The Mansion of Madness (1973)

Dir: Juan López Moctezuma

Surreal Mexican horror (loosely based on Poe) in which a journalist named Gaston LeBlanc shows up at an insane asylum in the woods, hoping to write a piece on the methods of the famous Dr Maillard. Said methods start seeming a little unorthodox (assuming crucifixions in the basement and attempted human sacrifices are unorthodox to you) and Gaston soon suspects the inmates may have taken over the asylum. Director Moctezuma's understanding of surrealism and its power to unsettle is strong and its hard to deny the weirdness of images like a man dry-humping a skinned veal carcass or three people dressed as birds performing a scythe-toting dance of death. The film looks fantastic - so many shots are framed as things of beauty - but ultimately the thin Z-movie plotting is so predictable and generic that it lets down the overall effect (especially during a seemingly endless chase through the woods sequence in the middle). At its best, the film scales the giddy heights of Russell and Jodorowsky but frustratingly fails to sustain anything like that for a full 83 minutes. Clearly a dry run for the director's later masterpiece, Alucarda. **1/2