The Castle of the Monsters

El Castillo de los Monstruos
Directed by Julián Soler
Produced by Heberto Dávila Guajardo,
Jesús Sotomayor Martínez
Written by Fernando Galiana,
Carlos Orellana,
Julián Soler
Starring Antonio Espino,
Evangelina Elizondo,
Carlos Orellana
Music by Gustavo César Carrión
Cinematography Víctor Herrera
Edited by Sigfrido García,
Carlos Savage
Distributed by Columbia Pictures (USA)
Release dates
 1958
Running time
 90 minutes
Country Mexico
Language Spanish

El Castillo de los Monstruos (also known as The Castle of the Monsters) is a 1958 Mexican horror comedy directed by Julián Soler.

Plot summary

Mexican funnyman, El Clavillazo (Antonio Espino), is in love with a seamstress named Beatriz (Evangelina Elizondo), and also hangs out with a variety of odd characters, including a newsboy and a mental patient. Meanwhile, at the nearby castle, a mad scientist named “Dr Sputnik” and his scarred, hunchbacked assistant are busy making monsters. The doctor poses as a kindly blind man in town and uses hypnosis to lure Beatriz to his castle, brainwashing her into believing that she is his own love named “Galatea”. El Clavillazo, with an assist from his friends, blunders his way into the castle, where he spends most of his time being chased around by various monsters. There is the butler, who looks like the Frankenstein Monster. The rest of the monsters include a werewolf, a mummy, a vampire (clearly modeled after Count Dracula) and a gill-man (clearly patterned after "Creature from the Black Lagoon"). There is also another, unidentified monster being kept in a cell (why it is not allowed to run free with the rest is not known), which is referred to as a “gorilla” in some reviews, although it appears to be more of a humanoid ape-like creature, perhaps based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the end, El Clavillazo manages to defeat the monsters, mostly by luck, and rescue the girl. A chemical in Sputnik’s lab devolves the gill-man into a big fish, the werewolf is choked out by the monster in the cell (perhaps that is why he was kept behind bars), Frankenstein accidentally electrocutes himself by grabbing a power cable in the lab and turns into cogs and clock-parts, the mummy falls into a pit of alligators and is devoured, and the vampire vanishes when the sun rises. Dr Sputnik has the usual falling out that all mad scientists seem to eventually have with their deformed assistants (usually due to the scientist mistreating his assistant, or the assistant developing a crush on a girl the scientist has designs on, or sometimes a combination of both), resulting in his being shot after he stabs the scarred hunchback. Clavillazo and Beatriz are trapped in a room and about to be crushed by the walls moving together when they are rescued in the nick of time by the rest of the gang, and they all live happily ever after.

Cast

External links

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