Do you hear that? The screech owl hooting in the arroyo? The tremolo strings of a haunting song being picked out in the courtyard of the nearby hacienda? It can only mean one thing…

Brought to you with the cooperation of the actual Mexican Consulate in Kansas City (I know, right?), Mexican Gothic is my first solo film series at the Stray Cat Film Center, bringing you four haunting Mexican horror films from 1934 to 1968.

(I previously worked with Elijah LaFollette of Magnetic Magic Rentals to produce the Kazuo Umezu’s Horror Theater film series, showcasing hard-to-find adaptations of the works of the “god of horror manga.”)

Why Mexican Gothic? As the whitest guy you know, it may not seem like the most obvious first choice, but I have a lot of favorite types of film. Anyone who is a regular at the Horror Pod Class, which I co-host every month at the Stray Cat with Tyler Unsell, knows that I am a devotee of horror movies made before 1970.

The ones I know the best might be those made by the Hollywood studio system during that time, but I am always questing for others. Fortunately, one doesn’t have to travel far afield to find some of the very best ones.

In 1930, while Tod Browning, Bela Lugosi, et al were making Dracula on sets at Universal during the day, Mexican actors were busy filming a Spanish-language version on those same sets at night. Within a few years, Mexico’s burgeoning film industry was turning out gothic horror pictures of its own, and by the 1960s they were producing a cottage industry of them that number among my favorites from that era.

Many of these involve the luchador enmascarado known as Santo – or, at times, a handful of his colleagues such as Blue Demon or Mil Mascaras. Those are, I think, what people tend to picture, when they think of Mexican horror cinema from this era. As much as I love those, however – and I do love them – they aren’t my favorites.

My favorites are the straight gothics such as The Witch’s Mirror, Spiritism, El Vampiro… and the four titles I selected for inclusion in Mexican Gothic.

Unfortunately, as an ugly American, the only language I am fluent in is English, and so my exposure to films from other countries is reliant on access to decent translations. As such, the creation of Mexican Gothic owes part of its genesis to the release of several of these movies on Anglophone Blu-ray by Indicator – singly, in the case of Phantom of the Monastery, and in the wonderful Mexico Macabre set that offered me my first chance to see two of the titles in the Mexican Gothic lineup.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a fantastic author and longtime friend, who first introduced me to several of these movies, and helped guide me into the shadowy world of Mexican horror cinema. I also borrowed the title of one of her books for this film series…

Mexican Gothic will run every Wednesday evening through the month of September at the Stray Cat Film Center. I’ll personally be hosting all four movies, offering a little background on them and enjoying watching the audience experience them on the big screen. What all do we have in store for you?

We start out with Phantom of the Monastery, one of the earliest sound horror films from Mexico, an eerie treat of specters and shadow play directed by Fernando de Fuentes and featuring actual mummies from the Museo de El Carmen.

Next up is the Edgar Allan Poe-inflected tale The Black Pit of Dr. M, helmed by Fernando Mendez, the director of what is probably Mexico’s most famous gothic, El Vampiro – the movie with the distinction of introducing the familiar canine fangs to vampires. As with your children, you’re probably not supposed to pick a favorite from among a film series, but this may be the one I’m most excited to show, replete with torchlit funeral processions, mist-shrouded courtyards, horribly burned faces, and much more.

If you only make it out to one movie in the Mexican Gothic lineup, you might want to make it Curse of the Crying Woman. Mexico’s most famous phantom stars in this unforgettable picture from producer and star Abel Salazar. Curse of the Crying Woman throws every imaginable trope and special effect at the wall to create a delirious concoction of haunted house hysteria, and you won’t want to miss seeing it with a crowd.

The only one of our films in color is also the one with the best title… possibly in horror history. Even the Wind is Afraid kicked off a string of gothic films by screenwriter turned director Carlos Enrique Taboada (Poison for the Fairies) that “revitalized the genre” in the late 60s by being among the first to “depict modern-day Mexico as the space of gothic horror.”

Tickets are on sale now for all four installments of Mexican Gothic, and I can promise you an eerie, haunting, one-of-a-kind experience that’s a perfect lead-in to the Halloween season.

Come join us this September for some of the best horror from south of the border, along with all the odd history and special surprises that you’ve come to expect. After all, if this screening series is a success, they’re more likely to let me do more of them…