Welcome to a new 31 Days of Horror. This year we are doing things a little differently. Instead of focusing on one horror sub-genre or just running through a random list of my favourite films, this time we have a theme: international horror. Everyday from now until Halloween, I’ll spotlight a different horror film from a different part of the world.
The vast majority of horror films come from the U.S. but that doesn’t mean that the horror genre hasn’t taken off elsewhere. Horror is, in fact, big everywhere. To keep this global tour of the macabre organized, I’m going to go through the countries alphabetically. That means today’s horror offering comes from Argentina.
Argentina is one of the bigger producers of Spanish language movies in the world and one of the big three in Latin America (along with Mexico and Brazil according to Wikipedia). The first Argentinian horror movie was a 1942 film called A Light in the Window. The film starred Narciso Ibáñez Menta who went on to star in several horror films. One of his best was a 1960 movie called Obras maestras del terror aka Masterworks of Terror.
The movie is an anthology that features three Edgar Allan Poe stories. The Case of Mr. Valdemar, The Cask of Amontillado and The Tell-Tale Heart are the three stories with Narciso Ibáñez Menta starring in The Case of Mr. Valdemar. The film was picked up in the U.S., dubbed, cut and renamed Master of Horror. It was released in 1965 but The Tell-Tale Heart was cut from the film for some strange reason. That segment was later released in film called Legend of Horror in 1972. Even dubbed, these are some really good adaptations of Poe’s work.
Here’s the original film but without subtitles.
And here’s the American dubbed / cut version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk1iTA1v1R8
