The Monstrous Doctor Crimen (1953) DVD-R

Starring Miroslava, Carlos Navarro, José María Linares-Rivas, Fernando Wagner, Alberto Mariscal
Paul Page
Directed by Chano Urueta

Print: Black and White
Runtime: 85 min.
Genre: Horror

The first major medical sci/fi movie in Mexico, loosely based on the Frankenstein story but injecting gory surgical motifs into it,
laying the foundations of the genres that came to dominate Hispanic Science Fictionin the 60's and 70's,
as exempified by the work of Jesus Franco from 'Gritos en la Noche' (1962) onwards.
Set in the Balkans, this story concerns a bored journalist,
Nora (miroslava) who is ordered by her boss (Wagner) to follow up a mysterious advertisement placed by Dr Ling (Linares Rivas).
Ling turns out to be a misshapen creature who, rejected by his peers,
has become the stereotypical mad scientist, here specializing in plastic surgery.
He falls in love with Nora but fearing she will betray him he resuscitates a young man who committed suicide,
Ariel (Navarro) by transplanting a new brain into him, and order him to fetch Nora so that he can kill her.
However, Nora and Ariel fall in love, and the zombiesque youth rebels against the orders of his master,
turning on him and kill him, whereupon Wagner saves Nora from the beautiful young zombie.