Before the Age of Mad Cow Disease:
Starring Abel Salazar, Rubén Rojo, and Rosa María Gallardo Written by Federico Curiel, Antonio Orellana, and Alfredo Torres Portillo Directed by Chano Urueta Mexican, 1962 NOTE, this movie is also known as El Barón del Terror. I bought this movie on DVD for CDN$2.88, so you're probably asking why I'm reviewing it if it's not some decade-old VHS tape threatening to die on me. Truth be told, this DVD is not in good shape. At the 20 minutes and 54 seconds into the movie, it freezes for up to 30 seconds, and the very end is plagued with short but numerous skips and jumps. The DVD isn't in good shape, and I don't know if it will be watchable in a few years. I've read about "DVD rot", so maybe this disc is a victim. Anyway, this is a Mexican monster movie that was imported and dubbed into English by one K. Gordon Murray, who did this with many Mexican movies. The movie begins rather abruptly, with credits shown over a painting of a winged creature holding a pair of scissors in one hand and a leg in the other (?) The music is tense, and all of the names are Mexican names. Finally, we begin. A title informs us that it's 1661, and we see a dark, stone-walled chamber that is dank looking. We hear a long introduction from a falsely theatrical, announcer-like voice: "We, the Grand Inquisitor, Protector of the Faith against heretic Sins of Apostasy in the City of Mexico and all the states and dominions in the province of New Spain and its Vice Royalties and Governing Bodies through Royal Audiences in all the cities and states do proclaim that the other Inquisitors, and I, have attended this hearing in the Secret Chamber of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition in Mexico to do justice in the trial that has been initiated against the aforementioned Baron Vitelius of Estera, of unknown origin and who has repeatedly refused to state same, aware of the edicts and merits of this trial, and the evidence and suspicion resulting thereof."GOOD GRAVY! It's the mother of all run-on-sentences! The talking comes from one of the Inquisitors, men in black hoods and robes. The Baron (Abel Salazar) stands, his feet and hands chained, with two guards on either side. The 'prosecutor' Inquisitor grabs a scroll and recaps the Baron's trial and punishment, which was already done. They found the Baron guilty of many bad things like witchcraft, necromancy, seduction of wives and maidens, and pretty well anything else you could do wrong. At various points, the Baron smiles, which irritates the Inquisitors. They tortured him to try and get a confession, but the Baron seemed to enjoy and welcome it all. During the recap, they refer to Vitelius as "Count Vitelius". So is he a count, or is he a baron? Now he is here to receive final sentencing, but before they do this, the Inquisitors begrudgingly bring forward a defence witness. The prosecutor reacts: "This is the epitome of all brazen defiance, Lord Inquisitors! Now are we going to stand for it?!"The seventeenth-century judicial system clearly needed some work. The witness is brought in, a Portuguese man named Marcos Miranda (Rubén Rojo). We get to see him talk, and find out quickly that this movie was dubbed from Spanish into English. It looks pretty bad, which surprised me since I thought Spanish and English had some common ground in structure and grammar. I understand why Japanese wouldn't dub well, but Spanish? Anyway, Marcos testifies that the Baron has "many virtues", promoting art and science and helping "the downtrodden people of this new land." This testimony doesn't jive with the Inquisitors, who punish Marcos with two hundred lashes. Marcos is then taken away to the torture chamber. The Inquisitors huddle, and while they whisper to each other, we hear some really dramatic and intense music. This takes 31 seconds, after which time the prosecutor says that they've sentenced the Baron to be humiliated in public, to lose his property, and to be burned alive at the stake. The Baron finally speaks, demanding that he not be burned in chains. As a demonstration of his evilness, the chains around his feet and hands vanish, and reappear around his guards. Oh, so he really is evil. He walks away, his guards struggling to follow. We cut to a field at night. The Baron is there, dressed in white robes and a tall Pope hat. There is a crowd around, watching him. There are some torches around a big pile of hay and kindling around the Baron, who is tied to a pole or something. The Inquisitors are also there. Marcos too watches helplessly with the crowd. We see a father and his daughter, who was seduced by the Baron. The father is glad to see him die. Next, two old gossipers are piously excited to see the event. The fire is set, and within seconds (!) it is a raging inferno of flames perhaps twenty feet tall. It doesn't really look like the fire is around the Baron. Some of it looks to be a superimposition effect, and the rest looks to be smaller fires close to the camera. The Inquisitors look satisfied and nod to each other with the knowledge of a job well done. The Baron doesn't seem to look afraid, in pain, or even a little singed as the fire rages. Suddenly, the Baron looks up at the sky, and a spotlight shines down. We see a shot of a laughable painted thing that is supposed to be a comet of some kind. It is blurry and slowly moving against an equally out-of-focus starfield.  Fig. 1 - The comet Next, we get a time-consuming sequence of scenes that has a simple message yet delivers it most ineffectively: The Baron looks up at the comet. Marcos looks up at the comet. We see the comet. Marcos looks at the Baron. The Baron looks at Marcos. Marcos looks at the comet. The Baron looks at the comet. We see the comet. The Baron looks at Marcos. Marcos looks at the comet (Ha! Fooled the Baron!) The Baron looks at the comet. We see the comet. The message is that Marcos knows the Baron is looking at the comet. Okay, I GET IT!! The Baron turns to look at the Inquisitors one by one. He uses his superpowers (or whatever) to see through their black hoods and get a look at their faces. He names four of them (and forgive me if I got the names wrong, Mexican names are not my specialty) Sebastien de Pantoja;The Baron declares that he will return with the comet in three hundred years to exact his revenge upon the Inquisitors, namely by killing their descendants. We see here that the actor is shouting, but the dubbed voice isn't forceful enough to match the face. And so, years go by. We see captions flash by on the screen: 1661, 1761, 1861, and finally 1961. Now we're in a modern (relatively speaking) nightclub, where people are dancing to Lawrence Welk music and eating. Our two heroes, Ronnie Miranda (also played by Rubén Rojo) and Vicki Contreras (Rosa María Gallardo), are dancing. Ronnie notes the time (11:45 PM) and says that they must leave to go to the observatory. They explain to their friends that they're going to talk to a Professor Milan. Ronnie: "We're looking for a real star, and there are no clouds tonight."Yeah, those fake stars are really annoying. He then establishes that he is an astronomer. He and Vicki head off. We cut to the observatory, an aerial shot. There's a large telescope in the center of the cavernous room which may or may not be a real observatory, with some tables around it. A lone man is working, the professor. Outside, Ronnie and Vicki pull up to the observatory. It's not actually an observatory, but a large mural of an observatory, with Ronnie stopping his car in front of this background. Most of the backgrounds in this movie are photographs. The problem in this case is that the photo appears to have been taken from some altitude and so makes it appear that the observatory is sitting about a mile away in a crater below them. They walk off-camera. The professor looks through the telescope. We then see what he's looking at, the Moon. He then writes something down. We can only imagine what he's writing down: "the Moon is still there," or "it's actually not made of cheese!" Ronnie and Vicki arrive, and apologize for their tardiness. The Professor doesn't seem to mind, but quizzes the two of them on comets. He stars with Vicki, asking for some basic information about the two "most important" comets. He then asks Ronnie a more advanced question involving big numbers. Now we see why he didn't ask Vicki that question ;-) The Professor then shows them some historical evidence of a mysterious comet having passed the Earth in 1661. He goes into some background jargon-ish information about comets: the nature of their orbits, Sir Isaac Newton, parabolas, ellipses, and all that stuff. I checked it out, and it's generally accurate. Somebody actually did research for this movie. That's a checkmark in my book. Anyway, he says that the comet of 1661 will be visible to them "within a precise time limit, 2,624,600 sidereal hours." Somehow, he interprets this nonsense as meaning 2:36 AM. He throws more jargon at us. How could he figure such an exact date from a pile of old books? Ronnie checks his watch and says it's time now, so he rushes to the telescope and looks through it. He sees Andromeda, but no comet. Professor Milan tsk-tsks him, suggesting he turn the telescope to the south. Ronnie slowly starts moving the telescope. Not that this would help, as the "south" is a large chunk of sky. We see stars, galaxies, and a star cluster. The Professor suggests the telescope be pointed at Orion's Belt, and then we see a nebula. Can't the Professor generate some coordinates? There's no comet, and Ronnie and Professor Milan are confused and work on the problem. Vicki takes the telescope and looks around with it. Ronnie and the Professor work with rulers and papers, but we both know Vicki will find it shortly with blind luck. Sure enough, she finds it. Unfortunately, we are confronted with two shots of the comet in the eyepiece, one using a genuine photo of a comet and another using that weird blurry thing again, which looks completely different. The Professor confirms it and seems excited, while Ronnie and Vicki rush outside to see it. They hurry to a small telescope, the kind that can be found in any department store. A mural behind them shows the larger telescope they were just at, only it's pointed in a very different direction. The comet is plainly visible along the horizon, above the city. So they didn't need a telescope to see it?! Vicki says it's beautiful, and when Ronnie is looking, he notes the comet's emission of a "strange light". They hurry off to investigate. Huh? How, are you going to drive to the comet? We cut to a forest-type setting. A man is driving a car down the road when he spots something in the sky. We see it, and it's a sparkler suspended in a starfield. Really cheap effects here, but just wait, as the best is yet to come. The man gets out of the car to get a better look, and we hear a whistling sound. A paper maché boulder makes a VERY controlled landing onto the ground. It fell using visible strings. I spat out the water I was drinking when I saw this for the first time and laughed. Now we're starting to fall to the level of Plan 9. Making things worse, the set looks like the graveyard from Plan 9, with dead trees and fake grass inside an obvious soundstage. The man, who I realized by now would die, looks excited yet nervous as he cautiously approaches the boulder which fell. Is it the comet, or a piece from the comet? No matter, the boulder isn't very big and it stands on a suspiciously flat bottom. It then dissolves away to reveal a monster standing in tattered clothes. It is one of the worst latex-mask monsters I've ever seen. The make up is awful, and it doesn't even look alive in the face. It has a long hook nose, large pointed ears, lots of hair, and has a trollish look, as well as a pair of long fangs. The whole head pulsates cheesily. It's snarling, and wielding hands with two pincer-like fingers on each one. The man is terrified and runs, but the monster slowly pursues him. The man stops to cower in some bushes, but the monster finds him and shines a blinking light in his face. The man turns around as if hypnotized. I think that, in this movie, when a blinking light is on your face, you're hypnotized by the monster. The creature lunges forward, grabs the pacified man, and unfurls a long, ridiculous-looking forked tongue. Meanwhile, Ronnie and Vicki drive. Behind them is a mural of a sunrise or something. The monster does something to the man involving its tongue, and the man dies and falls to the ground. Ronnie and Vicki drive. The dead man's suit fades away and vanishes, leaving him lying there in his underwear. The suit reappears on the monster, who now has a human form. It's the Baron from before. What a surprise, and to think the suit fits perfectly! He heads off into the forest. Ronnie and Vicki pull up near some sort of steel girder bridge (another mural), and pause briefly outside the car while they pretend to see something. They walk off-camera. At the edge of the forest, they meet the Baron, walking about in his full suit. They then stand there silently for 12.7 bewildering seconds. They stare at each other, and Ronnie occasionally glances at Vicki. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?! Now the movie is descending from Plan 9 into "Manos" the Hands of Fate territory. NOOOO!!! Finally, Ronnie acts as if surprised by the Baron standing in front of them, and asks if he saw an "airlight" (don't ask) land nearby. The Baron says no, and then goes on to say this: "You appear surprised to see me, my friend. I think I should explain, you see, I always take my walks at this hour of the night."Yeah, that's really normal. That answers all my questions. It seems to satisfy Ronnie, who explains that they were observing a meteor. Since "meteor" is an obviously complex astronomical term, Vicki chastises Ronnie for using such big words in the presence of an obvious ignoramus like the Baron. Naturally, the Baron asserts politely that he knows what they're talking about, and he even comes out of the closet... he's an amateur astronomer. He takes an interest in such things. I guess his life depends on it. Ronnie hands the Baron his business card and invites him to talk shop at the observatory before the three of them part ways. Now we see the Baron walking in front of the sunrise mural. He spots a restaurant/bar, and enters. The interior looks like a mini bar someone would have in his or her basement. We are subjected to some bizarre saxophone music that warbles a little bit and reminded me of a prolonged, high-pitched fart. Don't worry, I don't flatulate. It's my brother, honest! So anyway, the Baron enters the empty bar and slowly walks in. There's only one customer, a drunken young woman. The bartender and owner are off to the side emptying the cash register. The Baron vanishes from the room in mid-stride, only to reappear at the bar, shaving a few seconds off his trip. He stands there for a moment, looking very slick and evil, and finally the woman notices him.  Fig. 2 - He's way too cool for the room She speaks to him. Her speech is slurred. He slowly turns. The owner and bartender notice him, and the owner says that they can't serve him drinks at this hour. The girl, his daughter perhaps, intercedes on the Baron's behalf and gets him a drink. The Baron then stares at her, or at least he's supposed to be staring at her. It looks to me as if the Baron is staring above and through her. The woman is positive they've met, but can't put her finger on an exact time because she feels "foggy." She then asserts that he's her friend. She's just a little bit psychotic. The bartender leaves for the night, joining the owner. The lady speaks again. "Since you got here, you haven't said one single word to me. But that stare in your eyes says so much to me."A light blinks on and off in his face. I thought that the light meant you were hypnotized. Now it means he's hypnotizing you... unless he's hypnotizing himself. The light reminds me of a turning signal on a car. She says she's afraid of him, but wants him to keep staring. She then kisses him and he stands as stiff as a statue. She gets frustrated and turns to go but pauses, wanting to look back and get stared at I guess. Unfortunately for her, the Baron transforms into the Brainiac via transition effect, and he starts snarling. She turns, sees him, and screams. There is a slight but very annoying delay between the visual start of the scream and the sound. He grabs her, unfurls that tongue again, and somehow kills her after a brief struggle. The owner hears from another room, but only makes a cursory gesture before he resumes whatever it was he was doing before. I would think a woman's scream would warrant some kind of investigative action, but apparently not here. Next, we're in a morgue, and the Brainiac's two victims are being examined. The medical examiner and two detectives are there. The doctor tells us that both people were killed in the same manner. A pair of small holes was drilled into the bases of their skulls, and their brains were sucked out. The chief cop, a beefy bald guy, is sure that "the killer made the perforations." Erm, yeah, if that's how they died then obviously the killer did it. The chief is a regular Sherlock Holmes. I felt the voice used to dub in for the chief was a tad inappropriate. He sounds like some skinny accountant, not a beefy cop. Anyway, the chief goes philosophical for a moment and wishes there were some way to control what people learned because "a maniac with a lot of knowledge is a threat." Really bad movie philosophy. It always shows up at some point. The cops smoke away and talk things over. The chief tries to tie in a bank robbery that occurred with these murders. Benny, the other cop, tries jumping ahead and solving the entire case, but the chief points out that the dead man was found twenty-six miles away. That was quite a walk for the Baron to make in one evening. I guess he teleported or whatever it is he does. Benny tries to lighten the mood but fails miserably. The cops leave the morgue. We cut to an exterior (a mural again,) and the Baron steps in and reads a plaque mounted on a concrete wall:
Frente a este lugar es-
Naturally, the Baron reads this all to us in english. This building was the Inquisition crematorium from 1596 to 1771. He enters.tuven el que madero de la Inquisicion de 1596 a 1771 Direccion de monumentos coloniales y de la Republica. The interior has blank stone walls. Inside sits a librarian who watches over an archive of old Inquisition literature. The librarian points out that the archive is closed, but the Baron stares at the librarian with an arched eyebrow and a sinister look that made me laugh, and his face does the flashy thing.  Fig. 3 - The Baron hypnotizes the librarian It's darker and damper looking down there. He finds the tombs of his Inquisitors, and reads their names to us once again. We cut outside, to another mural of a city street. A woman stands at a street corner (I wonder what she's doing there...) and the Baron happens to walk by. She asks for a match, and we hear more of that awful saxophone music. He lights her cigarette and then proceeds to kiss her. He walks off and she watches him with confusion. He then transforms and turns around. The lady screams but doesn't run. Here, we get a good close look at the lump of poorly molded and pulsing latex with tufts of hair sticking out that collectively is the Brainiac's face. The eyes are painted or something; they don't look alive.  Fig. 4 - The Brainiac's face He extends his silly looking tongue, and the woman faints or something. We now see a diner, and the chief and Benny are enjoying some food. I noticed the chief is having some coke and milk. I've heard this was a popular drink a long time ago. I tried it, and I spat it out. It was not good. While the cops eat, they talk about the third victim of the psycho they're investigating, the one we just saw die. They think an electric drill was used to drill the holes. This kills Benny's appetite for a sweet roll he was eating. The chief thinks that these killings are the work of a schizophrenic (he pronounces it as "schiz-OH-phrenic".) A waitress arrives with Benny's order of calf's brains. Is that a food for people? We hear some mirthful xylophone music that indicates to us that this scene is supposed to be funny. With mad cow disease floating around, I wouldn't be caught dead eating any kind of brain. Food from a simpler time... Now we're back at the observatory. Professor Milan is frustrated - the comet has vanished, and he can't find it. Ronnie suggests the professor get some rest, and wonders if the comet was some kind of hallucination. The professor vehemently rejects this idea, despite the fact that reports coming in the mail from other observatories are negative. While Vicki goes through the rest of the mail, she finds an invitation for all three of them to a housewarming party being held by the Baron at his new residence. None of them know who the Baron is or why they were invited to his party, but the three agree to go. We cut to our two hard-working police officers on a restaurant terrace, smoking away once again. A mural of a city is behind them, but the horizon is way too high to convince anyone that a city is really out there. Benny is excited, as they've been invited to the Baron's party. Granted, they're supposed to be there for security and not to enjoy themselves, but Benny is still excited. He then claps and asks for service. Pretty damn rude. So it's party time. The Baron's house has a castle-like interior, where the party is being held. I felt it was too big to be comfortable, but that's me. Some people are already there, quietly talking amongst one another. Overall, it's a pretty lamp party. New guests arrive, and the butler announces their names. First to arrive is Luis Meneses, descendant of Balthazar Meneses. In fact, he's played by the same actor and therefore looks identical. The middle-aged man looks like a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and Principal Rooney from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. As he stands at the entrance, we see him briefly fade in to his Inquisition clothes and wig, a subtle message from the director that this one of the Inquisitors from the beginning of the movie!!! As if the evil music playing during the introduction wasn't enough. The Baron seems friendly and invited Luis in. A moment later, the next descendant arrives. She's a young woman named Anna Louisa Bevar, who is about to be married. We see her ancestor's face superimposed over hers, only her Inquisitor ancestor was a man, so it's a little goofy. She enters with her fiancée. Next arrives Professor Indelacio Pantoja and we get the same Inquisitor superimposition treatment, and finally we see the professor, Ronnie, and Vicki. Here, we get the 'plot twist'. Vicki is descended from Alvaro Contreras. Ronnie is quite obviously descended from Marcos Miranda, the man who defended the Baron and got lashed for it. Oh my. An intriguing conflict arises. What will the Baron do? Tune in next week and find out. ;-) The Baron leads the three astronomers into the party and pours drinks for them. He then says he can't drink alcohol himself because he is or was ill. He then suffers a mild pain and retreats to an anteroom for some medicine. We see the Baron stand at a chest that struck me as being in plain sight of the guests. He unlocks and opens it, and retrieves a large metal chalice filled with chunks of brains. They appear to be fist-sized hunks of brain. How, if he sucked the brains out with his straw-like tongue, did he reconstitute them into large chunks? With a dessert spoon, he scoops a small amount out and into a smaller martini glass-like dish, cautiously looking around before he drinks/eats it. We next see the cops, standing away from the other guests near the doorway. The chief warns Benny that these sorts of upper-class parties attract the best thieves who will go for jewels and wallets and stuff. They split up. So the party goes without a hitch, and by the end everyone has gathered around the Baron as he explains why he's visiting Mexico. He admires their culture or something. Anna Bevar invites the Baron to her coming wedding, and he's happy to go. Professor Pantoja also welcomes the Baron to look at some old documents he's translated and interpreted, and Professor Milan leaves a standing invitation to visit the observatory. Everybody says good night and leaves the house. The cops are the last to go. Benny seems disappointed that nothing happened at this party. Next, we cut to Professor Pantoja's house, where Pantoja is showing the Baron some of the aforementioned documents that pertain to the old Inquisition. Pantoja notes how brutal they were and how uncomfortable it is to talk about what they did to people. But in the Baron's case, didn't the Inquisition do a good thing? The Baron is evil, right? While Pantoja talks, the Baron spots his daughter Maria coming down a staircase. The Baron does the flashy face thing, and she approaches with some books. The professor introduces them, and the Baron is friendly. The professor notes that at that time, "religion was not extremely enlightened." Is it enlightened now? If you listen to Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, it sure doesn't sound like it. Anyway, the professor is talking and the Baron is staring at Maria the whole time. The professor then finds a note describing the trial and execution of a Baron with the same name in 1661, and the Baron takes it up and retells the story, while staring at Maria. He starts sounding a little emotional about it, and Maria suggests that it could have been one of the Baron's ancestors who was executed. The Baron stands away from them and says that he has no ancestors and that he was the one who was executed. Neither Pantoja understands what he means. The Baron then does the flashy face thing, and hypnotizes both of them. As they stand there frozen in place, the professor visibly gestures at Maria with his eyes several times. I know he was supposedly looking at her with worry, but I saw it as the professor gesturing, "take her, not me!" Really funny stuff.  Fig. 5 - Pantoja and his daughter are hypnotized She then walks to the Baron, and kisses him while the professor helplessly watches with very wide eyes. She then turns and walks away, and the Baron transforms and puts his pincers on her shoulders. It takes a moment for her to realize what is touching her. The Brainiac grabs her, sucks her brains out as she screams, and she dies. Next, the professor is killed, though there's no struggle with him. He seems to be more hypnotized than Maria. Maybe it works better on men, who knows. The Brainiac then throws some of the translated and interpreted books and documents around the room like a rampaging toddler, and sets fire to the room. He then leaves. The room gets gutted, and the cops inevitably show up. It's the chief and Benny there. Benny takes charge of the bodies, and seems very blasé and even amused about it all, saying the killer "probably thought he was cracking a safe" when he sucked the brains out of his victim's skulls. He then carefully reminds the morgue people there to tag the bones so that Benny won't get them mixed up. These are real secrets of forensics we're seeing here. CSI, this is not. At the observatory, Ronnie and Vicki read about the deaths of the Pantojas and are shocked, as if the professor. He then goes back to reading more negative sighting reports from observatories around the world. As he goes through the papers and talks, we don't hear a sound other than the dubbed voice when we should also be hearing the papers crinkling. The foley artists must have been asleep. I don't blame them. The professor is very frustrated now, as he's sure he, Ronnie, and Vicki sighted the comet. He returns to the old book he used to predict the comet, and very silently goes through it until he finds the entry from 1661. Milan: "Comet seen... but it's not true... a sorcerer."Okay, now he's getting incoherent. We cut to Mr. and Mrs. Meneses' house, showing the Baron around their metallurgy lab that they have there. In the following pointless scene, the Baron tells them that he is interested in metallurgy and has a formula for a new super-alloy that he wants to test using the Meneses' lab. As they walk through said lab, they smoke. Who smokes in a lab?! They eagerly cooperate, seeing financial opportunity with the Baron's alloy. The Baron then stares at the wife while Mr. Meneses fiddles with the furnace. She smiles politely, but the Baron does the flashy face thing. Mr. Meneses sees this and is frozen in place, leaning a bit to his right. The Baron kisses the hypnotized wife for about 22 seconds before transforming and killing her. I didn't really see his tongue go through the back of her neck as she never really had her back turned to him for any significant period of time, but never mind. All the while, Mr. Meneses stands there frozen. The Brainiac turns to him and speaks with an echoic voice. The Brainiac condemns Mr. Meneses to death. The hypnotized man then turns, opens the furnace, and climbs in. I guess the Brainiac had his fill of grey matter. We cut to Ronnie and Vicki's house. Based on what I've seen on Judge Judy, it's not a good idea to live with someone before you're married. They read the newspaper over a meal, and of course, they're horrified at the recent murders of the Meneses couple in their house, which burned to the ground. Ronnie somehow suspects the Baron - he's a "bad omen" in Ronnie's eyes. After all, both the Meneses' and Professor Pantoja were at the Baron's party before they died. And over at the Baron's house, Benny and the chief show up at the door to meet the Baron. The butler goes off to get him, and the cops are told to remain at the door. Being in Mexico, where a search warrant apparently isn't necessary, the two cops enter the house and start looking through books and cabinets. Again, these cops are showing us just how rude they are. The chief looks through a rolodex-like device, and copies some names onto his notepad. He stops when he sees the Baron slowly make his way over to them, dressed in a silk robe. The cops introduce themselves, and would like the Baron's help in their investigation. The Baron is aware of the killings of the Pantojas, but not of the Meneses'. The chief figures that since the Baron was a friend of theirs, he would know useful information. The Baron regretfully says that he didn't really know them too well, that he only invited them to his party to be polite, and that he just recently moved there and so knows nobody. The cops give up and leave, and the Baron watches them go. Once he's alone, he heads off to that cabinet of horrors he has and moves the chalice to a sturdier looking trunk. We get a nice close up of the brains stuffed inside the chalice. He locks the trunk and leaves. Why aren't they decaying? We cut to a mural (again!) of a cathedral interior. The Baron meets the newlywed Coraya couple. The new wife is a descendant of one of the Inquisitors, remember? I had problems remembering, I was busy thinking about how to best preserve brains in an unrefrigerated cabinet. Anyway, they thank the Baron for the present and he apologizes for being late and missing the wedding. They don't seem to mind too much and head off for their honeymoon. We then cut to a different angle, and a different mural. The Baron bumps into Ronnie and Vicki, who witnessed the blessed matrimony. They mention how they've been looking for a comet, and the Baron is surprised anyone is looking for it. They mention that they saw it the same night they met the Baron in the forest. The conversation turns to the recent murders: Ronnie: "It's really a strange coincidence. The two were together at your house, you remember, don't you Baron? They were dead two days later. Strange, isn't it Baron?"Now, if I were the Baron, I would assume Ronnie was insinuating something, and I would suck out his brains. I'm not a good brainiac. The Baron takes this as idle talk and dismisses it. They part. Now we cut to the hotel where the Corayas are staying. Anna is brushing her hair at the vanity, and her new husband is having a bath. The Baron slips into the room (we see this through the vanity mirror) and quietly walks in until Anna finally sees him and jumps. She's startled, and asks if the Baron needs anything. He remains silent and slowly approaches. He does the flashy face thing, and she gets very frightened. He stares and continues his advance. She calls out for her husband (I think his name is Frank,) runs to the bathroom door and pounds on it. The pounds are soft and dull sounding, and not at all in sync with what we see with the film. Frank doesn't answer. She manages to force the door open, and finds Frank hanging from the shower fixture, with his head submerged in the water. Did the Baron do that, or did Frank kill himself? Maybe he had second thoughts about the marriage. This really isn't made clear, but I assume the Brainiac did it. Anna screams and runs back into the room. The Baron approaches her and tells her exactly why he's going to kill her. Yeah, that'll calm her nerves. He then transforms, and she faints onto the bed. In a shot derived from Nosferatu, the shadow of the Brainiac is on the wall behind the bed, and it slowly creeps up to Anna. We cut away before we're able to see if the shadow can move her, like it did in Nosferatu. Benny and the chief are at the Inquisition archive, and their investigation is continuing. The chief writes some stuff down, and then they head to the basement. For the next 57 seconds, we watch the chief write down the names of the dead Inquisitors while Benny silently follows and looks around. Benny finally whines about leaving, and they leave. Now we're at the morgue, and new victims are being looked at. In fact, we get a close up of someone's face/skull that looks burned. The chief stands aside, reading the Inquisitors' names, and then the victims' names. He realizes the pattern. I told you, he's Sherlock Holmes! He then extrapolates, and makes the clever realization that Victoria Contreras may be next. Heading out, the chief makes an early and forgettable use of the "I'll be back" line. The cops head to the observatory and meet the professor, who tells them that Ronnie and Vicki are having dinner at the Baron's house. Chief: "Any minute now they could be dead."The cops run out and into their car, parked in front of the observatory mural. Benny: "Then I suppose we're going to the Baron's house, Chief?"What can I say about the dialogue? Ronnie and Vicki are seated in the Baron's living room. They chat about the Baron's mysterious pain, which he says is getting better. Ronnie and Vicki were invited so that the Baron could share some information he has on how and when to recover the missing comet, but the Baron pushes for a twenty-minute wait until the comet becomes visible. He leaves in the meantime to get some medicine for himself. He opens the trunk, and eats some brain. Ronnie and Vicki wait. The Baron finishes up, and rejoins them. He notes Ronnie and Vicki's approaching wedding date, and the Baron wants to give Vicki a jewel as a premature wedding present and sign of friendship. Ronnie starts getting a bit defensive, and Vicki really doesn't say or do much about the offer, but the Baron insists. He also insists (a tad aggressively) that Vicki choose a jewel alone, so Ronnie can't "influence her." Vicki remains tight-lipped as the two of them leave Ronnie high and dry. Dude, he's putting the moves on your girl, do something! What does he do? He goes over to the trunk and examines it. He tries to open it, but can't. The Baron shows Vicki some jewels in an ornate looking box, and he comes on to her. She moves away, but he longs to have and love her because she's so beautiful. Unfortunately, he can't. Why doesn't she run now? Baron: "My hate is much stronger than my love, like a master no one can control!"Care to show me a "master" that is under control? She continues to back away. Ronnie grabs a screwdriver or something similar. The Baron doesn't want to kill Vicki, but he explains why he must. She's the last descendent left. Ronnie manages to get the trunk open. The Baron then stares at Vicki, and she looks scared. Ronnie finds the brains, and looks disgusted. The Brainiac (didn't want to overuse the transformation effect, I guess) chases Vicki around the room, growling and snarling. She screams and runs to Ronnie. The Brainiac is close behind, and speaks to Ronnie. He orders Ronnie to stand aside, and notes that Ronnie's ancestor defended him, thus keeping Ronnie safe. The Brainiac then declares that nothing can stop him. Ronnie yells at Vicki to run, and she does so, but she's stopped at the front door by the butler. So, he's in on it too? How does this old man keep a young woman inside anyway? The Brainiac runs at Ronnie, but becomes semi-transparent and passes through him like a ghost in pursuit of Vicki. He grabs Vicki. In the nick of time, the cops burst in and knock out the apparently evil butler. They carry enormous bazooka-like guns attached with hoses to metal drums they wear on their backs. They are flamethrowers, which the cops proceed to use against the Brainiac. Turn invisible again! No, they cook him, and he falls. It certainly didn't look like the flames were anywhere near him, but after a moment of broiling, the Brainiac lies dead on the floor, nicely charred. As he steams, he reverts to the Baron in his clothes from 1661, and then into a blackened skeleton. And then... we see "THE END" on the screen. That's how the movie ends, right there and just like that. Nothing about where the cops got those flamethrowers, or how they knew to kill the Brainiac with them, or what Ronnie and Vicki will do in the future. Really a piss-off ending.
THE END!!!
Apparently, The Brainiac was one of many Mexican horror movies imported into the United States by K. Gordon Murray. Did he deliberately pick the worst that Mexican cinema had to offer? I guess so. This movie doesn't even have a moral. The Inquisition was evil, but in this movie they were killing an evil man... so what's the point? And then, the Brainiac goes around killing all the innocent descendants of the Inquisitors, and their wives (where applicable.) How is that considered justice, and how come he seemed to have "many virtues" as Marcos Miranda put it? What does that mean? I think the Roman Catholic Church should destroy this movie; it's clearly evil and confusing. I guess the only moral here is the comets are evil. This is reinforced in the 1985 mess Lifeforce. Plot holes abound in this movie, mainly due to the abrupt ending. So many questions were left unanswered. I'll lose much sleep wondering if Ronnie and Vicki will ever see the comet again. Maybe Mr. Murray dicked around with the ending and made it like this. This movie suffered from a dubbing affliction that I've seen in a few Japanese monster movies and, of course, "Manos" the hands of fate, and that is a reuse of voices. I knew that the bar owner from the beginning had the same voice actor as the chief, who may also have had the same voice actor as the librarian at the archive. Also, I'm sure that Mrs. Meneses, Anna Bevar, and possibly Vicki herself were all voiced by the same woman. Now, on to the acting. It's hard to judge since they were dubbed out. Abel Salazar went a little over-the-top at times with his hypnosis stare, but he wasn't bad in this movie. Vicki was a little irritating since, especially in the observatory scene, she had sort of a dumb look. I expected her half the time to press one finger against her cheek and say "gee wiz!" while the men talked about Halley's Comet. I guess it was a sign of the times. The special effects were certainly substandard. I mean, that falling boulder scene paralysed me with laughter, and that blurry comet thing was enough to get a chuckle out of me. But you know what? I think that, with a decent budget, fleshed out story, some rewriting in parts, and good actors, this movie could be saved. I really think so. Of course, I'm a pretty weird guy. I watch these movies, don't I? And finally, what was up with this title? Brainiac? Is this meant to be a combination of 'brain' and 'maniac'? So if you like postcard backgrounds, long forked tongues, or rude detectives, I think you will like The Brainiac. BTW, I have nothing against amateur astronomers. Really, I don't. July 7, 2004 Back to main site? |
