A small community has been ravaged by a series of death, attributed to plague. Yet all of the bodies of the dead have disappeared! When the deceased husband of an elderly matriarch is stolen, her son rides off to get help. Despite opposition, in his dying moments he finds friendly cowboy Gaston, who soon finds himself in a hostile town where both man and monster conspire to kill him before he discovers the truth...
El Pantano de las Animas, The Swamp of Lost Souls, is a film that immediately gets your attention with its catchy title! And it keeps it with a really gripping first act. We have a macabre mystery, a heroic cowboy, and most surprisingly, a fish monster!
With a story as packed as this, it is never boring. Actually the greatest concern is you'll lose track of what's going one! A plague, a town conspiracy, a fish monster, and how it all connects, etc. There's also the question of whether there are really supernatural events afoot. I was a little confused how everything tied together, so I just turned my brain off by the end and focused on the action.
As the film went on, one
thing began to worry me-This really is about a fish person, right?
It's not gonna pull a fast one on us like an episode of Scooby Doo? El
Grito de la Muerte did the same thing, which was fine for that movie, but twice
in a row would be a bit much, and make me skeptical about all future
Gaston Santos horror pictures!
The action here is your typical cowboy gunfights, and barroom brawls.
Decent stuff for what it is. The small amount of monster action we get
is pretty neat. The
climax is the most unimpressive sequence. It's just a regular cowboy
showdown Everyone looks and dressed the same, so I didn't quite
understand who the main bad guy was. It also got laughably ridiculous how they heroes keep tripping and tricking the bad guys into the same trapdoor! It got to the point where I expected them to form a human mountain and easily climb their way out.
Modern genre icon Guillermo del Toro has been vocal about his love for
Creature from the Black Lagoon, which would eventually inspire his own
The Shape of Water. It's interesting to see that the inspirational
power of that classic film stretches not only to modern Mexican pioneers, but
to contemporary ones too!
Gaston Santos is once again the whitest cowboy in Mexico, hitting every beat a western (or in this case southern) hero needs to. Wide brimmed hat, check, noble steed, check, quick draw pistolero, you bet! I wonder if he knew he was going into this fight with a man in costume,
or if he really thought he was about to fight a real fish monster.
Props to him either way! The love interest is nice, and the old lady suitably mysterious. The son who goes for his help has a distinct look to, and I was disappointed to see him die so quickly.
The comic relief gets a strong introduction. If he were any other
character, his life span could be marked in the seconds, but since he
was larger, and had a tendency to sing to himself, I knew he would
survive. Girthy
as he may be, he's able to outswim the fish monster!
The monster makes for a fun villain, and it's interesting seeing how he operates, especially one hilarious scene where he uses a harpoon gun! The only thing more dangerous than the Creature from the Mexican Lagoon is one that packs heat!
The direction in Swamp of Lost Souls is really good, with some standout underwater photography. It captures ripples in an atmospheric way too. There's also a great lightning shot. Swamp is a great example of doing a lot with a little. The locations are really good too, from the rustic waterside village, to the titular swamp, complete with skulls for decor!
Swamp
is an interesting counterbalance with Gritos, another genre hybrid starring Gaston Santos. Whereas that film had an
exaggerated colour palette, made up of artificial hues, this is lit much more
naturally. It has a greyish tinge to it, without looking colourless, if that makes sense.
The effects here are neat, mainly comprising of a surprisingly good fishman costume! I like how large the head is. Rather than make it generally human sized, they go all out. The credits has some nice illustrations too!
The cast here is a good one. Santos can play a noble cowboy in his sleep, while Rayo de Plata(?) is a reasonable comic relief, and the villains are all decent enough thugs. The horse is a valuable co-star too, and even gets the final whinny of the film!
Swamp of Lost Souls is a bit confusing, but well worth checking out! If anyone says you can't mix Creature from the Black Lagoon with a western, those people are wrong and Mexico proves it!...
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