el crispito

Mexican cinema has the same thing going on. There are films that are breathtaking additions to world cinema and some that would make Ed Wood recoil in horror. And just like I enjoy some exotic Mexican candies that taste a little strange, I also have a strange fondness for some trashy Mexican films because they're so alien to me. I often cannot sit and watch one paying full attention to it, nor usually do I make it through a whole one before I change the channel. Still, I've seen enough in bits and pieces that I feel comfortable making a few comments on some interesting aspects of midnight Mexican cinema. (I call it that because it's usually shown late at night before 6 or 6 am, when the Mexican movie channels go back to showing classics from la época de oro or "golden age" of Mexican cinema.)

I have difficulty accurately judging the age the films. They look to be about five to ten years older than they really are. Sometimes you can date them properly from products, advertisements or fashion, but the film stock itself will look like a bad 70s movie when it's really a bad 80s movie. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe the cameras and other equipment used were old? Perhaps the processing was not as cutting edge as what I'm used to seeing from the 80s? In any case, when watching Mexican color films from the 60s through the 80s, they're usually a lot more recent than you think they are.

Grieving Wife, Mil caminos tiene la muerte

Contrary to the oft-heard complaint, there is no shortage of roles for older women in Mexican films of this (or any) era. It tends to always be the same role: the elderly grandmother or the devastated wife crying at the side of the coffin of a recently murdered innocent during a wake or funeral.

The imminent threat, La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

Younger women don't often fare too well either. They're usually the victims of rape. Whether this serves as a twisted gratification in the male gaze or merely as the realization of the ultimate national masculine nightmare, I am unsure. During the era of these films, all good guys are macho and all the women in their lives chaste and pure. Contrary to popular belief, machismo does not dominate contemporary Mexican culture. You see those stereotypes nowadays once in a while, but more often than not, they're the subject of gentle mocking.

The destiny of a young female character, La muerte cruzó el río Bravo

Not so in the midnight movies that take place in the countryside or desert, with a cast of all cowboy-clad males. They look like cowboys everywhere, but of course, they're Mexican. They don't necessarily have to be cowboys. They might ride horses or they might use motorcycles. They might be the toughs of no specific career other than initiating random violence and criminal escapades. In any case, the cowboy otfit means tough and macho.

I once saw a movie here once where the enemy was the gringo hydrological engineer that came to a small agricultural pueblo to help with their irrigation problems. He was tall, skinny, white, blond and wore glasses, and while he had a ridiculous accent in his Spanish, when things turned ugly in a town meeting and the crowd (dressed in flannel, jeans and cowboy hats) threatened to lynch him, he understood every word they were saying, even in the heat of the moment. Maybe he was a highly educated spy or a plant from a multi-national narcotics ring. I don't know because I stopped watching.

This type of film usually plays upon the fear of a violent disturbance to domestic tranquility in a family or small town by an outsider, like Shadow of a Doubt. In a similar vein, you have films wherein a group of outsiders, like a gang of ruffians on motorcycles, comes to a place simply to terrorize it. Sometimes this involves violence committed for kicks and other times it is an orchestrated plot like a kidnapping or attempted robbery of a poor family mistakenly thought to have money hidden somewhere in their house.

Motorcycle gang rides into town, Mil caminos tiene la muerte

Often in the end of these fearmongering movies, the love interest gets killed. I don't mean they are killed in the beginning of the film, giving the hero or heroine cause to take up a mission of avenging their deaths. I mean that at the very end of the film, they're killed by some pointless tragedy or accidental oversight, like not making sure that the bad guy is really dead and he comes back to life just long enough to aim his gun at and fatally shoot the girl whose father has just been rescued by the hero-boyfriend from the gang of maniacal kidnappers. It seems that films of this era needed to have an unhappy ending for some reason, even after all is said and done and the day has been saved. The moral is that you should never be too happy, I guess.

A more lighthearted genre popular in the 70s and 80s is the sex romp. These are just like the sex romps in the rest of the world, but in Mexico they have Sasha Montenegro.

Sasha Montenegro

She's interesting because she was born (1950) in what was then Yugoslavia, moved to Argentina, then ended up in Mexico, but best of all, she had a 20-year affair with a president (1976-1982): José López Portillo y Pacheco. He was still married at the time, but he got a divorce and the two married in 1995. She had two children with him. He was taken sick though, and she had to struggle with his children from his former marriage for visitation rights in the hospital. Since his death in 2004, she has been battling them in court for her part of the estate.

De todas todas (1985) demonstrates a common feature of the Mexican sex romp: the male lead can look like Ron Jeremy, but he's always surrounded by beautiful women.

Dinner scene from De todas todas

Yet despite these ridiculous aspects of Mexican films from the 70s and 80s, they are not without their charms. First off, they do more with less. They are obviously low-budget productions, but it seems that a lot of thought has gone into their production. Even in cheap movies with absurd storylines, you will come across creative blocking, breathtaking lighting or incredibly sharp editing.

Maribel Guardia and Rafael Inclán, De todas todas

In Mil caminos tiene la muerte, from 1977, the group of toughs is a little more nuanced than in most films. The group is detained by the inevitable Man, who is acting as the man does and threatening the toughs. As the toughs are pushed into a corner by the Man, they strike back. First we see the faces of individuals in the group just as they are starting to act, punching a cop or hitting a townsperson over the head with a chair. Before the blow lands, we cut to a scene in which that particular character is having a very bad previous experience with a prior Man (an abusive father that beat on the individual and his mother), then cuts back to the individual landing a punch on the Man in the present day story. This way the characters are developed, and you identify and sympathize with the individual. You know that in attacking the Man, they're accomplishing the greater social feat of breaking with the will of authority.

These films often evidence Mexicans' love for their country, or more specifically, for the diversity to be found within it. The various cities in Mexico are all renowned for their own particular characteristics or attractions. For example, Guanajuato is known for its tunnels and mummies, where as Tijuana is historically famous for bordertown excitement. The midnight movies you see here often exploit those characteristics in their locations, and it's a fun way to find out about the different regions of of the country and their specialties. It's especially fun to check out, say, Tijuana of 1975.

There is no shortage of music in Mexican movies from the 70s and 80s. Whether it's a mariachi ensemble or two drunk guys singing off key in a roadhouse, you hear all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of films from the 50s and 60s that were showcases for that hip new music that all the teens were listening too. These often have juvenille deliquency themes also, which makes them doubly entertaining for me. (My favorite is La edad de la violencia from 1964, which has a Spanish-language version of "Moon River" and the classic Sonora Santanera, "La boa.") The films of the 70s and 80s do not live up to the quality of these classics, but you can see how they're similarly throwing in music to try and liven it up a bit and give the audience a little more pow for their peso.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the trashier side of Mexican cinema is taking screen captures of the outrageous things they do and posting them on my blog. Someday, maybe I'll figure out a way to take motion picture clips from the tv and post them on here, so you can see their nuttiness in action. Until then, if you want to check it out, maybe you can order it through your local provider.