Creature of the Walking Dead

Jerry Warren had an odd niche back in the day. He would buy the rights to Mexican films and then cut them to pieces, include some new footage and narration and then release them in the States. This was not unprecidented...American International did this with Japanese and Russian movies many times! In most cases, the results are far from stellar....though perhaps "Creature of the Walking Dead" (originally, "La Marca del Muerto") is an exception.

The film starts with some pointless narration. Soon, the story begins long ago. An evil mad scientist has been experimenting in order to try to live forever. His secret? Stealing the blood of unsuspecting young women! He's soon caught and executed and the story jumps to the present day...and folks are discussing this old crime....just to make sure the audience REALLY knows what happened!

Soon, you see an ancestor of the evil man move into the old mansion and soon he discovers the old dead reprobate's experiments as well as the cells (and skeletons) where he kept his victims as he drained them! I think at this point, I would have moved out and sold the place! Instead, the idiot begins replicating the evil experiments and manages to bring the murder back to life! And, to keep him alive means more victims! All in all, his relative is a real idiot!

So is this any good? Yes and no. The film is not nearly as bad as its overall rating of 2.8 would imply. But the movie has a lot of problems, including a bat clearly on a string, long-winded voiceovers in portions instead of actually SHOWING what was happening as well as the silly notion that the mad scientist and a distant relative look nearly identical (and are played by the same actor). On the other hand, the story is creative and interesting...and very similar to the German film "The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism", the execution scene was brilliantly lit and filmed (the cinematographer was very good), and the movie did keep my interest...mostly because the Mexicans appear to have done a decent job with the original movie. Worth watching though far from being a must-see film.