Juan López Moctezuma: Mexican Horror’s Transnational Style

• In Event: New Approaches to Transnational Mexican Cinema

Abstract

In this paper, I seek to reposition cult author Juan López Moctezuma as an essential part of transnational Mexican cinema. Cited as an influence by directors such as Roman Polanski and Guillermo del Toro, López Moctezuma is one of the most important directors of transnational horror. After working as producer for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Fando y Lis (1968) and El Topo (1970), López Moctezuma went on to direct three films of great importance in the midnight circuits of both Mexico and the United States: La mansión de la locura (1973), Mary, Mary Bloody Mary (1975) and Alucarda, la hija de las tinieblas. Shot in English, these three films display two ideas that will be developed in the paper. First, it will discuss then notion of “transnational authorship” present in 1970s genre and even art cinema, in which directors as diverse as Sergio Leone, Dario Argento and Werner Herzog used multilingualism and transnational casts. I argue that López Moctezuma is a central character in this movement. Secondly, I argue that horror and exploitation become central for the transnationalization of Mexican cinema, given that the collapse of the film industry in the 1960s left underground channels as one of the few options to produce economically viable movies. In sum, the paper will contend that López Moctezuma’s violent and sexual horror films are the key moment of transnationalization of Mexican cinema, opening the doors for the success of Guillermo del Toro a decade and a half later.

Author

• Ignacio M Sánchez Prado, Washington University/St. Louis