Los monstruos del terror presents a revision of the classic horror myths in popular cinema of the 60s and 70s, to which it adds a plot of alien invasion, thus giving rise to multiple intertextual references to genre films of previous decades. This hybridization and intertextual richness is one of the hallmarks of the so-called Spanish fantaterror (a mixture of horror and fantasy that draws both from Classical Hollywood Cinema, from the “pop-sadistic” inclinations of the British Hammer Film Productions, and from native tendencies of the Hispanic culture). The plot of Los Monstruos del terror was conceived and developed by the legendary Spanish actor and filmmaker Jacinto Molina (AKA Paul Naschy), who also plays the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky in the movie, a recurring character in his filmography.

The plans for Earth’s domination, which are led by Dr. Odo Warnoff (Michael Rennie), a representative of an alien race in danger of extinction, rely on taking advantage of human passions and superstitions.To do so, Dr. Warnoff utilizes the monsters of popular folklore as catalysts to evoke the weaknesses of human emotion. Among the monsters resurrected to culminate Dr. Warnoff's sinister plan is the Oriental-featured mummy Tao-Tet (Gene Reyes), who is located and brought back to life in the supposed hypogeum of Amun-Ra in an unidentified location in Egypt. For the “mad scientist” Warnoff, the mummy represents the ideal of the domination of an alien race, for, in Warnoff’s own words, it is merely “a corpse that obeys and destroys”. This vision of the mummy as an automaton (literally, “a blind killer that only obeys the Egyptian cabal”, according to Warnoff) detaches the myth from its aura of romantic resurrection, characterizing it, on the contrary, as an unthinking murderer. The mummy become instead a lethal puppet controlled through the orders transmitted by the reflections of a mirror with magical powers.

The revision of the mummy myth in Los monstrous del terror responds to one of the main thematic concerns of the film: the fulfillment and domination of folklore under the influence of technology. It also evokes the dangers associated with the triumph of scientific reason, reduced here as a strategy of control and surveillance, over popular beliefs. Contributing to this background reflection, it is worth mentioning that one of the film's intertextual references is focused on the character of Warnoff, played by Michael Rennie, in what stands as an inversion of the role of the benign alien (Klaatu) that the American actor Robert Wise played in the 1950s science fiction classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Author: Samuel Fernández-Pichel