México Bárbaro

 

México Bárbaro

2014

Director- Lex Ortega, Isaac Ezban, Aaron Soto, Ulisses Guzman ,Jorge Michel Grau, Laurette Flores, Edgar Nito and Gigi Saul Guerrero

Cast- Guillermo Villegas, Marco Zapata, Harold Torres, Waldo Facco, Florencia Ríos, Leslie Arce, Joyce Cuervo, Barbara Perrin Rivemar, Sara Camacho, Dulce Alexa, Anuar Zuñiga Naime, Claudia Goytia, Patricia Ortiz, Alberto Palavicini, Don Anastascio, Ramón Medína, Agustín Tapia, Diana Contreras, Nino Reyes, Emiliano Hernandez

From Mexico

            México Bárbaro is an anthology of stories, set in Mexico, most of which have either a folk horror or urban legend quality. Most movie anthologies consist of 3 ,possibly 4, stories with a “bookend” story as well. Not so with this film! You get a whopping eight stories! They are, in order:

1)- Tzompantli-A vignette about the brutal practices used by the cartel.

2)- Jaral de Berrios-  Taking place in the Old West, two bandits try to steal cursed gold.

3)- Drena ("Drain")- After smoking a joint that she finds on a dead man, a girl is visited by a witch that gives her a bloody task to perform.

4)- La cosa más preciada ("That Precious Thing")- A girl that’s obsessed with losing her virginity has the perfect weekend planned with her boyfriend. However, her plans are ruined by a visit from a perverse creature.

5)- Lo que importa es lo de adentro ("What's Important is Inside")- A little girl keeps trying to warn her mother that the Boogey Man lives outside of her apartment but no one believes her.

6)- Muñecas ("Dolls")- A tourist attraction doubles as a home for a serial killer.

7)- Siete veces siete ("Seven times Seven")- A disfigured man engages in a long occult ritual to raise the dead.

8)- Día de los Muertos ("Day of the Dead")- The girls at a strip club dress up for The Day of the Dead, but they have something special planned for the customers.

            Despite it being geographically contiguous with the United States, Mexican horror doesn’t have much in common with American horror. I’m not even sure it has much in common with Spanish horror either. Mexican horror has evolved as its own entity.

            All good horror, regardless of where its from, plays on the anxieties of its audience.  Before the introduction of Christianity, the Aztecs practiced their very bloody religion which relied on pervasive human sacrifice. The arrival of conquistadors may have spelled the end of the Aztec civilization, but culture and religion die hard. Even when suppressed, their themes and imagery find a way of expressing themselves.

Fast forward a few hundred years and the violence of the Aztecs and the violence of the conquistadors has been replaced with the violence of the drug cartels. All of this seeps into the popular consciousness over the course of generations and manifests itself in new and unique ways.

A good example of this is the veneration of Santa Muerte, or Saint Death. She is a Mexican folk saint and a kind of death goddess. She is a mixture of Aztec death worship and Catholic imagery. She remained a rather obscure figure until the late 20^th century but has now found many admirers.

            From the beginning, one difference between Mexican horror and American horror is that there were very few, if any, “rules”. I don’t mean rules about what you can show or do. More like rules about what kind of story to tell. In the campy 1960s this might mean a masked wrestler fighting a mummy who then fights a robot (check out the Aztec Mummy trilogy). In the 70s it might mean turning out 2 of the greatest nunsploitation movies that the genre has ever seen, Alucarda and Satanico Pandemonium. In the 21^st century it means turning out Guillermo del Toro, whose eclectic interests in subject matter reflects his Mexican cinematic heritage.

            Now, you won’t find anything as eclectic as masked wrestlers and robots in México Bárbaro. But it does seem like the directors of the stories were given a free hand to tell the stories how best they saw fit. The stories run the full gamut in terms of style and tone. Some are classical Gothic story telling where as some are gritty and modern. Some are tongue in cheek while some are brutally violent.

            Anthologies are a unique kind of story telling. No story is long enough to develop character and the success of the story relies on getting to the point quickly. México Bárbaro presents several unique, effective stories connected by overarching themes of death and the occult. It’s an enjoyable change of pace and worth the time to track down.

Haxan- A 100 Year Retrospective

 

Haxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages)

1922

From Sweden /Denmark

Director- Benjamin Christensen

Cast- Benjamin Christensen, Clara Pontoppidan, Oscar Stribolt, Astrid Holm, Maren Pedersen

            Haxan is a sort-of documentary. It takes a scholarly look at the view of witchcraft in the middle ages but mixes in haunting and unsettling imagery that is comparable to the best horror movies.

            Those silent films that have stood the test of time have done so not because of the writing or acting but because of the imagery. This movie is a hundred years old but the effects hold up because, unlike CGI that doesn’t age very well, they rely on make-up and photography. The devil (played by the director himself) is especially scary with his perpetually flicking tongue and gleeful expression,

            The first fifteen minutes or so is rather boring, being filled mainly with images of medieval engravings but stick with it because the movie takes off after that.

            The movie was censored or banned in several countries, including the United States.  It takes a dim view of humanity. Those that fear the devil seem to do so out of backwardness and stupidity but those that serve the devil do so out of lust and greed.  The church is naturally lumped in with this.  Clergy are presented as just as stupid and lustful as their flock, perhaps even more so.

            But again, it is the images not the plot, that leave a lasting impression; Satan tempting a young woman as she lies next to her husband, a witches Sabbath where they sacrifice and eat a baby, a skeletal horse, witches flying through the air, grotesque demons prancing about in an orgy, women lining up to literally kiss the devil’s ass, a young monk orgasmicly enjoying a flagellation and Satan tempting a nun to defile a Eucharist wafer.

            The end of the film slows down as it tries to explain the demonic possessions of the middle ages as modern day mental illness, but it’s difficult to reconcile that with the utter realism with which the film depicts its diabolical subjects.

            The film was re-presented in 1968 with a narration by William Burroughs. The narration adds to the film but the jazz musical score, though adding to the mood in places tends to distract at other times. This version is shorter than the original but I think that’s a product of the narration being quicker than reading as it retains all the imagery of the original.

100 Years Later

            Haxan premiered  in September 1922. Now a century out, the question is, is it still relevant? I would say that it’s at least as relevant as it was a hundred years ago, perhaps more so.

            A hundred years ago the world was about 2 years removed from a global pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. Russia was engaged in a civil war brought on by the Bolshevik Revolution. The world was about 7 years away from the Great Depression. In response to this chaos, fascism spread through the world as people begged for someone to take charge of their lives. Any of this sounding familiar?

            Beyond the current events, we seem to be entering into a kind of New Dark Age. The rejection of science and critical thinking, in favor of emotion and wishful thinking, is a trend that started growing in the United States about 20 years ago and is now spreading to the rest of the world.  Believing what can be supported has been rejected for believing what makes us feel good. This same devaluing of knowledge is what led to the Dark Ages that took Europe a thousand years to climb out of.

            One thing that has changed in the last hundred years is the general perception of witchcraft. When most people see witchcraft now it’s in tandem with Wiccans worshiping nature or someone peddling their grandmother’s home remedy for sore throats. Most people aren’t living in fear of Satanic conspiracies spreading through their neighborhood, though if you remember the 1980s, that was an irrational belief that was perpetuated without a shard of evidence.

On the other hand, maybe society has outgrown witches. Maybe black cats and pointed hats have become quaint. Conspiracy theories have replaced church doctrine and members of the opposing political party have become the unseen threat seeping into our daily lives.

            Of course, that’s all pretty heavy, maybe too heavy for the first time viewing of a silent film. Does Haxan entertain? Haxan won’t scare a modern audience. But it will definitely show you images that you will never forget and give the viewer an appreciation for the art of fine film making before the modern era of special effects. Students of films or aspiring filmmakers will certainly appreciate the careful crafting of effective, realistic, creepy imagery.

Want more? Read about the role of The Devil in film.

Still want more? Check out the review of Faust, a German film made around the same time as Haxan.