic Gal notwithstanding, they get too greedy and open the coffin of the executioner, and remove the axe from his chest. Obviously, this wakes the angry dead guy up but good, and soon the local lethality rate by decapitation, face pressed through lattice, and axeings rises to Halloween Kills levels. Campers are particularly under threat.

Eventually, the dead guy will certainly also try to revive his old rapey plans, if the local cop Captain López (Fernanda Almada) doesn’t find a way to fight him off. Since the cop’s daughter (Edna Bolkan) will turn out to be the killer’s preferred virgin, he is at least highly motivated.

I have to admit, I didn’t really expect terribly much going into Rubén Galindo Jr’s mix of supernatural slasher and religious horror. Most of the little I’ve seen of Mexican horror of the 80s does tend to the cheap, boring and not terribly interesting to look at. The two last problems really do not apply to the film at hand, though, for once his film gets into its groove, it provides so much gloopy fun and so many bizarre ideas and films them so pretty damn attractively, you could probably make two normal movies out of them.

The beginning of the film is a mite slow, but once the executioner is walking around again, heads and extremities start to fly left and right, Almada’s cop beats up teenagers and wastes ammunition like a good action hero, and stranger things dawn on the horizon.

All of this is most probably inspired by Italian 80s horror. At the very least, Galindo seems to like the same mix of blueish light, indoor fog and specific camera angles as his European colleagues. That’s not a complaint, and perfectly keeping in the tradition of Mexican horror, which also was rather good at taking European or North American influences and given them a very individual turn.

The mood of the film is strange and a bit dream-like early on, partially thanks to the camerawork but also because the way the characters go about their business doesn’t exactly make sense (unless most grave robbers are teens with their own psychic), the way the locations are supposed to be connected never quite comes together as anything you’d call a believable picture – even if you ignore the executioner’s Satan-given ability to teleport. This sort of thing will of course be a bit of a weakness if you like things logical and plausible, but here, it seems rather consciously used as a way to create a mood of the outré.

And things do get rather out there in the final half hour, when the slasher we’ve been watching suddenly adds things like a murderous hand coming out of a guy’s belly, a hand which then suddenly comes – plaster colour and all out of a wall to strangle another character. Then, a priest is attacked by a flying dagger he can’t pray away, and Captain López really gets into dynamite in the action movie plus horror plus what the hell climax. All of this is realized via pretty wonderful practical effects, shot attractively, and staged – apart from a couple of bizarrely wayward reaction shots in the finale – very effectively.

Ladrones de tumbas is a wonderful example of all that is good and right about fun 80s horror, and, because Mexican horror unfairly never made it terribly big outside of Spanish language audiences, probably a new old example of the form for many a potential viewer.