Mexican horror has had its highs and lows. The monster and luchador pictures of the 50s and 60s are definitely a high! The 90s
on the other hand? Well, you can guess their cinema had declined a fair
bit! This was the VHS phase, where budgets had been
stripped to an absolute minimum. In this environment comes Herencia Diabolica, or
Diabolical Inheritance.
A businessman and his pregnant wife move into a new home, where they find a clown doll, belonging to the now-deceased old owner. Strange things soon begin happening, and the doll shows a life of its own, and when the wife discovers the secret, she is killed. Years later Tony and his son still live in the house, and he soon remarries. But the cycle begins again when she too realises what's happening and tries to stop it. Making her the doll's new target...
Herencia Diabolica has been called the Mexican Child's Play, and really it's pretty different, but the general vibe is there. A kids' doll is wreaking havoc, and the only ones who suspect are next on the chopping block. It gets off to an alright start. A bit slow, but we soon get a big setpiece where the apparent heroine is terrorised by the nefarious doll, and...killed!
It definitely feels like the movie peaks early. So where can it go from here? Behind of course. We sit through a semi-montage of the guy being a morose widower, raising their kid, meeting a new woman and falling in love again, and getting married.
It's here when the film begins to repeat itself. The new wife notices something's amiss with the doll. These scenes are broken up with things like a riveting visit to a petting zoo, where the towering sight of a King Kong sculpture is the closest thing to scary. It's 46 minutes in before we finally get something new, when the wife attempts getting rid of the doll.
It was at the hour mark when I was just about ready to yell at the screen "Is anything actually gonna damn happen in this movie?!". Just think of what we could've got! Investigation into the doll's history, escalation of the doll's antics, more than one murder in the first hour. Instead we just get repetition,, and people talking. Nothing interesting either. Even if you understand Spanish their dialogue amounts to mundane comments about taxes or the day's weather.
At one point Herencia becomes pretty hallucinatory, and almost verges on a Mexican version of Black Devil Doll from Hell, right down to the shot-on-video look (although this looks more like a 'real film' than that at least).
The final act does get fun again (with a lynching murder being a highlight), but it's basically just the first setpiece, but a little bigger, and ends in pretty much the same way. Nothing stops the doll, and the girl dies, again! How many wives is this guy gonna lose before he realises it's the doll! The movie ends on a bit of a downer, and one that isn't really any different to what's been seen before, so it's not even fresh.
The end credits are pretty amusing, keeping up the doll's evil laughing till the screen goes black. It must have given the pint-sized actor a sore throat!
The cast here is pretty amateurish in some ways, but they get the job done. Some line deliveries and reactions are pretty cheesy. The best performance is Margarito Esparza as the evil doll Payasito. He gets some great evil grins and cackles! He has a pretty fun presence too, running around energetically. It's he who really carries the movie, and without him it'd be dead in the water.
Herencia Diabolica is directed by Alfredo Salazar of all people. He wrote a few Santo entries, the Wrestling Women series, Mexican Batwoman, and was also the occasional director, helming weird western El Charro de las Calaveras! Most of his work was in the 70s, with a quiet period of over 10 years before Herencia, his final film.
The score is one of the film's best qualities! It's a bit cheesy, but effective and varied. We've got quieter ominous tunes, bombastic ones, tender character bits, and more. As well as a focus on ambient noises in places. It gets the job done in building a good atmosphere.
The effects here are cheap, but decent. The make-up/costume for the doll is colourful and a little hard to take seriously, but that only makes it more fun to watch! One thing I really loved was the studio logo sequence that begins the film! It's endearingly cheap, but also visually neat! Who doesn't love an Aztec pyramid, some lush greenery, and tribal fluting to open a movie. It's especially nice seeing reminders of Mexico's indigenous past in their media.
Herencia Diabolica is a movie that was alllmost good! In a cheesy z-grade trash sorta way, but good all the same! But it squanders its potential, and is a pretty boring watch.
This post is for The Shortening, a blogathon set up by Emily of The Deadly Dolls House of Horror Nonsense.
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