Las Tres Magnificas (Mexico, 1970)

Thanks in large part to the Italians, the rules of the movie western were as loose as they would ever be during the late 60s and 70s. So why not a film like Las Tres Magnificas, in which a beleaguered frontier town finds salvation in the form of a trio of pantless chorus girls turned vigilantes? Of course, such burlesque set ups were typical of the good naturedly horny Mexican pop cinema of the era, especially when an eye popping "usual suspect" like the beautiful B movie starlet Maura Monti was involved.

Las Tres Magnificas was Monti’s second to last feature film -- the last being 1971’s The Incredible Invasion with Boris Karloff -- and followed right on the heels of the wonderful Cazadores de Espias. Some of Monti’s co-stars from Cazadores are also here, including Eleazar “Chelelo” Garcia, who, true to the Mexican pop cinema rule of quotation marks, is known mostly for his comedic turns. The fact that Garcia’s character is the closest thing that Las Tres Magnificas has to a villain speaks adroitly to the film’s lightweight nature.

Here Garcia plays bumbling bandit Felipe Mendoza, who, along with his two gun slinging sons -- Clemente, who dresses all in white, and Modesto, who dresses all in black -- poses an ongoing nuisance to the people of Las Tres Magnificas’ subject town. It should be noted that, while both sons are portrayed as every bit as oafish as their dad, they are in fact played by a pair of bona fide Mexican matinee idols; Latigo himself, Juan Miranda, in the instance of Clemente and Dominican sex symbol Andres Garcia in that of Modesto. In any case, seeing as this particular town comes with the usual combination of timid sheriff and passive -- indeed almost invisible but for the habitués of the saloon -- populace, the local padre has no choice but to seek help from outside.

This he finds in the much touted form of the titular Magnificas, whom he comes across in all their frilly knickered glory during one of their beer hall song and dance numbers. In contrast to Monti, who plays Candida, the remaining Magnificas are played by a pair of actresses who might be less familiar to Mexican genre movie fans. Where we might expect to see, say, Lorena Velazquez or Amedee Chabot, we instead have famous ranchera singer and actress Lucha Villa as Paz and former pageant winner and future soft pop singer Renata Seydel as the blonde Dulce. From this point on, much comedic hay is made of the irony of this bawdy trio taking their marching orders from a man of the cloth, with the Magnificas at one point even masquerading cheekily as choirgirls.

Because of its cast and concept, I had hopes that Las Tres Magnificas would be sort of a western version of one of the Las Tigressas movies. That hope, however, was in vain. More of a comedy than an action film, Magnificas, rather than endowing its heroines with Emma Peel-like martial skills, focuses instead on the havoc they cause just by being women. As such, the pastor has them hit the town disguised as a trio of virginal belles of the prairie, their garters and frilly intimates amply concealed beneath layers of bustles and petticoats. From there they proceed to seduce and then systematically humiliate the three Mendozas, leading to jealous squabbling among the gang that conveniently undermines their capacity to commit further crimes.

This is not to say, of course, that Magnificas, being, after all, a western, is completely bereft of action. In one scene, the Magnificas fend off attacking Indians with a cannon mounted in their stagecoach, a pulpy touch that reminded me of the Spaghetti Western’s vision of a frontier littered with abandoned military armaments just there for the taking by any Django or Sartana who happens by. In another scene, the girls masquerade (they do a lot of masquerading) as Indians to attack the Mendozas with bows and arrows. Unfortunately, true to the film’s slapstick nature, this scene includes a bit where an arrow, missing its target, ends up striking a painting of a cow. When that arrow, lodged in the cow’s udder, is pulled out, a stream of milk issues from the painting. Oh my sides!

Given it has at its disposal the highly regarded singing talents of Lucha Villa, Las Tres Magnificas is also something of a musical, with the star being given ample opportunities to belt out throaty ranchera numbers. Even Juan Miranda is given the chance to pluck out a romantic ballad and, later on, joins with the two Garcias in a comic moonlight serenade of the three female stars, who reward them by dumping multiple buckets of water on their heads. All of these melodic interludes, composed by award winning music director Manuel Esperon (a contributor to the score for Disney’s The Three Cabelleros, among others) are pleasant enough, with by far the most catchy being the Tres Magnificas’ theme song, which the stars sing both upon their entrance and departure from the film.

Taken as a whole, Las Tres Magnificas is a pretty pure example of “kitchen sink” 1960s/70s Mexican pop cinema, featuring as it does a bit of comedy, a bit of action, some song and dance, some beefcake and, for Dad, frequent occasion for the Magnificas to be seen lounging about in their complicated preindustrial underwear. And it is at this point in the review that I would normally say something like, “and that’s good enough for me” (accompanied, you might imagine, by the sound of me expectorating and the ring of a spittoon), but the fact is that I could have just as easily taken a pass on this one. Shocking, I know, but, while it has its charms, I see this as one more suited to the completists among you. Of course, that also depends on what you are completing; if it is your viewing of every film starring Maura Monti, then you are indeed engaged in one of life’s most admirable pursuits. If it is the viewing of every film in which a comical barroom brawl is accompanied by cartoon sound effects, then hell is too good for you.

[Note that the version of Las Tres Magnificas I watched lacked English subtitles, which, given the simplicity of the film’s story, caused me little regret other than that I was unable to determine whether it passed the Bechdel Test.]

Las Sicodelicas (Mexico/Peru, 1968)

If you listened to the last episode of The Infernal Brains, you heard me and a couple of my pseudonymous associates discussing the Cantonese "Jane Bond" films of 1960s Hong Kong -- and, in particular, how those films stood out for their relatively non-sexualized depiction of the high-kicking contemporary action heroine. To see the absolute opposite of that, one need only look at lady spy films from pretty much anywhere else in the world during that era, and especially those from Mexico. 1968's Las Sicodelicas, a joint production between Mexico and Peru that was primarily shot in Lima with a combination of Mexican and Peruvian talent, although not technically a spy film, offers a good example. Of course, without the aid of English translation, Las Sicodelicas comes across as little more than a mod era fashion show. But, oh, what a fashion show it is!

Modelling the film's selection of lysergic, flower power inspired couture is what could be considered a sort of Valentines Day sampler of 1960s Mexican cinema's finest eye candy. Among these is Chicago born beauty queen Amedee Chabot, who left behind a string of bikini clad bit parts in American film and television for a career as a leading lady in south of the border genre fare during the late 60s. Also here is Elizabeth Campbell, another American, who won her pulp cinema immortality as one half of Las Luchadoras in the first three films of the Wrestling Women series. Isela Vega, a former model and singer whose enormous popularity as a sex symbol during the late 60s would lead to her winning a lead role in Peckinpah's Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, represents Mexico. And last, but certainly not least, we have Batwoman herself, Italian import Maura Monti.

Here the four starlets play a quartet of hit women working for the deceptively grandmotherly "Aunt" Ermentrudis (Tamra Garina), who runs a protection racket under the cover of a somewhat unorthodox funeral parlor operation (in that, among other things, the funeral services include our four femme fatales acting as skimpily attired cocktail waitresses for the assembled bereaved). Aunty's targets are wealthy men from all areas of business, whom, should they ever tire of paying, find themselves on the wrong side of Maura, Amedee and company, whose job it is to hop into their chauffeured hearse and blithely eliminate them in any number of darkly comic scenarios. Thus is a recalcitrant luchadore hurled from a plane, another man obliterated by an exploding golf ball, and another herded into an abandoned arena to have a private audience with an angry bull.

Las Sicodelicas being the type of film that it is, none of its titular foursome are given any sort of character notes beyond what would easily fit inside a fortune cookie. Campbell's Patricia is the butch one. Vega's Dalilah is a hard drinking rocker chick in love with a pop singer named Ringo (Jack Gilbert, whose band is portrayed by Peruvian garage rockers Los Shains). Maura's Mireyra is, I don't know, the one most likely to pop her top, I guess. And it falls to Chabot's Adriana to be designated the most virginal and relatively sweet-natured of the group, which leads to her falling ass-over-teakettle for the private detective Arsenio, who is played by Rogelio Guerra as one part bungling comic relief and one part bargain bin Michael Caine. This last development requires Chabot to constantly make puppy dog eyes at Guerra, something that she proves to be weirdly terrible at. It also results in a plot snarl for the Sicodelicas once Arsenio takes it upon himself to investigate their latest string of killings.

As I alluded to above, the costumes worn by its stars are an undeniable highlight of Las Sicodelicas, as well as the one aspect of the film that most lives up to its title. Chabot especially, being cast as the group's resident flower child, gets to model a particularly astonishing assortment of floral-themed ensembles, which at one point include a piece of head wear that looks like an overturned flower pot rendered in macrame. However, aside from that and the nods to Beatlemania in Los Shains' musical sequences, there's nothing all that counter-cultural going on. For one thing, the Sicodelicas, despite their name, don't do psychedelics, nor, in fact, do they appear to do anything harder than alcohol.

Furthermore, there doesn't appear to be any element of "sticking it to the man" in the Sicodelicas' various transgressions, with the motive instead being a combination of financial gain and the fact that the girls just really seem to enjoy killing people. As such, Las Sicodelicas, for the most part, comes across as an amoral romp with a sort of frothy, free floating irreverence, taking its license from contemporary youth culture without subscribing to it on any deep level. That is, until its conclusion, when an ill-advised decision is made on the part of the filmmakers to call the girls to karmic account for their crimes.

No one in their right mind is going to come to a movie like Las Sicodelicas with an expectation of seeing anything remotely gritty or hard hitting. But if you're looking for a vibrant example of 1960s Mexican pop cinema at its most cheerily sex obsessed and silly, you couldn't do much better. Director Gilberto Martinez Solares (Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters), does, as will surprise no one familiar with his work, a merely workmanlike job, but it's likely he felt the combined appeal of his four female stars would be enough to carry him. And he was right. As highs go, Las Sicodelicas may be lightweight, but it's clear that everyone involved was enjoying the trip, and that's enough for me.

Planeta de las Mujeres Invasoras (Mexico, 1965)

In my recent review of Gigantes Planetarios, I characterized that film as being a departure from the typical Mexican sci-fi films of its era, my point being that the typical Mexican sci-fi films of its era were incorrigibly good natured and horny. Instead, Gigantes Planetarios was a fairly straight-faced space opera, with a ladling on of good ol’ Cold War anxiety for added frisson, and with little of the cheesecake and burlesque antics common to its peers. To make up for this lapse, the makers of the film’s rapidly following sequel, Planeta de las Mujeres Invasoras, made that film’s cast top heavy with a virtual who’s who of Mexican B movie bombshells.

Chief among these bombshells is former Miss Mexico Lorena Velazquez, who had a lengthy run as Mexican genre cinema’s leading lady of choice, meaning that she played opposite Santo on more than a few occasions. She was also one of the titular stars of the first three Las Luchadoras films, the only female driven series in the lucha genre. Starring alongside Velazquez in those films was American actress Elizabeth Campbell, who also appears here. Campbell was no slouch herself when it came to racking up an impressive slate of appearances in Mexican pulp productions, and even continued on in the Las Luchadoras series after Velazquez’s departure, making the loopy Las Mujeres Panteras in 1966. And last but not least, we have Italian beauty Maura Monti, whom you’re probably already sick of me going on and on about.

Alongside this top billed trio we see returning to Planeta all of the major players, both in front of and behind the camera, from Gigantes Planetarios, including prolific, German born director Alfredo B. Crevenna. And along with them come many of the costumes, props, sets, locations and special effects from Gigantes Planetarios. All of this suggests the possibility that the two films were filmed back to back, a practice that was not uncommon in the Mexican film industry of the day -- not to mention a specialty of Crevenna’s, who boasted of having a system that allowed him to complete four films in just eight weeks.

The first act of Planeta catches us up with our band of intrepid space travelers from the first film, which includes fearless scientist Daniel Wolf (Guillermo Murray), his faithful secretary Silvia (Adriana Roel), the prizefighter Marco (Rogelio Guerra), and Taquito, Marco’s manager (played by Jose Angel Espinosa, whose quotation mark bracketed nickname, “Ferrusquilla”, in the grand Mexican movie tradition, sounds a grave warning of comic relief hijinks to come). As we join them, Marco is trying to restart his fight career on a clean slate, and has promised Silvia that he won’t throw his upcoming fight as he has been known to do in the past. Marco stays true to his word, but, unknown to Silvia, he has accepted a payoff in exchange for taking a dive, which means that, in winning the fight, he has crossed the two bumbling mobsters who paid him.

Those mobsters catch up with Marco the next night, when he is out on a date with Silvia at an amusement park, aboard a flying saucer shaped “Trip to the Moon” ride. (In a nice bit of self referential humor, Silvia at first playfully objects to going on the ride, calling it “childish”, and adding, “They simulate the Moon with painted backdrops”.) Little do Marco, Silvia, the thugs, and the assembled other passengers realize, but the ride has been substituted for by an actual flying saucer piloted by the sexy space ladies Martesia (Campbell) and Eritrea (Monti), a ruse that makes it that much easier for the two to whisk these unsuspecting Earthlings to their home planet.

That planet turns out to be the “Planet of Perpetual Day” (keeping in mind that the planet our crew traveled to in Gigantes Planetarios was the “Planet of Eternal Night”) a world whose constant blinding sunlight makes living on its surface impossible. And inhabiting that planet is a subterranean race of “heartless” women ruled over by their extra-heartless Queen, Adastrea (Velazquez). In a refreshing change of pace from most old school space operas depicting planets inhabited by Amazonian races, it’s not men that Adastrea and her people are after this time. Instead what they want is to harvest these Earth peoples’ lungs so that the femaliens themselves might be able to survive in Earth’s hostile atmosphere, thus making it easier for them to invade and take over.

Fortunately for Adastrea’s unhappy new guests, she has a twin sister, Alburnia (Velazquez again), who, by some bizarre accident of birth, is every bit as kind and virtuous as Adastrea is a ravening bitch. The perpetually mini-toga’d Alburnia pledges to help the Earthlings and, at Marco and Silvia’s urging, sends her servant Fitia (Monica Miguel) to Earth to fetch Wolf and Taquito. Though Fitia ends up, through a chain of circumstances I can’t be troubled to explicate, dying in the trunk of Taquito’s car, she does manage to pass on Alburnia’s message at least in part, and, with the aid of some recycled footage from Gigantes Planetarios, Daniel is soon jetting off to Adastrea’s planet in his rocket ship with Taquito at his side.

Upon arriving on the planet, Daniel poses as a hard hearted rogue in order to seduce his way into Adastrea’s trust, which he easily does by liberally dishing out the kind of romantic sweet talk Earth scientists are known to be so adept at. Meanwhile, Adastrea has determined that it is the lungs of Earth’s children that are ideal for her purposes, and so aims a weapon called “The Thunder Mirror” at our world, calibrating it so that it will only kill adults. Once all the grownups are out of the way, Martesia and Eritrea wait Earthside to begin a massive kidnapping campaign. See, I told you these women are heartless!

Planeta de las Mujeres Invasoras represents just one front in an ongoing war of the sexes that raged throughout Mexican B cinema during the 50s and 60s. In many of those battles, the men were represented by wrestlers, and the women by vampires, fembots, harpies and witches (to name just a few). It’s hard to tell whether Mexican audiences at the time -- or at least their male half -- saw these films’ vision of a world under threat of malevolent female rule as laughable, or terrifying, or both (or, as certain laugh lines in Planeta seem to suggest, a fait acompli), but, whatever the case, the evidence suggests that they couldn’t get enough of it.

And when the result is a film as fun and ceaselessly dopey as Planeta, who can blame them? Typical of this kind of fare, the movie is just too silly to come across as mean spirited. And, though its sexual politics are backward, the way it so clumsily clubs you over the head with them only serves as a reminder of just what a relic of the Stone Age they are – or, at least, should be. In addition, despite all the heroics of the movie’s generically square jawed leading men, the players you walk away from the film remembering are the trio of female stars whose names appear above its title. Velazquez gets a perfect showcase here, tucking into the scenery like a true diva in both facets of her Janus-faced double role. The way she wrests the last drop of high melodrama from her every moment on screen demonstrates why she was such a popular and perfect choice for these kinds of comic book movies, and also provides a great example of the deceptively high amount of hard work that goes into being a B movie queen.

As for Campbell and Monti, it’s hard for me to argue that they are used for anything much beyond eye candy here. Though I must point out that it is eye candy that’s dressed in fetishistic retro-futurist space lady costumes, which is not really an argument for their performances having any objective value, really, but more an indication of the bias on my part that renders me incapable of judging. I am but a man, after all. And, until the evil space ladies come along to silence me, I have to tell it like it is.

Fighting Femmes, Fiends, and Fanatics, Episode 4: Con Licencia Para Matar

In this episode, I demonstrate the woeful inadequacy of my Spanish pronunciation while singing the praises of a Mexican pulp cinema classic replete with killer androids, beatnik mad scientists, and, most importantly, catsuit wearing lady spies.

S.O.S. Conspiracion Bikini (Mexico, 1967)

It says a lot about Mexican spy films from the 60s that S.O.S. Conspiracion Bikini is one of the more sober examples. In the case of most such films, the makers might as well have just made a movie featuring a guy in a sharp suit go-go dancing with a bunch of bikini girls on the roof of a Ferrari for ninety minutes. I mean, it’s not like anyone was demanding that any of them actually have a plot, right? Pero no, says S.O.S. Conspiracion Bikini, and goes on to deliver what, to my trained eye, appears very much to be an actual story, complete with characters and a series of causally related events and stuff like that.

Though, not being fluent in Spanish, I couldn’t tell you what exactly that story was. Nor can I even tell you for sure what the conspiracy at that story’s center was. It did indeed, however, involve a bikini fashion show taking place at a resort hotel in Ecuador, so it was probably some kind of nefarious, cameltoe based scheme, or perhaps a plan to start some kind of worldwide wedgie pandemic. The bikini models, you see, are enemy agents. And if you’re looking for some kind of conspiracy-minded thread tying the events of S.O.S. Conspiracion Bikini to those of our present day, it is possible that they are Muslims -- but, really, probably not.

S.O.S. Conspiracion Bikini is positively riddled with familiar faces from 1960s Mexican genre cinema. Chief among these is our star, Julio Aleman, here taking his first of two turns in the role of Mexican super-spy Alex Dinamo. (This film’s sequel, Peligro…! Mujeres en Accion, would arrive two years later.) Aleman was a handsome fixture in the Mexican B movies of the day, being a regularly featured player in both the Neutron and Nostradamus series, as well as the star of the awesomely ridiculous Rocambole costumed hero capers. (One of Rocambole’s super powers is ventriloquism.) As our bad guys, we have lucha movie staples Noe Murayama and Carlos Agosti, a screen villain so reliable that the mere presence of his name in the opening credits counts as a kind of spoiler. And finally, we have the ever-welcome Maura Monti in the role of Henchwoman Most Frequently In A State of Near Complete Undress.

Behind the camera here we have the familiar hand of Rene Cardona Jr., who, though not yet as seasoned as his dad, was well on his way at this point to approaching the same level of obscene prolificacy. S.O.S. Conspiracion Bikini was not blessed with the kind of budget that would allow for the kind of set pieces one would hope for in a spy film of its type, so instead we have an air of intrigue established by way of lots of sneaking around. People skulk suspiciously in corners, guns are furtively brandished, and folks listen at hotel walls with stethoscopes.

When there is evidence of production value, the attempts to milk it for all its worth are fairly conspicuous. An old station wagon is blown up, and we then get to watch it burn, and burn, and burn. And burn. For the climax, some boats, a seaplane and a helicopter were rented, and needless to say we are granted ample opportunity to get a very good look at them. Fans of frequent, inter-cut shots of people shooting alternately out of airborne and waterborne vehicles will find much to embrace.

Another way that S.O.S. Conspiracion Bikini compensates for its lack of kinetic thrills is by featuring a lot of things that are absolutely as red as they could possibly be.

The world’s reddest car.

The world’s reddest jacket.

And finally, the world’s reddest jacket vs. the world’s reddest cardigan.

To be fair, S.O.S. Conspiracion Bikini had the misfortune of being yet another spy movie in a month when I’d already watched quite a few. It’s really not bad. It’s just not novel enough to stand out above the accumulated noise of so many bullet-firing cameras, morse code blaring wrist watches, and exploding old junkers. It does have a great scene of sexy ladies dancing to a gringo garage band called “The Surfers” in a classy nightclub, which is exactly the kind of thing that will make it shine more brightly in my memory than it deserves to. At least I’ll have this review to refer to before I make the decision to watch it again.