5.6 Autopsia de un Fantasma (1967) "Beautiful Robot Farts"

Howdy Babblers. Prepare to have your brains melted! For our film this week is Autopsia de un Fantasma (Autopsy of a Ghost) from 1968 (date confusion intended).

Watching Autopsy of a Ghost is a bit like stumbling into a Halloween party where the host forgot the theme halfway through and instead decided to smoke a huge bifter and throw in any oddity that sprung to mind, whether it made sense, or, preferably, not. 

Directed by Ismael Rodríguez, the film stars Basil Rathbone as Canuto Pérez, a ghost who can separate himself from his horny life-size puppet skeleton, John Carradine as Satan, who seems less like the Prince of Darkness than he does a cranky uncle with a flair for dramatic entrances and retractable tails, and Tony Blackburn.

After speaking to God, Satan offers Rathbone a proposition: he must find true love to escape eternal haunting. What follows is a chaotic mash-up of horror, sci-fi, surrealism and slapstick comedy, where Canuto’s redemption looks suspiciously like a series of nonsensical pratfalls and very awkward, deeply problematic romantic encounters.

Along the way, we meet a mad scientist named Prof. Moléculo Pulido (yes, his actual name), bumbling agents (including, umm, James Blondo), a manbot, a fembot, a chipmunk-voiced spider and a parade of comedic side characters who seem to have wandered in from other movies. Or from somewhere else entirely. If we listed everything in this anarchic film you wouldn’t believe us. But that’s okay, we took a bullet for the entire planet, so no one else has to watch it.

Autopsy of a Ghost is a glorious Mexican farce, a fever dream where Rathbone and Carradine cash their paychecks whilst wearing capes. It’s messy, campy and (un)intentionally bonkers. Look away cinephiles, this one ain’t for you. But Babblers, let’s lean into a film so rare even the Dark Web refuses to acknowledge it exists.

Touché away…!

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