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Joined: 09 Dec 2006
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A big howdy to new contributor Sergio who hails from Mexico. First up from him, a retrospective on the cult Mexican gore horror, 'Alucarda.'
Directed by Juan Carlos Lopez Moctezuma in 1975, Alucarda is an important reference among Mexican movie goers, one of the reasons is because of its topics (vampirism, soft lesbianism, gothic culture and satanic cults). Coming from a country so religious as Mexico, it gives a curious unusual and Risqu'e vision of a convent and deals with the forces of evil.
UK film studio Hammer Films and independent Mexican producers financed the film which received good reviews on the festival circuit, but as time went by the Mexican film industry forgot this movie along with other gore and fantastic films, because they saw erotic cinema as a better chance to make money.
The plot centers on Justine, a young and attractive girl who enters a convent in which the nuns dress in white pieces of fabric that gives them the look of a living mummy. There she meets Alucarda, another attractive girl. Soon they become best friends and will discover the forces of the dark arts...and that`s when all hell breaks loose.
Moctezuma gives us a quick intro to the story, with some fantastic and creepy elements such as the crazy assed nuns and vivid dreams that Alucarda has in the presence of the Devil. These are all there to remind us of a biblical reference of the beast. He makes us travel through mystery and erotism in the first act, only to prepare us for a no point back second and third act for a unique climax. He used religious images and allegories to get deep inside the world of Alucarda and gives us a particular vision, never before seen in Mexican cinema. Moctezuma drew much of his inspiration from movies and history books, often these things that were clearly visible in his films.
The climax of the movie is just what we would expect or even more, seeing a sequence in which rivers of blood and eyes of fire are there just to show us the true force of the son of Satan (in this case daughter) which begins by a woman who came from bathtub cover with blood, literally. Alucarda has cult status among Mexicans, second only to Carlos Enrique’s Taboada’s Hasta el viento tiene miedo. This is mainly because Taboada’s movie was more widely distributed than Moctezuma’s and because it didn’t involve the taboo topics of Satanism and nudism of Alucarda.
Lopez Moctezuma died in 1995, leaving the legacy of Alucarda and he has been a huge inspiration to the likes of Guillermo del Toro who watched him on television, hosting a show in which he presented horror and silent short films. To this day the film is not available to buy on DVD in Mexico, having only been released in the US and Europe. |
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