Ofelia Montesco Movies

The long-buried sins of a foster father return to haunt a younger generation in Mexican director Arturo Martinez, Sr.'s 1965 Spanish-language western Un Hombre Peligroso. Rodolfo de Anda stars as the gunfighter El Zurdo, nicknamed 'Lefty.' During his younger days, El Zurdo was forced to murder a gambler in self-defense. He subsequently adopted the gambler's orphaned son, Mario, but consciously avoided informing the child of the circumstances. Years later, as Mario comes of age, he discovers the truth, craves vengeance for his father's death, and decides to square off in a duel against El Zurdo. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Ramon Obon directed this Mexican Gothic horror anthology based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. "Panico" concerns a man (Joaquin Cordero) who schemes with his mistress to frighten his wife into a heart attack. Ariadna Welter is the terrorized spouse, who later turns the tables on her tormentors. "Miedo Supremo" deals with a doctor (Jorge Martinez de Hoyos) who gets accidentally locked in a cemetery crypt with an insane woman who has been buried alive. Obon, best known for writing the screenplays of such Mexican horror standards as El Vampiro and Misterios de Ultratumba, produces some nice atmospherics and manages to avoid silliness in favor of genuine mood. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

The great screen surrealist Luis Buñuel co-wrote and directed this dark, bitterly witty satire. A group of people in formal dress arrives at an elegantly appointed home for a dinner party. However, once dinner is over and the guests retire to the drawing room, they discover that the servants have gone away, and for some reason they cannot leave. There is no explanation why -- there are no locked doors or barred windows preventing them from going home -- but the guests are convinced that they're stranded. Left to their own devices, they slowly but gradually degenerate into genteel savagery, taking an axe to a water pipe for drinking water, killing and eating a sheep that was to be part of the post-dinner entertainment, hiding the bodies of dead guests in the closet, dabbling in witchcraft, and burning the furniture. Buñuel's dry, quixotic wit is abundantly displayed in this film. Leading the cast was Silvia Pinal, the renowned actress who starred in several of Buñuel's Mexican films (she was married to noted producer Gustavo Alatriste, who produced several films with Buñuel). Other than the short subject Simon of the Desert, El Angel Exterminador proved to be Buñuel's last film made in his adopted homeland. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi