El Vampiro (1957)

El Vampiro (1957) aka The Vampire

The story takes place in a vague, isolated area of Mexico identified only as Sierra Negra where a train drops off one of the heiresses of hacienda Los Sicomoros who obtains a ride from the station on a cart delivering Hungarian soil to a neighbor, accompanied by an initially semi-comedic, wisecracking, traveling agent (a very charming Abel Salazar who's ultimately revealed to be a particularly unobservant physician,) only to find the place strangely abandoned, one of her aunts recently dead, and the other mysteriously well-preserved.

The chronology might initially seem a bit off.
One hundred years ago Hungarian count Lavud died and was buried, with his brother appearing only ten years ago from presumably a late 1950s present. Since then, there has been a blight on the land, and it has been abandoned little by little.

The strangely youthful aunt wants to sell the hacienda, and her sister's death has simplified the sale, but there is still the niece's signature which must be obtained.

There's no beating about the bush here. The dead count's brother is a vampire and immediately reveals a plan to resurrect his brother on the centenary of his death so they can rule the land.

Germán Robles (an actor with whom my name has been often confused, for some reason,) is a tall, handsome, but lightly-framed menace, not that this could not be used to a vampire's impact on screen, but when his first attack consists of graphically killing and feeding on a young boy, one immediately gets a homoerotic vibe from the goings on. The plot element of two 'brothers' wanting to rule the land together is also a bit suspect.

I was immediately impressed by the foggy dusk the movie starts on, and from then on, the presence of mists and light diffusion creates a very particular mood in scenes set both at night and during the day.

Clearly inspired by the lore and visuals from Universal Studios Dracula film, for once, a loose adaptation with a nice spin successfully integrates cultural elements from the land where it was produced, (including architecture; these gothic movies sometimes utilize odd designs that don't capture the feel of Mexican spaces or make any definite statements.)

It might seem odd that the vampire, despite proven ruthlessness, would bother to waste efforts legally purchasing a tract of land; but this could easily be a cultural comment on foreign investors who plagued Mexico for decades, if not whole centuries.

A vampiric Transylvanian may or may not have made thematic sense in Bram Stoker's London, but a similar figure is a good metaphor for predatorial outsiders in Mexico, even when Hungary in particular had little to do in its history.

Still existing fear of vampires in Sierra Negra is also easily understandable since a century ago one was already killed, and the locals still remember the event. It makes sense the locals would be skittish today despite the dismissive attitude of an outsider, (since he ultimately functions as the sort-of-Van Helsing character, it's not clear whether he has positively identified a supernatural menace by then.)

The slaying of a vampire is notable in itself: While Dracula's villagers never dared attack him much less managed to kill him, these Mexican villagers overcame their own fears and superstition and clearly did Count Lavud in. Not only that, but written reports also exist that deal with the aftermath. Unlike in many monster films, this wasn't something that was done clandestinely and shamefully buried afterward - it was all made official with witnesses' declarations which were then recorded and preserved.

I may be slightly off in this, (have others written on the subject? How seriously should one take possible subtexts here?); critics have traditionally interpreted vampiric stories as being anti-aristocratic; but here, and based on Mexico's history, a simple anti-foreigner attitude seems like a very good reading especially because the base matter at hand is the ownership of land. How far back to take it would be a simple matter of choice... France, the United States... all the way back to Spain itself? With the sly presence of very specifically voiced Indian servants this is not even a stretch.

Despite the obvious use of a bat-on-a-string, the transitions into human and vice versa are well achieved.
Vampires may seem old-fashioned, especially when they are of the bat-and-tux variety, but a last-act revelation takes the movie into truly horrific territory.
Yes, the initial inspiration is all Universal Studios, but the appearance of fangs; the violent, acrobatic attacks, (including some nice swashbuckling); and even the post-death transformations are all already leading the way to Hammer Studios' Horror of Dracula.

Impressive.
This isn't at all what I would have expected.

With Ariadne Welter, Carmen Montejo, and José Luis Jiménez.