Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Alucarda

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the wild realm of Mexican horror with Juan López Moctezuma’s 1977 cult classic “Alucarda,” starring Tina Romero, Susana Kamini, David Silva and Claudio Brook. (originally published 9/26/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb,
and hey, it's here. Halloween season is here, and it
begins today with this Rewind episode from last year. This
is going to be our look at the 1977 Mexican
cult classic, Alucarda. It is terrific. It is a real
favorite of mine. It was a lot of fun to

(00:24):
cover it last year. And if you didn't catch it,
if you're not familiar with this film, or maybe you're
a fan of this film and you just want to
hear our take on it, Well, it's a great time
to dive into it. So I hope you enjoy it,
and I hope you enjoy all of the new Halloween
content that is coming straight at you starting tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
And this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
And in today's episode of Weird House Cinema, we're going
to return once more to the wild world of Mexican
horror to consider a film and a filmmaker often celebrated
as one of its true greats. We'll be discussing the
1977 cult classic Alucarda, also known as Alucarda, the Daughter
of Darkness, directed by Juan Lopez Montezuma. While not well

(01:22):
received by mainstream Mexican audiences at the time, it has
become an obvious cult classic, a midnight movie. It's been
championed by the likes of Guillermo del Toro, David J. Scull,
Michael Weldon, just to name a few. This is one
you poke around online and you can see folks are
constantly discovering and rediscovering Alucarda. And everyone seems to be

(01:46):
blown away by it when they encounter it.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
I think it's exactly the kind of film ripe for
this sort of rediscovery and, I don't know, late positive
reception because of the different textures that it gets into,
a part of it feels like an art film, you know,
it has some really, uh, interesting writing. That's not a
writing and performance that is, uh, you know, not just

(02:11):
going through the standard horror tropes, but then there is
also a lot of just standard horror exploitation content and
the way they blend together is, uh, unusual and interesting.
It it's, almost an intellectual film, but then it's also
just a, uh, you know, frenzied, uh, get naked with
the devil kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah. Yeah. It, this film, it's a lot of things.
As we'll discuss, there's definitely a strong European Gothic horror
element to it. Um, though to be clear, it is,
it is set and filmed in Mexico. Uh, and then
there is also a strong avant-garde surrealist element to it. And, uh,
all of these things kind of mix together, uh, As

(02:52):
the name suggests, Alucarda, which spelled backwards is a Dracula.
This is certainly a vampire film.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Not just the Dracula, a Dracula.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
A Dracula, yeah. Or, you know, it's the feminine version
of Alucard, I guess. But yeah, so it's certainly a
vampire film, or at least a film with a vampire
in it. But it's also a lesbian love story. It's
a smoldering criticism of organized religion and just a delirious
fever dream of blasphemous horror.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Certainly blasphemous, uh, is an interesting lesbian love story is
I don't, I wonder about the criticism of organized religion.
That is one of the weirdest themes, uh, realized in
the film because, uh, we were sort of talking about
this off mic. I would say the middle stretch of
the movie is strongly anti-clerical and it sets up the

(03:45):
Catholic authorities, the priests and the, and some of the nuns.
as almost the villains of the movie. They're depicted as
cruel and sadistic and superstitious in these scenes with self-flagellation
and the torture of Justine. But then there's a very
strange turn where essentially all of these mad clerics that

(04:05):
are being set up as the villains in the middle
of the movie are vindicated and proven right.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Well, to a certain extent.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
To a certain extent. And then it's kind of like, wait, what? Like,
the character who the doctor character who comes in to
criticize what they're doing to these poor girls is ultimately
humbled for his naive view of not believing that the
devil is real and will turn nuns into zombies.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Well, this will be interesting to discuss. I would argue
that the clerical side of things, they're never redeemed in
this picture, I think. I think they're essentially villains throughout.
But I don't know. This is the great thing about
this film is there's a lot of room for discussion
in I.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Don't know if the main clarity, I mean, certainly like
Father Lazaro and stuff. I don't know if they're ever
made to look nice in the end, but they are
sort of proven right. Like their worldview was the correct
one in the end.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
To a certain extent. Well, we'll get back to this.
But I think one way to think about the film
is to certainly compare it to Ken Russell's 1971 masterpiece,
The Devils, which of course starred Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed.
Like this film, The Devils is often sometimes thrown under

(05:22):
the broad sub-genre categorization of non-sploitation cinema. It's a big tent, non-sploitation.
I mean, it's a small tent in some ways, but
a big tent in others. So other so-called non-sploitation films
often center around explosions of sexuality, madness, and violence in

(05:42):
a convent setting. But in other cases... the sleazier exploitation
elements are more up front and center. And when nunsploitation
is referenced, that's generally the sort of picture we think of, right?
You know, something a little more purely scandalous without any
kind of serious message wrapped up in the offering. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
I mean, to the extent that there is a serious message,
I think these movies are usually concerned mostly with sexual
repression and that they will Feature a lot of, you know,
habit ripping by the third act. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
And The Devils is certainly that sort of picture. But
in The Devils, all of the conflict emerges from this
sexual repression. So we end up with, you know, mass hysteria,
murder and madness and oppression. And sexual repression is like
the root cause of everything. Just to simplify a great film.

(06:37):
In this movie, however, as we've already been alluding to, yes,
there is sexual repression and just general oppression from the church.
But we also come to learn that, oh, yeah, the
devil is apparently real. The God, to some extent or another,
is also real. All these supernatural forces are in play.
And then, therefore, how does that change our interpretation of

(06:59):
madness and mass hysteria?

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Not just God and the devil, but pyrokinesis and zombies
and vampirism, like a lot of stuff gets thrown in
at the end there.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah. And, and also the, the vision of God that
we see in this picture is, is at the very
least a sterner God, uh, more of an old Testament
vengeance God, uh, as opposed to sort of like the, um,
benevolent grandfather power that is generally more in play in
some of your Gothic horrors, where it's like, oh, the
power of God there is here to serve as like

(07:33):
a massive battery for the crucifix that you use to
ward off the vampires. That's right.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, the power of God in many of these other
stories is there to save the protagonists at the end,
to help and to save. Here, to the extent that
God's power is made manifest, it is, I think, only
a punishing power.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah. If anything, it's like God is real. The devil
is real. These two forces are in opposition. And then
humanity is just ground to a pulp between these two
opposing forces.

Speaker 4 (08:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
And that may ultimately be the central message of the movie.
But again, this is a film that is going to
lend itself well to varying interpretations because it ultimately presents
kind of a kaleidoscope image of things, as we'll discuss.
All right, I don't have an elevator pitch for this one.
I don't know if you have something kindling there, Joe.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Well, not one that easily works just as text, but
I am imagining a kind of quick cut in a
trailer that I would put together for this film. And
it would be Alucardus saying the line, do you know
how small creatures love each other? I'll show you. And
then it just cuts to everything being on fire.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
That's good, that's good. All right, well, let's go ahead
and listen to just a little bit of the trailer
audio for this picture. Not the full trailer, I think,
and this is, I believe, going to be the Spanish-language trailer.
As we'll discuss, though, this movie was filmed in English
and then dubbed into Spanish. Alucarda.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
God the Father commands thee.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
God the Son commands thee.

Speaker 4 (09:12):
God the Holy Ghost commands thee.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
No!

Speaker 4 (09:16):
Con Claudio Brooke. David Silva. Tina Romero. Susana Camini. Adriana Roel.

(09:36):
Tina French. All right.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Well, if you would like to watch.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Alucarda before proceeding with this episode or rewind, All right. Well,
if you would like to watch Alucarda before proceeding with
this episode or rewatch it, well, there are at least
a couple of main ways to view it. I initially
watched it on the Mondo Macabro DVD, which has been

(10:08):
out for a while now. They recently put out another
one of Montezuma's films, The Mansion of Madness, on Blu-ray.
But as far as I know, and I was checking
in a little bit throughout the year. There's no word
on Alucarda also getting the Blu-ray treatment anytime soon, but
obviously there's hope that that would come to pass. The
DVD is really solid, though. Film quality is perfectly fine,

(10:30):
and it features some nice extras. And as of this recording,
you can also stream Alucarda via the Excellent Criterion channel.
It's a currently featured as part of their kin film
non-sploitation playlist which includes some other great films including the
devils and so as i was re-watching parts of the
film while working on notes i re-watched it on criterion

(10:52):
channel and the film quality is the same as on
the dvd.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
I also watched it on the criterion channel stream uh
that that was a good upload uh i will say
so you you said you've got the mondo macabro dvd.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yes or i rented it from videodrome here in atlanta
I see.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
I've got one I haven't watched yet, but I've got
a Nonsploitation Blu-ray from Mondo Macabro for a different film
called Satanico Pandemonium.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Oh, that's another one. That's another title you frequently see
in discussion of Nonsploitation, but I have not seen it myself.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
I haven't seen it yet, so I can't vouch for
it either way. But yeah, that's by the same producer.
So I think they may have put out a number
of kind of... Wild Nun films.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
It's great to see Criterion Collection and Mondo Macabro coming
together for the same films. It's not always the case.
All right. Well, let's go ahead and jump in to
a discussion of the folks involved in this picture, starting

(11:58):
at the top with Juan Lopez Montezuma, the director. He
also has story and screenplay credit. Producer And I'm not
sure which one he is, but he also has a
big role as a monk in this. One of the
sort of henchmen monks that run around, uh, fetching things,
tying people up. That's sort of, you know, typical non-sploitation
monk business.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Those guys are supposed to be monks. The guys in
the black robes with the hoods.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
I think so.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah. Uh, that's so weird because they, Nothing about them
seems like they're of a religious order. They are henchmen,
as you said. They're like the mechanics of the film.
They're the ones who have to lift things and carry
them around or tie somebody up.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, I would say that, as is often the case,
this movie's probably not good as primary research for how
monasteries and convents work. It has a lot to say
about Catholicism, but it is not a good primary source
for information on Catholicism. Montezuma lived 1931 through 1995, Mexican actor, producer, writer,

(12:59):
TV and radio personality and director, best known for a
trio of 1970s horror films that really challenged just what
a Mexican horror film could be. He'd worked as an
actor previously, mostly on the stage, but also started a
long running Mexico City radio program called Panorama de Jazz.

(13:19):
I don't think he stayed on it long, but he
started it and it apparently lasted for a very long time.
kind of an institution. He also served as a, I
couldn't find any clips of this, but he was apparently
a sort of horror host on TV as well. Oh, cool.
He would present, I think it was like a late
night thing, and he would present old silent horror movies.
And there's an extra on the Mondo disc where I

(13:41):
think it's an interview with Guillermo del Toro from, I
want to say like 2002 or something, a good bit younger.
But he reflects on this. He reflects fondly on watching
Montezuma on this television program, presenting movies like Nosferatu. So
Montezuma became involved in avant-garde Mexican theater after this. He

(14:02):
became a collaborator with the legendary Alejandro Jodorowsky, serving as
producer on his 1968 film Fando en Lis, as well
as his famous 1970 metaphysical Western El Copo. And then
he set out to make his own horror films, which
certainly stand as fine examples of Mexican horror, But they

(14:23):
were also Montezuma's rebellion against mainstream film and established horror
cinema in Mexico as well. He was not a fan
of traditional Mexican horror cinema, stating in one interview, quote,
The Mexican tradition for such films is very simplistic and
very conformist, in my opinion, in spite of their surface delirium.
I don't really like them very much.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Surface delirium.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, I found this really interesting. And I guess as
with most broad statements like this, you can certainly point
to counterexamples from Mexican horror cinema and say, well, you know,
this is not mere surface delirium. Maybe it goes a
bit deeper. But I get what he's saying. Like, if
you look at, say, you look at an El Santo

(15:09):
monster movie, and yes, there are these delirious elements on
the surface of things, but the basic structure is going
to be generally formulaic. There's nothing subversive there. There's no
surprise in the outcome. And so what he clearly sets
out to do in his films, Montezuma that is, is
to create a true depth of delirium. So madness from

(15:31):
bottom to top.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Not shallow depravity, but deep depravity.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, I guess I can see what he's saying, that
a lot of these older Mexican horror films, while they
might have very weird sights and sounds or some strange
things going on, ultimately the story is going to be
somewhat predictable and its values are conventional.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
I don't know if I agree with that, but I
understand what he's saying.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah. And again, I think it's a criticism that is
going to apply to certain films more than others. But
it does seem to be like a motivating principle for him.
And when you look at his films, you can see like, yeah,
this is a guy that's trying to really make the
weirdness and the madness go from bottom to top. So
I was reading about this movie and Montezuma in general

(16:20):
in a book by Doyle Green called He's a film
critic and writer. The book is The Mexican Cinema of Darkness.
And he also points out that Mexican horror films, especially
lucha horror films, are big on telling rather than showing.
I think we can reflect on various examples where like

(16:42):
Santo is having a discussion with a scientist and they
lay out all the details. And so Montezuma is the opposite.
He would rather show you.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, well, I can see that in this film, actually.
This leans more on the other side. There's a lot
of stuff that does not hold your hand. I don't
know what's going on in some parts. I really don't
know why something happens sometimes or what it's supposed to mean.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, and when there is an explanation, like when Father Lozaro...
describes what sort of demon he thinks they're dealing with.
It really has no impact on anything. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Well, that almost seemed like a parody. I've got that
line written down from later on when he's like, oh, yeah,
it's a type six devil or something like that. Like
it almost seems like a parody of just the fussy
taxonomy of evil that the clerics are using here.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah. So given all of this, it should come as
no surprise that Montezuma generally worked outside of the mainstream
Mexican film industry, at least in terms of financing and control.
He still worked with notable professionals in Mexican filmmaking and
apparently fiercely retained his own creative control over his visions.
So his first film was 1973's The Mansion of Madness,

(17:52):
released in the States and sometimes still referenced, listed in,
I think, in IMDb and also sometimes streamable under the
title Dr. Tarr's torture dungeon. It's based on Edgar Allen
Poe's The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather, and
it tells the story of an asylum where the system
of soothing has been abandoned in favor of a new

(18:13):
system of, well, let's say a system of cruelty. And
we quickly come to realize that this is a case where, uh-oh,
the inmates are running the asylum now, and they're led
by someone going by the name, anyway, of Dr. Millard.
And this individual is played in the movie by Claudio Brooke,
who we'll be talking about here in a minute. This

(18:34):
film is perhaps more of a dark, surrealist comedy than
a pure horror picture, though it does have gothic horror elements.
I saw this a couple of years ago, rather liked it.
And this film, as with Alucardo, was shot in English.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
This might be it. kind of strange comparison, but I,
though I haven't seen the movie, some of the clips
I have seen of Claudio Brooke in it, he a
bit reminds me of Graham Chapman from Monty Python.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
There's a lot of absurdity in it. Um, because he's,
you know, he ends up presenting himself initially as a,
maybe a revolutionary, um, uh doctor who's uh who's running
the asylum and then we quickly realize like no this
was a this is an inmate of the asylum who's
taken over and so there's a lot of toga wearing
that ensues uh wild monologues hysterical laughter and so forth

(19:25):
and he does have blonde hair which certainly uh in
that film which adds to the.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Experience kind of yeah shaggy blonde hair yeah We'll get
to more about Claudio Brooke in a minute, I'm sure,
but I am impressed with the range that he gets
to portray in Alucarda.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Oh, yes. As we'll discuss, this is a case where
he got to do a dual role and clearly had
a lot of fun with it.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah. Hard to imagine two different parts more different. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
So Montezuma followed Manchin up with a Hollywood co-production, 1975's Mary, Mary,
Bloody Mary. I haven't seen this one, but it is
a modern erotic vampire film and also sort of a
giallo film starring Christina Ferreira, and featuring John Carradine in
a small role. It was also shot in English, and

(20:15):
it's also said to be quite good.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
You know my taste for Jallo. I'm intrigued. I'll have
to give this a look up.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
And then came Alucard, which we're talking about today. Montezuma's
best-remembered and most controversial film due to its comparatively racy
content and certainly its blasphemous themes. It draws on both
avant-garde cinema and European Gothic horror traditions. And I would
say just feels absolutely self-assured in its vision. We may

(20:42):
ponder and head scratch over what that vision ultimately is
and what he's trying to say, but it seems very
confident in its delivery. After these three big pictures, Montezuma's
output was a bit more limited. He directed a 1983
crime thriller titled To Kill a Stranger, which co-starred Dean
Stockwell and Donald Pleasence. And after that, his projects saw

(21:05):
even smaller audiences. There's 1986's Welcome, Maria, and 1994's The
Food of Fear. And at some point, he wanted to
do a follow-up to Alucarda, titled Alucarda Rises from the Tomb,
but that never came to fruition before his death in 1995.
As for other writers, let's see, there's Alexis Antita Uroyo.

(21:26):
These are the only screenplay credits on the databases I
was looking at. And then there's also Yolanda Lopez Montezuma.
also credited with a writer, also with no other credits.
I'm not sure if this is a relative or not,
just a name without much additional context. And then it's
also typically noted that this film is to some degree

(21:49):
based on the novel Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, who
lived 1814 through 1873, Irish author who wrote 1872's Gothic
novella Carmilla, a foundational vampire novel and one that explores
a lesbian relationship with, I'm to understand, some amount of nuance.
I think I started reading this book, this novella at

(22:10):
some point, set it down and didn't pick it back up.
That's on me, not on the novella. But I can't
speak to it with much doubt because I haven't finished it.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
But this is worth noting, a vampire novel that predates Dracula.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
So Dracula wasn't the first, wasn't even the first big one.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, as we've discussed on the show before, Dracula as
a literary work is not as old as a lot
of people think it is, or may sort of casually
think of it as being. We often may, we just
lump Dracula in with Frankenstein when, in fact, Frankenstein is
an older work.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah. One of the weird things we've talked about is
how Dracula was only a few decades old when Nosferatu,
the movie, was made. It's like adapting a movie today
from a novel published in the 90s.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, crazy. All right, let's talk about the cast here.
I'm going to, as I've done recently, I'm going to
stick with the idea that if your character is the
title of the film, even if you don't have top billing,
we're going to talk about you first. And so that's
going to be the case here with Alucardah. She is
played by Tina Romero, born 1949.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
What a force of nature she is in this movie.
She is fantastic, and she is so scary, bringing lead-heavy
intensity in the eyes. She has this just burning stare
where you feel like she could literally set you on
fire with her eyes, and it turns out she can't.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, yeah. It's just such a great performance, and she's
able to channel this feeling that, I mean, to a
certain extent, it is like she is a saint or
the inverse of a saint. You know, she has access
to different information about reality. Truth is shining through her.

(24:07):
And at times that truth may be like gentle and
reassuring and innocent. Other times it may be shocking and
horrifying and more than you can take. And and so, yeah,
I mean, you really have to see it, of course,
to to to really understand everything we're talking about here.
But but, yeah, she's not she's not like just a pure,

(24:27):
like evil character. It's not like, oh, it's like if
you think this is a demonic possession film and to
a certain extent it is. This is not a character
that is possessed by a demon and is snarling and
cussing and so forth. Exorcist style the whole time. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
You know, another thing I was mentioning to you off
mic that I think is really interesting about this performance,
I think Tina Romero was something like 26, 27 when
she made this film, but she really manages to pull
off a particular type of scary energy, which is like terrifying,

(25:03):
unhinged teenager energy. She's not just able to create a
scary presence with her facial expressions and all that, but
she she is scary in a particular way in the
way that like teenagers or young people can be scary
to old people. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Oh yeah. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. My
child is 13 now. So, and all their friends are
like 12 or 13 or 14. So yeah, I totally
get this vibe. Who are these creatures? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, beyond just the direct threat of satanic magic being
invoked to burn your body or something, there is also
just this generational mysteriousness.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yeah, yeah. So we'll have a lot to say about
Tina Romero's performance. It's a dual role as well. She
also plays Alucarda's mother in the beginning, and she's just
terrific throughout. Now, the love interest for Alucarda is the
character Justine, played by Susanna Camini. I wasn't able to
find any data on this actress's age when she was

(26:13):
born and so forth. But she was in all three
of Montezuma's 1970s horror films, as well as To Kill
a Stranger. She was active through at least 86 or
perhaps 2007, depending on which movie database you're looking at.
And it's difficult to compare her performance to Romero's because
Alucarda is the title character and is such an intense character.

(26:37):
But Justine, who is based here, at least to a
certain extent, on Desaad's Justine, is an intentionally more subdued character. So,
you know, you can't—it's apples and oranges to a certain extent.
But I think Kamini does a fine job, and she
gets to shine in a different way during the final act.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Yeah, that's right. The character of Justine is more passive
and being pulled along by the magic of Alucarda.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
All right, let's come back to Claudio Brooke then. Claudio
Brooke also has a dual role, a delightfully dual role
in this picture, playing both the rational Dr. Ozek and
a Romani hunchback who also may be a satyr and
may also be an agent of the devil or the
devil himself. It's unknown.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Maybe. I mean, he is a goat man in his
hunchback form. He's just a goat.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Give him full Billy goat shaped beard. And, uh, yeah,
they're not, does he have horns almost?

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Um, I, well, we don't really see, and there's hair,
there's at least hair going on, uh, there.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
There's a, there's very curly hair. So if there are horns,
maybe they're underneath the curls.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
The, the goat comparison in his human form is not subtle.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
No. And is not a subtle performance. Um, yeah, for,
for fans of like mystery science theater and weird films,
this is kind of like, imagine if Torgo were played
by an award-winning actor, uh, that has essentially like classically
trained and, um, and highly regarded. Yeah. So, yeah, we've
talked about Claudio Brooke, at least in passing on the

(28:11):
show before fantastic actor of the golden age of Mexican cinema. Um,
He has a small role in The Devil's Reign, which
we briefly talked about, which we covered on the show before,
and we briefly talked about Claudio Brooke, but it's not
a very big part. But here, yeah, we get to
see him just do a whole lot more here. He
gets to play both sides of the gothic horror coin,

(28:33):
you know, the straight-laced protagonist and also an agent of chaos. Again,
Claudio Brooke really got to run wild in Montezuma's previous film,
The Mansion of Madness. And his other horror films, horror
and or sci-fi, and certainly in some cases lucha films,
included 62's Neutron, the atomic Superman versus the death robots.

(28:53):
63's Neutron versus Dr. Carante. 63's Santo in the wax museum.
So yes, he did get to lock up with Santo.
I don't know if they actually lock up in it.
I haven't seen this one yet, but I'm excited to
at some point. He's in 1978's The Bees. And he's
also in Guillermo del Toro's Kronos from 1992. In that film,

(29:16):
del Toro fans might remember him. He plays the aging
Dieter de la Guardia, who is seeking the Kronos device
in order to prolong his life.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
He's the villain, not the protagonist?

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah, he's the villain in that. His henchman slash, I believe,
son is Ron Perlman's character. And so he's constantly like
berating him and hitting him with a cane and like,
give me that cruelness device.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Okay. So Del Toro has, has heaped a lot of
praise on, on Claudio Brooke, um, uh, including that, uh,
I believe again, 2002 interview on the, the Mondo disc here, uh,
you know, pointing out that he had an almost mechanical
perfection in his craft, uh, something that he compared to
actors of the British school, uh, just a solid professional, uh,

(30:00):
Outside of a smattering of horror and lucha films, Claudio
was a collaborator of the avant-garde surrealist director Luis Bunel,
appearing in the 65 film Simon of the Desert and
62's The Exterminating Angel, and I believe some others as
well from that director. He appeared in a variety of
major Golden Age Mexican productions, as well as international productions

(30:22):
like 76's Return of a Man Called Horse, 89's Romero,
89's License to Kill, 1990's Revenge, that's a Tony Scott film,
and 1991's One Man's War. Also, like I say, this
is a guy who had some big roles. He played
Jesus Christ in at least one Mexican production. I think

(30:43):
it was a TV miniseries, that sort of thing. So
a major name in Mexico. And also, he had certainly
a fair amount of international prestige as well.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
Wait, was the License to Kill he was in? That
was the James Bond movie?

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, yeah, he's in License to Kill, which I have
not seen in so long. I don't know who he plays.
I imagine it's a relatively minor supporting character, but I
don't remember him in that.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
That's the James Bond revenge movie, where he's not really
on an official mission, but he's on a revenge quest against,
I think it's Robert Davi playing a drug kingpin who
feeds Felix Leiter to a shark.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Yes, yes, this is the one. The main thing I
remember is Anthony Zerba is in that as well. Oh, yeah.
And gets blown up in an air compressor or something,
which was a pretty horrific scene at the time. Benicio
Del Toro is in that film as well, and I
don't remember him at all.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
He's one of the villain's main henchmen. He gets gruesomely
thrown into a grinder that's like chopping up bricks of cocaine.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Oh, man. Yeah, it's been so long since I saw that,
probably a little too young. And I haven't seen it
since because it's a I remember being pretty gritty.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Yeah, it's been a while, but I think gritty is
the right word. It is famously a kind of nastier,
more down to earth James Bond than a lot of
other films of that period.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Oh, and I'll also mention that the character, Dr. Ozek,
has a daughter named Danelia. And this character is played
by actress Lily Garza, who would go on to be
an Ariel Award winning TV director. All right, let's get
into some of the more supporting characters here. We also
have the character of Father Lazaro, who we've already mentioned
a little bit, played by David Silva, who lived 1917

(32:27):
through 1976, a one-time Ariel Award winner for 1947's Champion
Without a Crown. And speaking of the Ariel Awards, I
think I neglected to mention earlier that Tina Romero also
was at least nominated, I'm sorry, for an Ariel Award
for 1981's The Great Waters. The aerial awards are essentially

(32:48):
like the Oscars of Mexican cinema. So anyway, David Silva
won the award in 1947. And it was nominated three
more times, including for his role as the colonel in
1972's El Topo. I've seen El Topo. It's been so
many years, I don't remember his character.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah, I don't either.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
But he was an opera singer, an actor, shows up
in a number of different bits of weird cinema. He's
in The Mansion of Madness. He's in Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain
from 73. He was in 1962's The Brainiac, which we
previously discussed on the show.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Who is he?

Speaker 1 (33:28):
He's one of the inspectors. I don't know if he
wears a flamethrower or not. He's one of the less
notable characters, or at least in my viewing. And he's
also in 1968's The Batwoman, which we have not covered
on the show yet, but I think is maybe kind
of inevitable.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
We'll end up there sooner or later.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Now, I don't know for certain, but I heavily suspect
that while Claudio Brooke and Tina Romero are delivering all
of their English language lines themselves, Silva feels like he
might have been dubbed here. Like, his voice feels very
voice-over-y here. You know, it's like, Lupita, no.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
Exactly, yeah. Strong, yeah. That is what it feels like
to me also.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yeah, well, his physical performance, which is still great, is,
you know, he's more of a sweating, self-hating lump of
religious zeal. And I don't know, I just I could
be completely wrong on this. I'm not familiar enough with
his work, but it feels like maybe he's dubbed in
English here.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
I love how they don't really set us up for
the first flagellation scene. You just don't know that that's coming.
And suddenly this guy and all the nuns are like
with their habits and tunics pulled down and just whipping
themselves or being whipped. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
And, and not in a, not in a way that
feels like it's supposed to be sexy.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
No, no, no, not at all. No, it's like, uh,
it's gross and pathetic.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah. Uh, let's talk about some of the other, uh,
members of the cloth here. Um, and what bloodstained cloth
it is in this picture. We have a sister Angelica
who is ultimately in many ways, the, the more relatable, uh,
member of the convent here. The nicest of the nuns. Yes,
the nicest of the nuns. She's played by Tina French.

(35:17):
I couldn't find any information about her birth date. Her
other credits include 1968's Fando and Liss and 1998's Angel
of Light. As of 2022, she was still active as
an actress. But she has some really great scenes in this. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
Really great one where she, uh, as a, she's like
a praying nun and she begins levitating, sweating blood and
she delivers a lethal curse via prayer.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
That's pretty amazing. It's an, it's an awesome sequence. Now
there's also mother superior played by Brigitte Segereskog. Uh, this
is her only credit. So I couldn't find anything about
this individual. Uh, then we also have sister Germana who, um,
I don't remember what Sister Germana really gets into. She's,

(36:04):
I think, involved in some dialogue scenes back and forth.
And then she has a particular fate that we'll discuss.
But she is played by Adriana Roel, who lived 1934
through 2022. We previously mentioned her because she played the
werewolf's sister in 1965's La Loba. Ah, okay. Yeah. And

(36:24):
she herself was an Ariel Award-winning actress for that. a
1979's Anna Cursa, and she also was in 2014's She
Doesn't Want to Sleep Alone. And then finally, the composer
for this film was Anthony Goofin. I wasn't able to
find information about when he was born, his dates either.

(36:46):
This was his first credited score, but he'd follow up
Alucarda with 1982's Deadly Eyes, which, weirdly enough, is a
Canadian killer rat movie produced by Hong Kong's Golden Harvest.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
That's going on the list.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
And he also did the score for Larry Cohen's The
Stuff in 1985, which weird film fans are probably rather
familiar with. And his credits in lesser known films continue
through about 2012. The score here, I think it has
some nice electronic weirdness. And of course, a lot of,
given the religious themes, you've got to have some electric

(37:22):
organ in there. And so we have a lot of
that going on.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Yeah, solid soundscapes throughout.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, and of course, numerous other professionals, as is always
the case, made this film possible. You know, the look
of it is pretty intense and incredible. And that ranges
from the costumes to the weird sets to the terrifying
man-on-fire stunts that you find throughout the last.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Act of the picture.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
All right, well, is it time to talk about the plot?

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
It begins with the prologue, of course, where we see
the birth of our title character. Or not see the birth,
we see the aftermath of the birth.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
That's right. And this is a great sequence that really
sets the tone in many ways. Alucarda is born in
a crypt that has all the trappings of a manger.
It's a strange set already, just full of cobwebs, straw,
green vines. ruin statues. So is this a place of
death or birth or both? And then eventually we're going

(38:30):
to see baby Alucard taken away by, I don't know,
an old Romani woman based on what we see later?
Or is this supposed to be a witch, some sort
of supernatural emissary? It's really hard to say at this point.
And she's sending the child away to keep him from
getting her. And at first, we might think, well, him,

(38:53):
who is she afraid of?

Speaker 4 (38:54):
Is it.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Some sort of terrestrial force? Or no, is it something supernatural?
And if it is supernatural, is Alucard a threatened by
the devil? Or is Alucard a threatened by the Christian God?

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Good question. This is a cold open, by the way.
This is like no credits or anything. We just open
straight up on this setting that is, as you mentioned,
weird in a number of ways. Like, one thing is
It seems to be maybe underground. It's certainly enclosed, but
it's also overgrown on the inside with all these green plants.

(39:29):
It's a little unnatural. Um, you notice the, the contrasting
statues all around. So like it's a mix of cultural symbols.
Some things look like they could be consistent with Catholic tradition.
Like I think maybe we see something that could be
Virgin Mary statues. But then the camera wheels over to
this statue up in the head of the room, which

(39:51):
looks to me like the great God pan. It's like
a youthful shirtless male figure on top with what looks
like goat legs or something on the bottom. Hard to
say for sure. Uh, and then, so the figure delivering
the baby, I thought was a man, um, made to
look like really feral looking. It is a figure wearing

(40:11):
a pelt of furs with straw, just fully woven into
his hair.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yeah, I was part of me was wondering if this
is Claudio Brooke once again.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Like the general like body form of the character would
match Claudio Brooke, you know, sort of tall and slim.
But I couldn't find a good answer on this and
could not positively ID him in this role either.

Speaker 4 (40:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Also, this is not the movie's fault, but I just
had to note an association. Alucard's mother here is wearing
what looks like a green velvet dress with this white
neck ruffle. And I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but
be reminded of the wardrobe from the classic mid-2000s Starburst commercial,
the berries and cream guy. I'm a little lad who
loves berries and cream. She's dressed like that guy.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
I was not familiar with this at all. I had
to look it up. Yeah, apparently this character is called
Little Lad and was played by a dancer and actor,
Jack Fervor.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
Anyway, in the scene, Alucarda's mother says, poor little creature,
I won't be able to see Alucarda grow. but she
must survive. Take her to the convent. Please promise me
that you will protect her and don't let him take
her away.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
That's what you were talking about. Him.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
Who is him? And then the person there swears and
takes the baby away. And then there is some kind
of magical confrontation. Alucarda's mother, still like, by the way,
she's in not just a regular, like we said she
was in straw, but not just straw on the floor.
She's in like a sunken, pit in the middle of

(41:45):
the room on a bed of straw. And she faces
up to look at the statue at the head of
the room, uh, which whether it's, you know, the God
pan or something else. And then we hear other worldly sounds,
the fluttering of bat wings, a dry rasping groan. And

(42:06):
then she braces herself against the straw bed and she
grimaces like she's getting prepared for a psychic battle with
Her eyes grow wide. She screams and then credits.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, and that dry, raspy groan, we're going to hear
that time and time again throughout the movie. Is this
the present? It sounds kind of like a zombie sound almost.
Is it the presence of the infernal? Or is this
perversely like the presence of the divine? Uncertain.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
It reminds me of the rasping of the witch in Suspiria.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yes, yes. Good connection. Yeah, that's what it was reminding
me of as well. All right. So from here, we
fast forward 15 years into the future. The year is,
I believe, 1850. And we have a new character, Justine,
and she is arriving at a convent in Mexico following
her parents' death.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
That's right. And there are a mix of feelings, I
would say, generated by this scene. The visual environment of
the convent is, I think, quite dingy and depressing. Justine
is brought by wagon on this bare mud road outside.
And we can see the outer walls of the convent
in broad daylight. And they seem to be just infinitely

(43:15):
smudged with filth and neglect. And then all around the
outside of the convent, there are just people standing around
apparently with nothing to do as if they're like waiting
for something. It just feels bad. But then on the
other hand, the nun who welcomes Justine when she arrives,
I think this is Sister Angelica.

Speaker 4 (43:34):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Is very kind and warm. You know, she gives her
a whole, like, Justine, I'm so glad you've arrived. We've
been expecting you. There's nothing to be afraid of. This
is your home now. So she's very kind and helpful.
But then again, there are more unsettling elements, like the
interior of the convent and the way all the nuns
are dressed. You had something about that, didn't you?

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think everybody who's ever watched
this movie has something about this because, yeah, the interiors
of the convent just straight up feel like a tomb.
In the best of cases, they feel like a nicely,
like a tomb where somebody's at least opened the window.
And in their worst, well, we'll get to that in
a minute. But then, yeah, the way the nuns are dressed,
if you're expecting or picturing in your mind sort of

(44:18):
traditional stereotypical nuns habits, that is not what's going on here.
They are dressed in alarming habits that really resemble mummy
wrappings more than anything. And these wrappings are like stained
in places with, what? We're not sure exactly. Blood, it
would seem, but also maybe perspiration. Are they stained with lust, suffering,

(44:41):
from intense emotion? Perhaps all of this. So the nuns
themselves are presented as if entombed alive in a place,
in this place, while their outfits betray their organic nature
and their mortal longings.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
The nuns are like bloody, muddy mummies.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Strange. Yeah, there is a Yeah, a foulness to the
way they're dressed. And this is something, yeah, that anytime
you read anything about Alucard, they always bring this up
because it is one of the most notable aspects of it.
And one that, you know, ultimately we're just left to
sort of puzzle and interpret.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Okay, what the nuns look like is they look like
mummies who are dressed in wrappings like mummies, but also
with like a kind of, you know, dress habit thing.
And they all work in a meat processing plant, and
they haven't changed their bandages in a month.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
I guess, as we'll see, part of it may be
that they routinely have to whip themselves for their mortal longings.
And that's going to stain through. It's hard to get
that out of your habits.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
Now, in this sequence, we also meet a few other
major characters. We mentioned Justine and Sister Angelica. There's also
the Mother Superior, Sister Germanna, and the Dr. Osek and
his daughter.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Again, Dr.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Osek is played by Claudio Brooke. So he is there
picking up his daughter, Daniela, who is blind. And we
learn that she has been spending some time at the
convent over the summer. I think they've been helping teach
her how to do some things there. And now she's
returning home with her father. Sister Angelica shows Justine to

(46:25):
her room, which is a small cell with a single
window to the outside. And there are two beds, each
with a cross on the wall over the head of
the bed. Sister Angelica tells Justine to get some rest
and that if she ever feels troubled or needs help,
just call upon her and she'll be there. So Sister Angelica,
she's she's sweet. But there's another bed in the room.

(46:46):
So is Justine going to have a roommate? Oh, yes,
she is. When she's left alone, Justine spends a moment
looking at a locket containing photos of her mother and father.
And then while she's admiring the photos, a figure blurs
into focus from behind her. It is a young woman
dressed all in black with pale skin and long, dark hair.

(47:09):
This is Alucarda. She startles Justine and then introduces herself.
And there's something notable about the velocity of interaction with Alucarda. Like,
there's no timidness at the beginning. She just launches into

(47:30):
relationship with Justine so fast. Like, they briefly bond over
the fact that they're both orphans. But then Alucarda suddenly says,
I have something to show you. So she runs to
retrieve something from under her bed. And she pulls something
out and says, these are things I never show to anybody.
They're secrets. And every day I find a new secret.

(47:51):
What is it? It's stuff. Like Alucarda dumps out onto
her bed a leather bag full of stuff. It contains
what look like pebbles, pieces of broken glass, flakes of metal,
scraps of fabric, and just other little bits of trash.
And she explains that each one of these objects is

(48:11):
a secret. She says that these objects come to her.
She says, it comes to me. And then she picks
up one piece from this pile and says this, for instance,
it means I like you. And she puts the object
in Justine's hand and then closes Justine's fingers around it.
Justine smiles. Then Alucarda says she'll show her another. So

(48:34):
she holds out her hand and she empties this, like
she uncorks a black bottle and empties the black bottle
onto her palm. And it's something alive. It's full of
little writhing caterpillars or some other kind of insect.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yeah, they're not played for horror here.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
No, no. No, she pours them out on her hand
and then says this line that you identified, Rob. She says,
do you know how small creatures love each other? I'll
show you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
What does that mean? I love this line. And again,
it's one of those where you just have to sort
of think about it and interpret it. But for me anyway,
you know, this feels like, like, Like peak innocence in
this film. So in this one line, we sense Alucard's enthusiasm.
you know, for the secrets of nature and wondrous things

(49:23):
that exist on the small scale. And perhaps, you know,
reading into this and thinking about what's to come in
this film, maybe they're on such a small scale that
they avoid the attention of a larger world, of the
adult world, and also supernatural forces. Like, maybe it small
things are allowed to love each other because they're too
small for the devil or for God to care about them.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Oh yeah. I like that reading. I think that could
be what he's meant there.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
The small things are like, they can, they can avoid
his gay is, you know, they can, um, that they
can get away with just living and loving as they want,
as they want. Um, now Alucard says, I'll show you,
I'll take you to the garden, to the woods. Everything
is there. And she's just so intense, so fast, um,
And then suddenly we're out there in nature. Alucarda and

(50:12):
Justine are outside and Alucarda has picked up a piece
of moss and she's holding it up for Justine to see.
And on the moss are crawling two bright red mites.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, I guess these are clover mites. And I like
their inclusion here because anytime I've ever encountered these little
guys or some related species in the wild anyway, it
always does feel like a little special minor miracle.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
So bright. So red.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Justine's very, she's, uh, I think she says, I've never
seen these before. Uh, they're so interesting. And, um, then
Alucarda says it's one more secret. One is identical to
the other, like an image in a mirror, like you
and me. Then suddenly Alucarda is like more, more, more.
Let's find more secrets. And they start to run around
in the woods, laughing madly, wrestling and tumbling in the grass. Uh,

(51:04):
And it seems perhaps their relationship is already something more
than friendship. It's like moving so fast.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Right, right. These two are drawn to each other, and
certainly Alucarda is drawn to Justine. And now their trajectory
cannot be stopped.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Yeah. But their happiness is interrupted by the somber clang
of a funeral bell. They look down into the little
ravine slightly below them and they see a procession of
figures in black carrying a coffin. It's a very creepy image,
by the way, in the way that it's framed, especially
because it's in broad daylight in this green, lush forest

(51:43):
full of undergrowth. But these figures clad totally in black.
I think you can't even see their faces and they're
carrying this coffin. So it's beautifully framed and unsettling. And
Alucarda explains to Justine that this funeral is for another
girl at the convent who died by suicide. And they
say the nuns will bury her in unhallowed ground. There's

(52:05):
something sad about that. Justine says that funerals frighten her,
but Alucarda does not seem afraid. She seems almost a
little bit defiant, maybe a little bit excited. And she says,
you have to die. Everyone has to die, but there
can be happiness beyond death. So Alucarda and Justine continue

(52:28):
running through the woods until they finally have an encounter
with the Hunchback. This is the character also played by
Claudio Brooke, who is very goat-like in appearance.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Yeah, this is tremendous. Such a contrast to the other character.
Very broad, jester-like performance at times. Lanky arms, shuffling gait.
speaking in an over-the-top accent and in multiple languages, goat-like
facial hair, shaggy pants. Yeah, the works.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
I mean, he should almost say at the beginning, I
am known by many names. He sort of pops up
out of nowhere and startles them while they're running around
in the woods. And yeah, he's very goat-like. He's got
these things dangling off him that jingle when he walks.
I like that detail. As you said, he speaks many languages, including,
I caught, pieces of French and of German and perhaps

(53:22):
other things too and when they first meet this guy
they have different reactions Justine is frightened by him and
she wants to run away but Alucarda is like no
I like this guy and she returns his smile and
she convinces Justine that they should follow him she says
he won't harm us and as they're going along he

(53:43):
advertises all kinds of services he tells them that he
can let them know people's secrets and Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
So they followed the hunchback to his camp where they
meet other people from his group, including a woman who
reads Justine's palm and tells her fortune, or at least
she tries to. After one look, she says, I see nothing,
only shadows and darkness. And there's also some feuding between
the two different main people in the Romani group here.

(54:32):
The hunchback and the fortune teller insult each other's services.
Like the fortune teller says, he'll tell you only lies.
And the hunchback says to the fortune teller, he's like, oh,
you know, what she sees in your palm is just
going to be her own dreams backwards. And the hunchback
tells Alucarda that he knows the secrets of alchemy and

(54:53):
he can transform dust into precious stones. And then he
says either stones or souls, I couldn't tell which one,
transform those into never imagined dreams. And he also offers
Alucarda a magic knife. and gives this very cryptic speech.
It was kind of hard for me to understand what
this connects to in the film, but I like the

(55:15):
ambiguity there. He says, I see your dream clearly, your
past and future. You have come from the dew in
the forest, and there they will be waiting for you.
Who is they? Strange creatures they are, and you must
take care. If it obsesses the young lady, and I
think it must, here I am, and here is my
box of charms. If the ladyship wishes, I shall make

(55:38):
her free from such a dream. Then, if the dream
should come true, I should be expecting her.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Very cryptic.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Very, yeah. I mean, very hard to paraphrase what he's
actually saying there. Though, at the same time, it's almost
like the subtextual implications are very clear. And those are,
it's like, he's making her some kind of offer, but
she's going to owe him something in return.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
Now Alucarda is shaken by this, but by what? Unclear.
So she and Justine run away and they dash together
through the forest until they come to a ruined palace
or castle of some kind. And once again, Justine, this
is a common kind of difference here. Justine is frightened
by this place and she wants to go back home.

(56:27):
But Alucarda is like, no, no, let's go inside. She
finds it beautiful and somehow very familiar as if she's
been here before.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Yeah, and the exterior here is so tremendous. It's like
a stone sculpture-encrusted edifice in disrepair, draped all over with
lengths of blood-stained colored cloths, red almost brown. And inside,
of course, we're going to find dust, bones, cobwebs, ruins,

(56:55):
and ultimately, the viewer will recognize the very crypt where
Elucarda was born.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
Right.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
And this place is radioactive with magic. She says, I
can hear voices from the past. I feel as if
I've been here before. One can live eternally instead of
turning into a pile of dust. Are you afraid of dying? Again,
with Alucarda, these just the frantic almost kind of stream
of consciousness feed the sudden subject changes one sentence to another.

(57:24):
They don't always seem to follow. But she asks Justine,
are you afraid of dying? And Justine says, yes, everyone is.
But Alucarda says, I mean dying, loving each other, dying
together so we may live as one forever. The same
blood always flowing through our veins. And then Alucarda caresses
Justine's face and it turns more tender, though it's a

(57:46):
little threatening and tender at the same time. Alucarda is
so much. She says, darling, darling Justine, I live in you.
Would you die for me? I love you so. I've
never been in love with anyone and never shall unless
it's with you. And Justine is, I think she reciprocates

(58:06):
the feeling in a way, but she's also overwhelmed and afraid.
And Alucardus says, the time is very near when you
will love me as much as I love you. You
may think me cruel and selfish, but love is always selfish.
Don't you know how jealous I am? You must love
me to death.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
It's great stuff. I mean, Justine is terrified, understandably, but
Alucarda is in a state of ecstasy and she's sort
of floating around the room almost. I mean, not, not
literally though. We'll, there will be some of that in
a bit. Uh, but she says she, she remembers a
time when she was wounded and nearly died. And then
she just pivots right away from that. She says, um, uh,

(58:45):
that Justine has to swear a pact with her that
if we ever depart from this life, we shall do
it together. And Justine agrees, but with passive phrasing. She says,
all right, if this makes you happy. And then Alucard
pulls out a knife, the magic knife to draw blood with.
But then she gets distracted and looks down at their
feet and first says, look, look at this coffin. And

(59:08):
they see the name on the coffin. It is the
name Lucifer. Lucy West Westinra. I think it is. I always,
is it Westerner Westinra, whatever it is. Um, that is
the name of the character Lucy from the novel Dracula, uh, the,
you know, uh, Mina's friend, Lucy, who is, if you're
not familiar with the story, She's the first person in
England who goes through this gradual transformation into vampire thrall.

(59:32):
The Dracula visits her on a series of nights and
she gradually dies and then turns into a vampire. But
this character, Lucy, we don't get that in this movie
at all. The name is the only reference. And so
it's this coffin with Lucy Westinra written on it. They
say she died years ago. And Alucarda has the idea,

(59:53):
let's swear by her. Again, Justine is afraid, but Alucard is,
she can't be stopped. She's like a bulldozer. She just
throws the coffin open. And then they see this mold mummy, disgusting, sunken,
flattened gray mask of rotten death. And the moment the
coffin is opened, it unleashes some kind of sonic attack.

(01:00:18):
the otherworldly demonic rasping from the prologue comes back. Remember
when Alucarda's mother was laying on the pile of hay
and there was the rasping from the statue? Now we
hear the rasping again, and it is affecting the characters.
It seems to be causing immense, stabbing, psychic pain in
Alucarda and Justine, and they scream and they run away. Now, Rob,

(01:00:42):
do you have a take on all this stuff that's
just happened?

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
I don't have what feels like a 100% clear read
on it. But, I mean, on one hand, it's like
their occult bonding got a little out of hand and
they maybe bit off a little more than they could chew.
That's one interpretation. Sure. And then one's actually presented with
death in the form of this body. It is overwhelming.

(01:01:08):
Or is it, in fact, psychically, spiritually overwhelming? And this
is also brought on by the various... magical pacts that
they are already dealing with here. But it is certainly
a turning point.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Yes. So the two of them go back to the convent.
And then the next big scene we get with them
is a scene where I guess it's Sunday morning and
everybody's at chapel. They're sitting in the chapel for a
church service that's like the best sermon of all time
in the best chapel of all time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Oh, my God. Yes, the crypt-like heart of the convent,
I guess, where the death-shrouded nuns gather to hear the tyrannical, threatening,
and domineering sermons of Father Lazaro. Here to remind you
that God is the one who can send you to hell,
that all your sins are going to wind you up
in hell, and that the devil wants to possess your

(01:01:59):
body and soul.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
Yeah, can I read part of the sermon? He says,
this is the very first thing we hear, by the way,
nothing leading into this. The devil uses the body of
the person he wants to master. He uses the organs
of that body for his own pleasure. For the performing
of such feats far above the capacity, strength, or agility
of the person thus possessed. So it's like a very,

(01:02:23):
I don't know, not like wisdom or values oriented. It's
just like mechanically discussing the powers of the devil and
how he will use your organs.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
And then he's describing to them in exquisite detail how
they are all going to burn in hell forever. The
wrath of Satan has no mercy. Repent. And this does
lead to just an outpouring of, you know, crying out
for God's mercy. People kind of screaming and jumping up
in agony and terror and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
And we already discussed the state of the nuns and
their habits. But the chapel here, too, is just downright
oppressive and grotesque. So hundreds of partially melted candles line
the altar beneath numerous effigies of the crucified Christ. uh,
effigies that Dole Green in the, that book, uh, the Mexican,
the Mexican cinema of darkness describes as having the air

(01:03:14):
of an abattoir. I mean, it's like hung meat above the,
the altar. Uh, for me, they brought to mind the
16th century Eisenheim altarpiece. Uh, this is the one that
has shows like the suffering of Christ as if Christ
is diseased, but these just, I mean, this is a
different message entirely. It's as like, it's as if the,

(01:03:34):
This is a place where death and torment are worshipped.
Just a nightmare image here, and perhaps one of the
film's most direct visual messages. A place of the dismal
spirit where the flesh dies and rots.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
I think one of the things to really emphasize, you
did mention this, but the multitude of crucifixes. So it's
not a chapel with one big crucifix at the top.
There are dozens of crucified Christs all just hanging there
in rows almost. It's like stadium seating of crucifixes up
at the top above the altar. Yeah. Yeah. And this

(01:04:09):
is what you're talking about with that abattoir feeling. It's
like just rows and rows of hung meat, but they're
all crucified Jesuses.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
As if one sacrifice, one death was not enough. But instead,
endless sacrifices, endless deaths are necessary. So just such an
overbearing scene. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
So I mentioned that in the middle of the sermon,
it becomes so terrifying and painful that the nuns and
the girls of the orphanage are like screaming for mercy.
And they're like, no, no, no, I repent. And in
the middle of all this frenzy, Justine passes out and
falls unconscious on the floor. So she's unconscious and she
is taken to her room to recover. Alucarda is left

(01:04:52):
alone with her to watch over her. Good idea. So
once the nuns have left the room, Alucarda says to her, Monsters, monsters,
they have done this to you, yet you did not
tell our secret. I have heard the voices again, Justine.
And then she describes how the voices of the past

(01:05:13):
came to her again. It's this evocative description where they're
coming out of the woods, they're in the branches high
in the tops of the trees, and the voices made
everything clear to her. She says, there's no one left
but you and me, just you and me, Justine. We
will make them pay bit by bit all that has
been taken from us. And I'm wondering what this refers
to here. I think you can make an argument that

(01:05:36):
they certainly live in a generally oppressive and repressive culture
and situation. I mean, we just saw this terrifying sermon.
But then again, they haven't, like, narratively, there hasn't been
a specific thing that has been taken from them so far,
unless there's something I'm forgetting.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Yeah, unless they're referring to things that have been taken
from them in life, their parents and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Exactly, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
But for the most part, like as oppressive as that
sequence in the chapel is, it's like, oh, Justine passed out.
Take her to the room and she can have a
little time out. It's not like prop her up and
make her watch.

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
Then Alucarda really gets going. She begins calling out these
names of what are presumably demons. I didn't recognize a
lot of the names and they didn't show up in
the subtitles I was watching, but one of the names
she says is Astaroth, which I know is a classic,
one of the names that appears in these manuals of demonology.

(01:06:41):
So she's calling out Astaroth, you know, Secundus, whatever all
the names are. And she ends up spinning around in
a dizzy mania, screaming Satan, Satan, Satan. and she knocks
Justine to the ground. So here, I guess we could
pause and talk a bit about what is happening to

(01:07:01):
Alucarda and different ways you could interpret this film. I
guess at the top level, you could ask, is this
true demonic possession, or could this be taken as hallucination
and delusion? I know that tension is played with in
some nunsploitation films or films that you know, have to
do with religious mania in a, you know, pre-modern Catholic context.

(01:07:24):
I really don't think that is an option we can
debate in this film. It's just clear, especially through later
events in the movie, that this is true demonic possession
and the devil is real and the demons are getting you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
Yeah, or at least, at the very least, the supernatural
element is a reality.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
Like, that seems to become clear, as clear as anything is,
towards the end of this picture.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
But there is a second level of questions that we
can ask about it. If this is demonic possession, what
is causing it? It almost seems overdetermined. There are too
many different things you can point to being like, well,
that is the cause. There are several things. Was Alucarda
born with some kind of demonic curse? That is suggested

(01:08:10):
by the prologue. Something is hunting her the moment she's born.
Or did an entity attack her or make her vulnerable
at a specific point for a specific reason? We've almost
got multiple scenes pointing to that as well. For one thing,
the curse seems to be linked to her love for Justine,

(01:08:30):
like that they're being sort of demonically persecuted for their
love for each other. That seems like a valid interpretation.
The other thing is, like, did she invite this by
her interactions with the Goatman and wanting the magic knife
and all that? Did they invite this when they opened
the coffin of Lucy and let out that rasp? It

(01:08:51):
seems like maybe the answer to all these questions is yes,
which is just more confusing.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Yeah, the film isn't very it's like this is not
one of those films where alucarda is eventually going to
be like alucarda is no more there is only zool
or something like you're even wondering to what extent she
is truly possessed by some other force or is this
just pure alucarda um and then and then on top
of that questions of hallucination and delusion or supernatural reality

(01:09:19):
The film manages, you know, through its more surreal aspects
to kind of have it both ways, which I think
is one of its strengths. Doyle Green in his book
comments on this. He argues, quote, it's not that the
subjective and objective moments are ambiguous and therefore demand clarification,

(01:09:40):
but rather that the scenes become subjective and objective at
the same time. And thus any clarification becomes impossible. And
so he ultimately argues for like just the pure evocative
power of images in this film as being like really
like the main feature.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
If I'm understanding him correctly, I agree with that. Then
it's not that it is just one way and the
film does a poor job of explaining which way it is.
It's more like it is being definitely indicated that it
is multiple ways at the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
And to expand on that, let me go back on
something I said a minute ago. I think when you
sort of contradicted me, you were right that it's not
necessarily that it's definitely demon possession, but there are elements
of the movie where if you take them at face value,
it's definitely magic. But it's not. But like, where is

(01:10:33):
the magic coming from? You suggested there's there's the we
have the demon interpretation, but you also suggested pure Alucarda
and some things point to pure Alucarda.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
Yeah, like eventually she's going to make people burst into flames,
as we've been alluding to. Is it hellfire working through her?
Is she possessed by a demon? Or is it more like,
and it's often compared to, you know, Carrie or something.
Is this just like psychic powers of Alucarda? Right. You know,
what's going on? We can't decide one way or another.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
Yeah, and that's where I agree. We get indications going
in both directions.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
Now, one indication that it is external outside forces is
something that's about to happen here, which is the ritual scene.
So right after Alucarda first seems possessed or whatever it
is and starts calling out the names of demons, we
almost like ascend into another realm of reality where it's
like you're in a dream. Sort of the lights change

(01:11:27):
on the scene and now some of the walls in
the room are gone and the Goatman comes in.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
Oh God, this moment where the Goatman reappears right out
of the shadows.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Yes, amazing. So it's like we're as if we're in
a dream suddenly going straight out of this room moment
of what appeared to be objective reality the hunchback appears
he again offers the knife to Alucarda the magic knife
and Alucarda says we shall make a pact and we
shall make them pay and the hunchback says yes we
shall make them pay and the hunchback then calls down

(01:11:58):
rain and thunder from the sky which appear on command
while Alucarda calls out again the names of the nine
kings of hell and now the thunder and the lightning
are cracking there is fog billowing all around And suddenly
Alucarda and Justine kneel facing one another, naked and entranced
with evil magic. And it's this blood bond they are

(01:12:22):
creating with each other of love and violence, where they
cut each other's skin, taste each other's blood, and then
kiss with their blood mingled on their lips. And the
hunchback is presiding over this whole ritual like a priest
of evil. He says, you shall blend into one another
and then blend into me. So like infinite love, infinite Satan.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Yeah. Satanic marriage ritual, really.

Speaker 4 (01:12:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
Yeah. And then from here, the characters have already moved
into this weird anti-reality dream state. And they seem to
progress even further out of the scene, out of the
real basis of the scene into some kind of cosmic
meeting or union with With a witch's coven, including the
fortune teller from earlier, I believe. And it's her and

(01:13:13):
all of these other people who we don't know who
these people are, but they're these people naked in the forest,
dancing in a circle with fires all around, praising the
demons who give them power and liberty. And then finally,
a figure appears between Justine and Alucarda in full goat form. Now,
no longer just a man who looks like a goat,

(01:13:34):
but just a goat head, a Baphomet.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
Yeah, yeah. And he moves among them, encourages them to kiss,
and also encourages the orgiastic rites that begin to... take
place all around him on the grass.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
Some parts of this are staged in a very funny way,
by the way, like all the witches are out there, uh,
you know, getting busy and the, and the devil figure
is like, no, that here, let me show you how.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
To have sex. Kind of like nuzzling their hair, like
coming up, like messing their hair up a little bit. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:14:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
Do that there.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
Um, uh, but yeah, it seems to be a celebration of, um,
of satanic libertinism.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
Yeah. And then at the same time, we cut back
to Sister Angelica in her room.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
This was the thing that really like changed because, you know,
we've seen movies with devil worship before. We've seen scenes
kind of like this. This is the thing where it
gets really different.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
Yeah, because Sister Angelica is back there and she's in
her room praying just fervently for Alucard's soul. I believe
it's Alicarta she's praying for specifically. Maybe Justine as well.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Maybe Justine. I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
I can't remember which girl or if it's both girls
she's praying for. But, oh, she's praying so hard. And
also kind of imagining the sort of things that they
might be getting up to. You could even interpret it
as if she is imagining the Black Mass that we
just saw and are seeing in her cut with this scene.
And so she prays that God protect them and prays

(01:15:07):
so hard that blood begins to seep, I think, first
from her nostril and or her eye. And then it's
eventually just blood is coming out through her pores until
finally she succeeds in convincing God, so it would seem,
to strike one of the witches dead with like a
gory smite to the neck. So we don't see the
hand of God. We don't see a thunderbolt. She's praying,

(01:15:28):
she's praying. And then one of the witches is just
the main witch falls to the ground with this bloody
gash in her neck, dead.

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
She invokes a death curse from God.

Speaker 4 (01:15:40):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
And then we cut back to her and she's levitating,
just exuberant in her room with this like weird light,
plane of light coming through the window. It's, oh, it's
so weird. And this is what Angelica has up to
this point been one of our more, you know, seemingly
well-meaning and relatable characters. She's the good nun, remember?

Speaker 4 (01:16:01):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
But here she is prayed with such self-destructive intensity, killing
a stranger out in the world, but also blood flowing
out of her face to do so. This scene is amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
And that is the end of part one of the film.
I guess you could say the end of the first act.
And it transitions after this to the second part. Maybe
we'll be a little bit more summary in our discussions
from here on. But one of the big inciting incidents
uh in the second act here is the scene in
the school room where we have justine and alucarda sitting

(01:16:39):
in the back you know they're sitting in the back
so they can cut up during class they're being instructed
about i don't remember what the lesson is it's something
about you know god is good and the girls are
whispering to each other acting up and uh the teacher
is like hey now is it sister germanna who's teaching
i think so yes yeah It's like, hey, now, I

(01:16:59):
see you acting up in class. Could you please stand
up and repeat what I was just saying? And so,
is it Alucarda or Justine who stands up? Maybe they
both do. And they begin to recite what at first
sounds like what the teacher was saying, but instead turns
into a speech on the virtues of Satan and the

(01:17:19):
deficiencies of Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
Yes. Things get out of hand fast. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
So the, obviously the nuns are having none of that
and they dismiss class and they're like, okay, we got
to deal with this problem. Uh, so they call in
father Lazaro to set things right. Uh, they're, they're first
going to have Alucarda go to confession with father Lazaro. Uh,
and he like gets into the confession booth and she

(01:17:46):
violently attacks him.

Speaker 4 (01:17:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
And this eventually gives way to the flagellation scene that
we were talking about earlier, where Father Lazaro and all
the nuns are subjecting themselves to a good hard whipping
while they're figuring out how to solve this problem. And
this was both horrifying and hilarious.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
Yeah, yeah, because we cut right to it. They've been
whipping on themselves for like an hour, bloody backs, sweating. Yeah,
it's gross and a little hilarious.

Speaker 3 (01:18:15):
There's a part in here where one of the nuns
explains that when Justine fell ill, because Justine, again, she
falls ill and has to take to bed after this
outburst in the classroom. One of the nuns says that
when Justine fell ill, she was complaining about being bothered
by the light. And Father Lazaro says, that's it, a

(01:18:35):
heliophobic demon. That's a sixth category devil who hates light.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
That was good. So now we have marching orders, apparently. Though, again,
this is the line that's also hilarious because this isn't
necessarily useful information. No, it's true at all. Not at all.

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
He says it's a nocturnal demon and he says we
have to destroy the demon to save the girls. We
must prepare an exorcism.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
Yes. And as you might imagine, the exorcism is basically
going to break down to just an awful exercise in torture.
where both of the girls are strapped to cross-type forms
in the chapel. And during the course of the exorcism,
Justine is essentially murdered by the clergy.

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
Right. So they torture her to death in an attempt
to get the devil out of her. And I would
say it is in this section of the movie where
I'm like, oh, okay. So the clerics and the clergy
here are the villains of the film. this is sort
of an anti-clerical narrative about how whatever happened with Justine and,
and Alucarda earlier, this is clearly an overreaction by the

(01:19:45):
clergy where they are, you know, making monsters out of
something less than monsters and then creating, you know, monstrous
violence of their own. And that is also the opinion
of Dr. Otzek when he shows up in the middle
of this torture exorcism and and is like, in God's name,
what are you doing? This is madness, superstition. And they

(01:20:09):
just kind of tolerate him taking over the scene and
being like, we have to put a stop to this
at once. They're kind of like, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
Well, it seems as if some of the members of
the clergy realize they've gone too far, which they should.
At this point, you have murdered somebody. You've tortured a
woman to death. You have gone too far. And they're
being called on it. And some of them are accepting
that it has gotten out of hand.

Speaker 3 (01:20:43):
So Alucarda is still alive. Justine has died. But he
takes Alucarda back to his house, taking pity on her,
and takes her back to his house and leaves her
with his daughter who he met earlier, his blind daughter, Daniela.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
This is a point, too, where we get the, I think,
where we get the Dr. Osik research scene where he
sits down in his study and he picks up a
single volume, opens it up. We see the title of
the book is Satan. This is a book about Satan.
And he basically opens it up, turns to one of
the illustrations, some sort of satanic woodcut with some sort

(01:21:19):
of outrageous demonic body. And then that's just that's all
it takes. He just slams the book and he's like preposterous. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:29):
Bunch of nonsense. And he gives a speech later about
how he was educated in Paris to believe that this
was all superstition and nonsense. And that, you know, we
have we have to understand the world scientifically, not by
believing in magic and demons. Right. So he has very
little tolerance for demonology. But unfortunately. So while Alucarda and
Daniela are sort of getting to know one another, I

(01:21:51):
think Daniela is offering comfort to Alucarda.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Dr.

Speaker 3 (01:21:55):
Osek is called back to the convent. He has to
go there again because Justine's body has disappeared. Uh-oh.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
That's right. Yeah. What has happened? We have disappearing bodies.
And then it is just kind of discovered that Sister
Germana has been burned. Yes. And they find her hideously
burned body. That's really gross, yeah. Yeah, really gross. They
end up bringing that into the chapel, and basically there's
this whole situation where Sister Germana's body is going to

(01:22:25):
steadily come back to life as a zombie. They end
up beheading it on the altar with a sword.

Speaker 3 (01:22:33):
Father Lazaro does. Well, it takes a lot of wax.
He's just whacking it over and over and over and over.
It's like, remember the episode we did on the guillotine
with Jack Ketch, the executioner who could never do it right?
So he's whacking the neck again and again and again. Eventually,
the zombie's head comes off, and it's still sort of
like chomping around on the ground, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
Yeah, yeah. And also the arms are still moving. It's
like just a grotesque spectacle.

Speaker 3 (01:23:00):
And here is the scene, I mentioned this earlier, where Dr.
Otzek is like, wow, that was a real-life zombie. I
repent of my scientific materialism. I now understand that magic
is real and the devil is real, and I am humbled.

Speaker 1 (01:23:17):
Yeah, and it's really interesting to try and figure out
how to interpret this within the context of this film.
Because I don't think this is a situation where Montezuma
is ultimately trying to say, see, look, the so-called Renaissance people,
the logical scientists and so forth, the philosophers must now

(01:23:38):
realize the religious truth of the universe. But this kind
of this feels like a tragedy in many ways, too,
because this was our this guy was a rock of
logic and reason.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
He was supposed to be the Sherlock Holmes of the story.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
Exactly. Yes. He was supposed to be the Sherlock Holmes
of the story. And now he's like, actually, I think
it's black magic. And and so, you know, he was
he was a rock. And now everything is perhaps tumbling
into supernatural madness.

Speaker 3 (01:24:05):
But in the scene, he is also made aware that, oh, yeah,
Alucarda seems to be possessed by the devil. And he's like, oh, no,
I left her with my kid.

Speaker 4 (01:24:13):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:24:14):
So he goes back to his house and they're gone.
His daughter, Daniela, is gone. And so I think is
there anything in between here before they end up back
at the crypt or the abandoned palace where. They had
been before.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
That's our main next destination. Yeah, that's our big set
piece because, yeah, we get back to the abandoned palace,
back to the casket, and this is when Justine comes
back to life, rises from a casket that's full of
blood like a bathtub.

Speaker 3 (01:24:43):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
Yeah, naked, covered in blood, now a vampire. This is
as close as we, this is a true vampire. Montezuma
in interviews is often like, very firm on the fact
that Alucarda is not a vampire, but that he often,
I've seen him stress that she has the powers that
are attributed to Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel, but not

(01:25:08):
blood drinking. So I don't know how to take all
of that. But yeah, Justine definitely has come back as
a vampire.

Speaker 3 (01:25:15):
Well, she's at least got some Bathory energy. She's bathing
in blood, and she bites, is it the Mother Superior?
One of the nuns, she bites her neck.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
Or Angelica, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:25:25):
Oh, Angelica.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:25:27):
One of the nuns, they're at the coffin, and she attacks,
and Justine bites her on the neck. And I don't
know if drinks her blood, but bites her on the
neck and kills her.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
Yeah. I mean, she may have got a little in there,
but she makes a mess.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
Now, what ultimately happens to Justine is, I recall this
actually being one of the less impressive stagings. He's just
kind of sloshing a bottle of holy water on her. Dr.
Wozniak is like.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
Yeah, like, like he has multiple containers of holy water
and he's throwing it at her. But and so but
then we do see she keeps getting these like big
burn marks on her back from where the splashes are
hitting her like acid. And so it is also grotesque
as well. And eventually this is just going to cause
Justine to fall to the ground and disintegrate.

Speaker 3 (01:26:11):
She melts.

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
But then the final confrontation actually is with Alucarda. And
does that happen here or back at the convent? I
think maybe they go back to the convent.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
Yeah, I think, yeah, definitely our main, our final battle,
our final showdown takes place in the convent itself with
all of those creepy Christ effigies. And yeah, this is
where Alucarda goes into full carry mode. you know, shouting
the names of various demons. And when she does so,
it causes various monks and nuns to just erupt into fire.

(01:26:45):
And we get these terrifying man on fire stunts that
I discussed earlier. I have no reason to believe anything
here wasn't completely safe, or at least I've never read
anything to the counter. But in general, even a very
well done man on fire stunt just horrifies me these days.
It's It's just terrifying to watch these people on fire

(01:27:08):
running around, falling to the ground, burning and burning. And
at times, you know, even kind of throwing me out
of the film viewing experience because I'm like, we got
to cut away. This scene has to stop. There's a
guy on fire. Cut away and then you put him
out after the shot is done. So horrifying stuff. Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):
And Alucard, of course, is filled with rage. This is
yet another scene where I guess it would be worth
asking What power is on display here? What power and
what motivation are on display here? Are we seeing Alucarda's
personal rage and her personal power, or is she possessed

(01:27:47):
and is, as we heard in the sermon earlier, the
devil acting through her against his own enemies and acting
with his own power?

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
You know, one way to potentially, I didn't really think
about this till now, but one way to think about
this film is what if there's only one power and
it's working it's both sides are using it you know
it's like that you know almost as if the the
supernatural force itself is neutral but it only takes on
these forms as it's like channeled through human ambitions and

(01:28:17):
human religions and so forth like.

Speaker 3 (01:28:20):
A conventional war both sides can equally make use of
the laws of physics and here in this religious war
both sides can equally make use of magic.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
Yeah, and the magic that they use to counter her,
or attempt to use to counter her, is basically bringing
in the dead body of Sister Angelica and holding her
up like a cross. which this is, yeah, I don't
think I've ever seen this in a film where, you know,
we've seen plenty of examples of a cross or a
crucifix being utilized or some other holy item being used

(01:28:50):
to shout down the adversary. But here they lift up
the dead body of Angelica and hold her up like
a cross.

Speaker 3 (01:28:57):
Now, another good question is, based on this scene, why
do you think, because that is ultimately how Alucarda is defeated.
Why do you think it works? Is it like the
holy power destroys Alucarda or does that make Alucarda repent
of her violence and destroy herself or what?

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
I don't know. It's, it's hard to figure out. I mean,
you could, you could certainly make a case that Angelica
was one of the people that was, that was nice
to her. I mean, she was nicer. We saw more
of that between Angelica and Justine. Yes. Uh, So it's
not a perfect explanation. Or maybe it's this that, you know,
Alicarta has just used up all of her rage, you know?

(01:29:38):
And at that point, like, it has consumed her, literally,
and literally turns her to dust.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):
And then, of course, at the end, strangely, I would
have thought that Father Lazaro would be one of the
people who gets burned by... But he, I think, survives
this somehow. And then at the end, we've got kind
of the doctor. We've got like science and religion just
standing there side by side being like, wow, that was something.

Speaker 4 (01:30:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
But but but then the the the chapel is on fire.
Everything is just in flames. And, you know, as Doyle
Green points out in that in that book, The Mexican
Cinema of Darkness, like it doesn't feel like a victory
for anyone at the end. Alucard is not victorious. It
doesn't really feel like a victory of logic and reason.

(01:30:22):
It doesn't feel like a victory of the church and religion.
He points out that in various other films, even films
within the Mexican tradition, fire is used to secure victory,
victory for science and reason, in many cases, over an
obsolete and dangerous past. For instance, we see this in
the Brainiac. At the end, how do they defeat the Brainiac,

(01:30:45):
who himself is like an icon of a, of a
troubling past in Mexico, they use flamethrowers, using fire against him.
And we see that sort of thing in plenty of
other horror movies. He writes, in Alucarda, the triumph of
science or religion is turned on its head. The world
in crisis defined by the unreasonable, the unexplainable, and the
unsolvable is not salvaged by reason or faith. It is

(01:31:09):
simply and completely obliterated in flames, the apocalyptic collision of
modernity and tradition in a perpetual dark age.

Speaker 3 (01:31:18):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):
To the extent that any edifice of authority is victorious
at the end of this film, it has not earned
its victory. It is not victorious because of its virtues.
It's more just kind of like, you know, there's this
horrible consuming fire and it eventually burns itself out.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
Yeah. Logic and reason are just kind of standing by
mouth agape. And if religion is victorious... It is because
it has achieved victory through the glorification of death and suffering,
like literally holding up the dead body and using it
to channel its energy against the adversary here. Yeah, and

(01:32:03):
then we cut to credits and burning, and that's the
end of the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
That's it. Well, Rob, I think this was a good pick.
I greatly enjoyed Alucarda, and I haven't seen anything quite
like it before.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
Yeah, yeah, it really, really stands out. So, you know,
obviously not for everyone, though if you listen to this
and it wasn't for you, you know it by now.
But yeah, not for everyone, but I think a very
fascinating film and one where you're really rewarded by rewatches
as well. So we're going to go ahead and close

(01:32:35):
it out here, but we'd love to hear from everyone
out there. If you have thoughts on Alucardah, some of
the other films we mentioned here, Mexican cinema, Mexican horror
cinema in general, write in. We would love to hear
from you. A reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays, we set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

(01:32:58):
on Weird House Cinema. And if you want to see
a list of all the movies we've covered over the years,
go to Letterboxd.com. Our username there is Weird House, and
we've got a nice list going. You can see everything
we've covered and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming next.
And as we get into October here, of course, it's
going to mean a lot of Halloween-y choices.

Speaker 3 (01:33:17):
Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
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