I saw parts of this on the Something Weird compilation Mexican Monsters on the March and it looked pretty cool. I found it online, so I figured I’d check it out. The copy I saw didn’t have subtitles, but when has that ever stopped me from watching an old Mexican monster movie?
The basic premise is “The Rider”, who is essentially a mash-up of Zorro and one of the Three Amigos tangles with various monsters in the Old West. It’s basically a stitched together feature from what looks to have been a TV show or a serial. That means The Rider fights a new monster every twenty minutes or so, which is all right by me.
A witch turns a poor guy into a werewolf who roams around killing people. The witch also has the power to make zombies rise from their grave and talk. The Rider, who wears a black mask, a wide brimmed hat, and a cool jacket with a skull and crossbones on it, does battle with the monster. Later, he tries to save a woman who has been put under the spell of a vampire and even goes head to… uh… head with a headless horseman and some skull-faced monks (who look like a more badass version of the Crimson Skull).
The werewolf is basically just a guy in a shoddy Halloween mask but I for one wouldn’t have it any other way. It is interesting that in the werewolf’s lap dissolve transformation scene that the guy first turns into a skeleton before becoming the werewolf. That means it predates the similar (though much more elaborate) transformation in The Howling 4 by several decades. I did think it was weird that bullets and knives don’t harm the wolf man, but he is killed when he (spoiler) falls off a cliff?!?
The vampire is very cool too. He’s basically just a dude with a creepy face (it looks like they put papier mache over a Lucha Libre mask), giant pointy ears, and a Dracula cape. The jump cut transformation scenes when he turns into a bat are surprisingly effective.
The headless horseman is shoddy looking. And by “shoddy looking”, I mean “awesome”. You know those headless costumes you see people wearing at Halloween parties? Well, imagine a dime store South of the Border variation and that may give you an idea of what we have here. (His talking severed head is cool too.)
The Rider has not one, but two sidekicks including a little kid and an old guy that provides the unnecessary (and unfunny) comic relief. One or the other would’ve sufficed. Heck, he really didn’t need either of them. However, they don’t get in the way of the fun.
Make no bones about it, The Rider of the Skulls is perfect entertainment for fans of Mexican monster movies.
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