The Vampires Coffin(1958) Starring: Abel Salazar, Ariadna Welter, Germán Robles, Yerye Beirute, and Alicia Montoya Directed By: Fernando Méndez Review FROM THE DEPTHS OF EVIL COMES A DIABOLICAL KILLER OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN! Hello Kiddies your pal the Crypt-Critic is back with more vampires and grave-robbers. This looked liked a good-black and white B-movie with a vampire heading it as the monster and I was right but I forgot to notice it was made in Mexico. In this film we got a doctor who is studying cellular health I guess and takes note from a story of doctors who stole a grave. Doctor Mendoza and a friend of his named Bazarra do the same thing and our asked by an old woman to stop but they do not listen. Bazarra is paid and wants to take the vampires gold necklace but in doing so takes off the stake and unleashes the vampire to finish his evil deed. The film does present some horror movie tropes and is a b-level flick, it doesn't offer much fright and you can clearly see the strings holding up the bat but the actors performances and the action do go a long way from making this a fun film to sit through. Just remember kiddies don't pull off the stake.

When a colleague of his unearths the coffin of a vampire, Dr. Enrique Saldívar(Abel Salazar)finds his life turned upside down as the one who helped bring the corpse(..with the stake still plunged into his heart), a criminal fiend, Baraza(a brutish Yerye Beirute;perhaps not used as much as he should have been)desires for the amulet around Count Karol de Duvall's(Germán Robles)neck. In getting to the amulet, Baraza has to remove the stake lunged in the Count's heart and when he does, the vampire has free access to once again bite the necks of females for blood. As obvious in these films, the Count will command(by using the amulet, a hypnotic device he uses to control his victims)Baraza to do his bidding..especially as a watchman when he sleeps during the day. Duvall sets his sights on theater actress Marta González(Ariadna Welter), Saldívar's love-interest, desiring to make her his vampire bride. María Teresa(Alicia Montoya)knows all too well what Duvall is capable of as she's been guardian over his tomb for some time and had tried to stop Saldívar's colleague(a doctor wishing to study the cellular structure of a vampire as part of researching diseases of the blood)and Baraza from removing his coffin from it's place of rest. When Baraza and Duvall flee from the Pasteur medical clinic where the coffin was taken(..not before Duvall casts a spell on Marta and almost chomps down on a little girl's neck), Saldívar will have to somehow protect Marta against a predator he's ill-prepared for. We see that María and Saldívar's colleague face a horrifying fate when they seek to find the vampire and his coffin..in a wax museum featuring "devices of death" where in the basement both can be found. It all comes to head when the Count and his henchmen seek to kidnap Marta during a stage production as Saldívar must follow them into their wax museum lair for the ultimate stand-off.Although the flick suffers from some embarrassing bat sequences where you can clearly see the strings controlling it, this is quite an entertaining modern Gothic vampire tale. It's your typical Mexican horror flick incorporating borrowed elements, such as the wax museum which I thought was a marvelous hiding spot for the vampire, but takes some interesting liberties such as having the Count disappear and reappear often tricking those who both know and not know he's in the building(..or room)with them. The amulet around the Count's neck is a major device he uses to control people where oftentimes a vampire can merely focus his eyes on the victim. There's an inspired sequence where an unfortunate victim finds her way into an iron maiden in the wax museum as she is trying to hide from Baraza. The one problem, besides the bat's visible strings, is the fact that Count Duvall is too much of a pushover against Saldívar. He's able to fight him a bit too easily while struggling mightily against Baraza. The chief plus of the picture is the Gothic atmosphere and lighting in a modern setting. There's a great scene where the Count opens his cape as the shadow nearly engulfs the whole picture as he pursues a victim into an alley-way. The Count's demise at the end is kind of neat and different than in a lot of vampire flicks in that he's actually in bat form when suffering a grim fate.

Mondo Macabro's R2 DVD of this film's prequel, THE VAMPIRE (1957), had included stills from the follow-up excerpted from its photo-novel edition (apparently included in full as a DVD-ROM extra on Casa Negra's 2-Disc R1 Set "The Vampire Collection"); at the time, the synopsis had felt contrived and, therefore, I had anticipated that the film itself would be inferior to the original (though I'm still disappointed that there's no Audio Commentary to accompany it!). Having watched THE VAMPIRE'S COFFIN now - and re-acquainted myself with its predecessor (the very first Mexican horror effort I'd seen), which didn't disappoint - I can only confirm this! Anyway, the original was largely set at a dilapidated hacienda in a remote village - with characters dressed in old-style clothing and an overpowering foggy atmosphere - so that it was jarring to see these same characters (or who was left standing among them) transposed to modern city surroundings! Apparently, the film-makers purposely opted to make the sequel as different as possible to its predecessor - and, while that same Gothic mood is felt on occasion, the three main settings of the film, i.e. hospital, wax museum and burlesque theater, elicit their own particular ambiance with which the vampire character may not always be compatible (for instance, he appears outside a bar to stalk an aspiring young female performer incongruously dressed in his traditional cape...and, yet, she never for a moment suspects his true intentions, in fact welcomes the stranger's advances by throwing flirtatious glances at him herself)! The music score is typically overstated (as far as I can tell replicating that of the original, where it seemed to work better!) and the special effects pretty ropey - especially the very visible wires holding the supposedly flying bat, but also the number of times that the vampire is seen reflected in a mirror when it's made clear that he shouldn't!; that said, the transition from vampire to bat is, once again, neatly enough done. The most atmospheric moments are those set in the wax museum with its numerous torture devices (though the climax is a rather awkward mess!), and the large shadows thrown by the vampire on the various buildings in the afore-mentioned stalking sequence (in fact, the film-makers seem to have liked this effect so much that the scene is absurdly extended, when the vampire could very easily have rendered himself invisible at any moment and let the girl simply fall into his clutches - as he does, eventually!). Resting largely on the shoulders of lead/producer Abel Salazar, the comic relief comes off remarkably well (particularly in scenes where he has to explain his tall tale about disappearing coffins and rampaging vampires to his superiors or the police) and, in fact, my relative disappointment with the film isn't due to any intrinsic campiness - as was the case with THE BRAINIAC (1962), for instance - though, as per reviews I've read of the English-dubbed U.S. version prepared by K. Gordon Murray (included on the DVD but which I haven't checked out), it's a different matter altogether! As for the principal cast members, Salazar is, again, an engaging hero; likewise, Ariadne Welter is lovely throughout (even when engaged in a sleazy dance number!) - but German Robles fares less well than in the first film (where he had cut a suitably imposing figure), here tending to come off as merely nonchalant...and a veritable Elvis Costello look-alike to boot! The evidently rushed production, then, ultimately brings (perhaps unkind) comparisons - with respect to the difference in quality between the two films - to SON OF KONG (1933) when stacked up against its monumental prequel!

EL Ataúd del Vampiro(1958), The Vampire's Coffin, is not a fitting sequel to El Vampiro,both featuring German Robles as aristocratic vampire Count Lavud. This sequel seems like a quickie followup. Most of the film is filmed inside modern buildings or building sets. It lacks the beautiful foreboding night fog scenes of the former. However, when I first wrote this review I had only seen the K. Gordon Murray dubbed version. I expressed thoughts that the Spanish version might be better. I have now seen the Casa Negra restored version in which the beautiful photography and music are quite apparent. The restored version DVD has both Spanish with and without English subtitles as well as the inferior K. Gordon Murray dubbed English version.German Robles's acting is fine; he is quite the natty-charming-aristocratic-menacing-sensual vampire seeking Martha (Ariadna Welter) from the first movie. There is also an interesting scene in which he picks up a woman in a bar. He returns to this life?? thanks to a thief who becomes an assistant and acquires that status while attempting to steal the Count's large pendant and in the process pulling out the stake and thus bringing the Vampire back from the nether place to which he had been consigned in El Vampiro. The Count does not punish him but acknowledges his appreciation and makes him his assistant. (This is somewhat a precursor to Leo (Manver) the beguiling, willing hunchback assistant in the later Nostradamus films). The Spanish restored Casa Negra version is part of a two DVD set with El Vampiro in both Spanish with and without English subtitles and dubbed English. The movie does now stand on its own and is worth seeing IN Spanish with or without English subtitles. I would now give it a 7.5 or 8 rating for its genre. IMDb will not allow any modification of my review of El Vampiro so I am unable to mention the quality of the Casa Negra restored version of El Vampiro; it is outstanding. I would add to my earlier review of that film that the photographic and sound quality are magnificent in the Casa Negra restored DVD. Thomas J McKeon Indianapolis