Psychotic Cinema

Genre: Mexican Comedy Crime Caper

Four sisters who had been taken out of reform school and adopted by an evil aunt, Aunt Ermentrudis (Tamara Garina), run a protection racquet focusing on millionaires. If the millionaires don’t pay up, they are murdered. These four girls also like to enjoy a spot of bank robbery.

When not involved in extortion or robbery, these girls relax in their luxury villa and run a funeral business as a facade to their criminal activities. And yes, you know where the stiffs will be coming from.

One day whilst at a masked wrestling match, one of the girls flirts with Arsenio Junker Tres Alas (Rogelio Guerra), who is a budding Austin Powers clone, but the flirting has to be cut short when the girls suddenly disappear and secretly kidnap one of the wrestlers.

With the kidnapped wrestler held prisoner in their own private jet, they demand their protection money. The wrestler stupidly refuses and this results him being thrown out over the sea with a concrete block tied to his feet.

It just happens that Junker is a private detective, but a bumbling one at that. He’s trying to work on the case of the missing wrestler, but his attention is distracted by the short mini-skirt his very pretty assistant wears.

Junker is invited for a game of golf with a rich friend and just happens by chance to meet the four girls on the same golf course. The girls have meanwhile been asking Junker’s rich friend to pay them his protection money which he too refuses. This results in him being killed by an exploding golf ball.

Still Junker doesn’t seem to notice the coincidence of these four girls always being present when these high profile crimes take place.

After meeting the four girls again on the beach, it isn’t long before Junker falls in love with one of them and a relationship begins to blossom.

Meanwhile, one of the other girls enjoys to party. When the four girls are sent to their bedroom at night, which happens to be a giant bedroom with four beds in a row, the party girl likes to sneak out of her bed and put on her gold go-go boots and make her way to the local nightclub. Here she dances wildly on the table to her boyfriend’s band - her boyfriend being Ringo Peniche (Jack Gilbert).

The four girls must follow a strict code of never falling in love with men, but this code has now been broken with Junker and Ringo. Aunt Ermentrudis gives the order that these two men must die.

Directed by prolific Mexican director Gilberto Martínez Solares, this film was shot in Mexico and Peru and is by no means a great movie, but what would probably appeal to most people is its completely over the top 60’s kitsch style. Most notably the girls' outfits which are either matching black leather catsuites or a mod/espanic hybrid you would only ever see on a catwalk.

Some of the girls in this movie are very pretty and spend a lot of their time also in bikinis or short mini skirts. The four sisters are Maura Monti, who played the buxom bikini clad Batwoman in the Mexican Batgirl rip-off La Mujer Murciélago (1968), Amadee Chabot, who appeared on a couple of US TV shows and movies before continuing her career south of the border, Isela Vega, who is still busy today, and American Elizabeth Campbell, who had a successful career south of the border, including a reoccurring role in the Rock 'N Roll Wrestling Women movies.

So far this film only seems to have been released in Spanish language, but hopefully someone will one day release it subtitled. In the meantime, if you want to see a film which is fun and easy on the brain cells, but has a sexy 60’s style and beat music, then Las Sicodélicas could be the one for you.

Las Sicodélicas (The Psychedelic Girls) (1968)

Genre: Mexican Horror

In this Mexican horror movie we start with Dr. Satan who is deep down in the caverns of Hell being told by Lucifer that he has one more chance to return to the living and to find the black magician and vampire Yei Lin.

Yei Lin has discovered the “Sorensen Formula” which can transform base metals into gold using a device like a ray gun. He must kill Yei Lin and bring back the formula (you would think the Devil would be powerful enough already to turn base metals into gold). If Dr Satan fails, he will never have eternal peace.

With that unpleasant prospect in mind, Dr Satan returns to the world of the living and is back in his office interviewing young girls. When he finds a suitable one, he injects her with a syringe and turns her into a zombie.

With two girls as zombies, he returns to his laboratory where the girls sleep in open coffins. At night he sends them out to search for Yei Lin.

In the meantime, the police are trying to track down Yei Lin, who is planning to fly to Hong Kong. These policeman don’t seem too bright because Yei Lin continues to experiment with his device in his laboratory while his pretty assistant, Medussa, sit’s on the reception desk.

When one nosey security guard enters she murders him by fireing some guns built into the reception desk.

Soon Dr. Satan’s female zombies discover the whereabouts of Yei Lin and the rest of the movie is a tit-for-tat between these two forces of evil.

With Yei Lin's supernatural powers, he is able to transform himself into a very fake looking bat which can then suck the blood from its victims. Because he can turn into a vampire, he can also be killed with a stake through the heart. Yei Lin also has some henchmen to assist in his evil crimes.

Dr Satan must use his suppeirior cunning and while Dr Satan and Yei Lin battle for the formula, the police are getting ever nearer.

Directed by Rogelio A. González, who has made some pretty strange films in his time including the 1960 sci-fi movie Ship of Monsters (1960), which contains some of the strangest aliens ever put to celluloid

Like many Mexican horror movies, Dr. Satan versus Black Magic can be a bit slow at times. It’s also difficult to root for any of the characters as the two leads are both as evil as each other. The police are secondary and hardly come into the story.

That’s the down side to this movie, but don’t let that deter you because this movie is bizarre. What stood out for me were the sound effects, especially in Dr Satan’s Laboratory and Yei Lin’s ray gun device. These sounds are a psychedelic smorgasboard of freakin' weirdness

Luis Hernández Bretón produced the soundtrack which reuses the avant-garde music he wrote for two earlier vampire movies, El Vampiro Sangriento (The Bloody Vampire) (1962) and La Invasión de los Vampiros (The Invasion of the Vampires) (1963).

Another thing which stands out with this movie is the surrealistic color schemes. This is all thanks to the work of the great cinematographer José Ortíz Ramos.

Joaquín Cordero, who usually played heroic characters rather than villains is Dr. Satan. His rival, Yei Ling, is played by Noé Murayama, a Mexican actor of Japanese descent who spent most of his career in dramas and westerns, although he did appear in another movie concerning Satan, El Látigo contra Satanás (The Whip versus Satan) (1979).


The two buxom zombie girls are great and look more like zombie go-go dancers.

This could only be a product of the 1960’s and is recommended to any fans of Mexican horror movies.

Dr. Satán y la Magia Negra (Dr. Satan versus Black Magic) (1968)