By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Abraham Castillo Flores, head programmer of Mexico’s famed Morbido Fest, is hosting a multimedia tour of genre cinema from his home country at Fantastic Fest, and we’ve got an exclusive teaser trailer to share!
Presented by The Morbido Crypt and The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, the Guide to Mexican Fantasy and Horror Cinema will take place Sunday, September 22 at 2 pm. at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar (click here for more info). Here’s the official description: “For decades, Mexican fantasy and horror cinema hid in the shadows, wearing a luchador mask, surviving budgets tainted by economic gloom, holding vampires with a nylon thread, receiving the scorn of nearsighted critics and consumption by audiences sunk into tongue-in-cheek appreciation.
“But things have changed. Throughout the first 19 years of the 21st century there has been a clear rise in the amount, quality and risk found in Mexican horror and fantasy cinema. It is not by chance that today, in the midst of a horrifying reality, Mexican genre films enjoy popularity, freedom and sometimes, profitability. As if that were not enough, our beloved alpha genre warrior—Guillermo del Toro—has been knighted by Hollywood.
Who would have thought that stories filled with wailing legends from our pre-Hispanic past, starved female vampires, Aztec mummies, monk ghosts, child practitioners of the dark arts and tropicalized sci-fi queens would become part of our cultural heritage?
“We will revisit the origins of Mexican fantasy and horror cinema and examine its development through the 20th century and the start of the 21st. In parallel, we will dissect national legends and traumas that have been continuously reinterpreted by our national filmmakers that stand as a reaction to the tragic reality that Mexico is now experiencing.”
