El hombre y el monstruo (1959)

 El hombre y el monstruo (1959) The Man and the Monster

There has always been a vague connection between the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and lycanthropy. The first movie versions tried a connection with spiders and primitive man; but as other adaptations surfaced, they all tended towards a sort of wolfishness.

This Mexican Horror movie, seemingly taking its visual cues from Hollywood adaptations of Jekyll and Hyde, (when in monster form, he is able to think and speak despite amnesia afterwards,) and Universal’s The Wolf Man, (with vaguely wolfish makeup and a goofy bulbous nose,) but includes additional aspects of the old Paganini Faustian legend of a musician who makes a pact with the Devil.

Structuring the story as a circumvent mystery, we start it with a car accident whose driver becomes the first monster victim when she seeks help at an old, dark house and imprudently opens a locked room.
A musical agent who just happens to be driving by discovers her but is too late to save her.

Eventually the story of the musician is told in flashback, and we discover that he sold his soul to become the best piano player in the world, and he becomes so; but every time he plays, he turns into a monster forcing him to a life as a recluse which he doesn’t mind in monster form but tortures him when in human form.

The tortured victim aspect never really works, as his first murder happens when in human form and he more than happily commits it. This is not a man who 'says his prayers at night', this is someone willing to murder as a shortcut to success.

Another side effect is that whenever a better piano player comes up, they must be killed in order for him to keep his title. It makes an off sort of off-beat, Evil Queen-killing-Snow White logic, if you think about it.

There is even more than enough weirdness with the mummified body of his first victim hidden somewhere in the house for inexplicable reasons and his mother/keeper (not quite the Claude Rains role, but the accomplice parent willing to protect a killer son feels familiar,) but the story is still much too convoluted and unfocused.

Photography is nice, (see image below.) Why is it that these Mexican movies are so hit-and-miss in this aspect? These guys could shoot nicely when they felt like it!

Hardly one of the essential Mexican Horrors of this period, but it remains an interesting but still flawed blend of disparate Horror elements.

With Enrique Rambal, Abel Salazar, Martha Roth, and Ofelia Guilmáin.

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With this one I ended a current foray into Mexican Horror (most of which you won't see since they won't apply to this group), and, from what I saw, I’ve concluded that these late 1950s and early 1960’s Mexican films are much less effective with broad comedy or when played too dryly and humorlessly; while sly, clever injections of humor make their outrageous premises and low budgets most enjoyable.