The Mansion of Madness
By Chris Hyde
February 17, 2005
Juan Lopez Moctezuma meets Edgar Allen Poe, down Mexico way.
One of the earliest films that the outré cinema outfit Mondo Macabro released in Region 1 was Alucarda, a south of the border take on the vampire mythos by Mexican filmmaker Juan Lopez Moctezuma. Drenched in overwrought Catholic imagery and filled with bizarre and bloody ritual, this movie marked its director as an artist with a flair for the fantastic. Though Moctezuma helmed only four films in the course of his career, Mondo Macabro has now returned to revisit the first of the cinema documents this unique craftsman brought to the world of cinema: The Mansion of Madness.
Based in a loose manner on the Edgar Allen Poe short story The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether, this tale opens in 19th century France where a man named Gaston (Arthur Hansel) is traveling to write a journalistic piece on a local asylum. There, a doctor (played by Alucarda’s Claudio Brook) ostensibly named Dr. Maillard has set up a system for treating the insane that lets the patients more or less loose inside a strange and crumbling walled compound. The first inkling that things are not as they seem comes as Gaston’s coach is accosted by some ragtag soldiers on the pathway to the institution, and shortly thereafter his tour of the place makes it obvious that he has certainly discovered more here than he had bargained for.
So as not to reveal too many of the plot’s machinations, suffice it to say that along the way Gaston finds both love and secrets during his stay at this odd place. There are strange characters and situations galore, from a pecking human chicken through a weird party band featuring a guy tootling away on what appears to be a crab flute (?!). The female angle is given fleshy form in the person of Eugenie (Ellen Sherman), an inmate of the hospital who specializes in ritual dance and little lost girl looks. Eugenie may be mad herself or she may just be someone sane who has been locked away unjustly; and it is here where the echo of Poe’s original story is strongest, as it’s the thin line between lunacy and coherence that was the author’s main concern.
Somewhat less successful than Alucarda due to occasional pacing problems and a storyline that is a mite draggy at times, The Mansion of Madness remains a tremendously interesting document overall that offers many a pleasure for the connoisseur of crazy cinema. This director was no mere hack toiling away at genre entertainment; instead, by all accounts he was a bit of a highbrow who connected with horror as a means of conveying subversive themes and exploring the unconventional. Though there is at times a stiffness to the proceedings that belies the director’s inexperience behind the camera, there’s also some intellectual heft behind the framing that makes this outing a little bit weightier than your average horror piece.
Though the disc opens with the standard Mondo Macabro disclaimer that the elements used for the transfer are old and rare enough that they may not always look pristine, there isn’t really much reason to quibble with the material as it’s displayed here. There’s some occasional print damage to be sure, but in the main the movie looks crisp and while the color scheme isn’t exactly bright in nature, what there is for hue comes through just about right. The English mono track is also a fine-sounding accompaniment to the movie, and though this is the original audio the company has also packaged in the Spanish language version for the sake of completeness.
The extras included on this latest Mondo Macabro DVD are all well and good, though for the most part they’ll look pretty familiar to anyone who has already purchased the previous Alucarda disk. First up there’s a really nice documentary on Juan Lopez Moctezuma that covers his career and puts his work in the context of contemporaries like Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal. Additionally comes an interview with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, wherein he discourses on Mexican horror in general as well as Moctezuma specifically. Beyond this matter that is duplicated on the other Moctezuma release is some nice material that hasn’t been seen before: the film’s lengthy trailer, a stills gallery full of interesting shots and a written interview with the director from 1977. Closing out the festivities is the usual batch of previews for other films in the Mondo line, which I imagine might make for quite a dizzying introduction to their insane product line for the uninitiated.
Though personally I’ll admit that I did prefer the livelier proceedings of Moctezuma’s later viewpoint on vampires, The Mansion of Madness is such a astonishing film in its own right that there remains much to recommend it. Sure, you may have to suffer through a bit of staid downtime to get to the scenes that really put it over the top, but that seems a small price to pay for experiencing the exceptionally outlandish moments that the film contains. Besides, as it represents one of only a quartet of movies that Moctezuma managed to make in his life, it stands as a valuable representation of the work of a truly individualistic artist from a country whose cinema is far too often overlooked. The only real disappointment here is the repetition of the extras that will make the package slightly less attractive to regular consumers of the Mondo Macabro line; but in no way does that slight flaw keep this disc from being yet another solid release from an outfit that very rarely misses the mark.
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