MUSEO DEL HORROR (1964)
aka Museum of Horror
Article 2852 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-27-2009
Posting Date: 6-4-2009
Directed by Rafael Baledon
Featuring Julio Aleman, Patricia Conde, Joaquin Cordero
Country: Mexico

Someone is killing women and covering them with wax. Grave robbers are also on the loose. People are also being killed by poison darts with curare. Who is the culprit?

Sometimes I rise to the challenge of enjoying a movie in its native language without the benefit of subtitles or English dubbing, and sometimes it just seems a bore to even try. I’m afraid this one falls into the latter category. It should be easy to follow, given that it’s largely a clone of HOUSE OF WAX, but there are other elements here not from the movie (grave robbers, a room of decaying corpses, the curare darts, etc.), and not only was I never able to quite figure out how they all fit into the story, I never quite worked up the ambition to really put my mind to it because of the predictability of the basic plot. It has some striking scenes; a woman has a dream of the dead coming to life that is quite effective, and there’s a scene of a policeman being buried alive, his hands reaching through the dirt, that is very striking. It’s good it has these scenes, because it omits the most striking scene from its source movie; there’s no unmasking sequence, in short. I’m afraid this one left me cold, but it also might just have been a bad day for it. Perhaps I’ll give it a try another time…