Guest post by author Stan Stanley
Stan Stanley makes comics that are sometimes creepy, sometimes funny, but always queer. She’s been making comics since she was in high school and has continued doing so throughout various science-related careers when she was supposed to be doing science. Instead, she created Friendly Hostility, The Hazards of Love, and her online journal comic, Stananigans. The Hazards of Love is heavily influenced by the ephemera of the Mexico in which Stan grew up, though she now finds herself in NYC among a lovely crew of weirdos. She lives with her spouse, a large cat, and a larger collection of bones.
Let’s start with some qualifiers here: these films are all older than fifty years, so you’re not going to see a lot of the magnificent horror that’s come out in the past few decades. This list also doesn’t cover “best,” because then we get caught up in a tangled web of what makes a good film. Nah, we’re talking about moments that stuck with me, years and years after I saw them. Bits of these movies wormed their way into my psyche, and you can see tributes to them throughout The Hazards of Love.
5. El Vampiro
The plot’s not particularly sophisticated. It’s a remix of Dracula set in Mexico – but that’s its own wonder, you know? Sometimes a familiar story in a new environment is enough to make it fresh and interesting. However, what really stuck with me was the long shots of the funeral procession in the first half hour. We watch the funeral procession from either high above the church rafters, or from a distance in the foliage. Leaves and branches dangle in the foreground and separate us from the occurring funeral. There’s implications of the viewer-as-outsider, sure, and I’m certain film theory folks could dig into this a little more than I can.
In terms of movie pacing, this scene is probably not good. It lingers a little too long; a few moments shorter and it would hit its goal of an eerie atmosphere instead of stretching into boredom. But the framing on these long shots!
These scenes look beautiful. There’s something organic to them, you know? They tell you where we are and what’s going on, like…well. Like panels in a comic. To be fair to El Vampiro, it’s taken me years to nail pacing, too. And my medium is static. Pacing is hard.
4. El Espejo de la Bruja
This one has an absolutely wild plot that smushes a revenge ghost story with a mad scientist act two and mixes in a good dash of Eyes Without a Face. Is it coherent? Picture me wincing and moving my hand in a side-to-side motion. Is it horror? Yes for folks who find horror in the uncanny valley and can forgive a cheesy special effect or three. Is it enjoyable? Yeah, on a lot of levels, one of which is “why is there an owl in the laboratory, that’s not sterile at all.”
One of the things that hits my horror buttons is “that isn’t supposed to happen.” Gore is the unfortunate result of violence against the body and can be pushed to nauseating limits, and subtle psychological terror is amazing, but the idea of there is not supposed to be an eye there hits that hindbrain horror for me.
Or in this case, hands are not supposed to fall off and scutter away.
It’s a spoiler. It’s fine, this isn’t a movie where this spoiler will ruin your enjoyment. At some point, hands fall off. They crawl away and have one goal: revenge. This is by far not unique to this film, to the point that seeing disembodied hands in film can come across as silly (or charming, if we’ve had our dose of Addams Family exposure), but this was so utterly unexpected to me at the point where it happens. It was the precursor to the same horror I would later feel watching The Thing and seeing blood leap from the plate when tested. Bodies are not supposed to do that.
It imprinted is what I mean.
3. La Maldición de la Llorona or La Casa Embrujada
This is a hell of a film, and if you can track it down I recommend it. It’s a hereditary curse type of storyline, but chock full of homage to classic monsters of the 30s, and an ahead-of-its-time apotheosis horror. The fear that the real horror is you, changed, is a concept I love exploring.
But that’s not why I remember this film. No, this film stuck with me because of a pair of prosthetic pieces that fit over Rita Macedo’s eyes and blacked them out. There’s this scene where the camera zooms in on her weeping and you notice her eyes aren’t there, or they are but they’re all black, or they’re void, or they’re something that’s not supposed to be there. It’s so small and so clearly inhuman. And yeah, I realize now that they’re slightly wonky in make or application, but back then it was like a gut punch.
(As a sidebar, Rita Macedo plays an utterly vicious villainess who embraces her part in the curse and the power it brings. She spends the film wearing long black dresses and posing iconically with her chin held high; the movie poster displays her standing tall and proud and holding four leashed Great Danes. Anyway, I’m queer.)
2. Hasta el Viento Tiene Miedo
There’s a dark, ghostly secret at a boarding school for wealthy young ladies. A classic gothic horror plotline, but this film went hard into a palette of 60s bright pastels, resulting in a design that has more in common with 1977’s Suspiria than with dark decaying mansions.
Dark academia, eat your heart out. And there’s something to horror in lush, bright technicolor, isn’t there? It directly influenced the horror in The Hazards of Love – the monster-infested place our protagonist falls into is called “Bright World,” after all, and you might notice a large amount of monsters wear very fashionable, 60s sort of outfits.
Marga Lopez, incidentally, always had a sweep of blue eyeshadow that matched the walls and I frankly respect the hell out of that costuming department’s decision.
1. El Libro de Piedra
If you’re going to watch one movie on this list, I would beg you to make it this one. Aside from Hasta el Viento Tiene Miedo, the other films listed need to be watched with a fondness for cheesy older movies. And while El Libro de Piedra isn’t perfect, it’s as close as any of these come to that, to the point that I don’t want to spoil it too much.
You’ll recognize the tropes: a private tutor with a (figurative) skeleton in her closet is hired to work with an intelligent but isolated child whose imaginary friend is starting to become a little too real. From there, the story works hard at developing every character, giving them reasons they’re struggling, so that when tempers flare or personalities clash, it makes sense and leads to the awful, inevitable conclusion.
The storytelling is almost as magnificent as Joaquin Cordero playing the patriarch (he smiles maybe twice in the entire movie: a tight-lipped, brief social obligation at the start, and an exhausted, wry twist to his mouth at the end), but what really struck me was how the physical setting complements the narrative. The estate is heavily forested, cut through with narrow paths that are framed by tall, looming trees. Every angle of the home seems oppressively claustrophobic at times, too small and too dark to ever be truly comfortable.
One, yes Marga Lopez is in this one, too, and her wardrobe is still brilliant. Two, is the way the house frames the actors a bit heavy handed sometimes? Maybe. But damn, it looks good: all sweeping arcs and menacing angles.
(Sidebar, I am just realizing that something about the scene where the tutor combs Silvia’s hair stuck with me enough that I echoed it in The Hazards of Love, albeit a more sinister version.)
If you watch any of these films, you can imagine me beside you, excitedly motioning to the framing here, or the use of light there, or cackling at the cheesier portions. It’s apparent enough in my work that I’m working under some influences, so to speak. Taking a look at these will definitely show you where and how this genre left its fingerprints on my brain.
