31 Nights of Halloween Horror part 25 - Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary
101 mins.
Dir. Juan Lopez Moctezuma
1975/Mexico

One of my favorite urban legends growing up was that of Bloody Mary.  As I was told, stand in a bathroom and spin around three times and say Bloody Mary each time and then turn on the lights and you will see her in the mirror all bloody and terrifying.  Scary stuff.  This movie has nothing to do with the Bloody Mary legend.

This film is about Mary played by the lovely Christina Ferrare, an American artist living in Mexico selling her paintings.  There she meets another American who is hitchhiking his way through Mexico, so they hook up.  One other thing though, Mary needs to drink blood to survive.  Is she a vampire?  Not necessarily, she is out in the sunlight, and I am sure crosses and garlic have no effect on her.  Nothing in the conventional vampire sense, she just likes lapping up the red stuff.  Fair enough, so Mary goes around seducing people and sticking her dagger like hair pin into their throat and sucking the blood.  All seems to be going well until the bodies start piling up and the cops get involved.  Meanwhile there seems to be another figure other than Mary going around draining bodies of blood.  This one is a figure all clad in black with a black hat and a black scarf covering his face, he pretty much looks like the pulp character The Shadow.

So while Mary is frolicking around with her boyfriend killing people and sucking blood behind his back, the mysterious figure in black is chasing Mary killing people and sucking their blood along the way.  Like most cops in these movies, they have no leads and no idea what is going on.  They eventually apprehend Mary's boyfriend and try to pin the murders on him but they have no evidence to hold him with.

By the time the climatic end comes around Mary decides she needs to kill her boyfriend and drink his blood, so she drugs him like all her victims and drags him out to the woods to kill him.  Meanwhile the cops are chasing the mysterious figure in black.  The cops shoot Black Man's car and it goes over a cliff into a fiery inferno but not before Black Man jumps out.  The police go to investigate but Black Man is not dead and kills the cops, meanwhile Mary happens to be nearby the wreck and goes to investigate.  Black Man sees Mary and calls to her, she takes off and he begins chase.  Cornered the mysterious man in black pulls down his scarf to reveal...It's John Carradine!  And he is Mary's father.  Apparently he is dying from a disease that is causing his veins to enlarge and burst and Mary will have the same problem as she gets older, so to spare her the pain he wants to kill her.  Makes total sense.  Actually it makes about as much sense as this movie does.

Director Juan Lopez Moctezuma is also responsible for the much better Alucarda.  Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary does have some blood in it and some ample parts of nudity, but misses on some of the parts that made Alucarda so great.  Years before George Romero gave us a a new kind of vampire with Martin, Mexico was already touching upon the subject with Bloody Mary, though vampires are never mentioned in this movie.  I should point out there is a scene with some animal cruelty, where a swimmer gets bitten by a shark and some of his friends go out and beat the shit out of the shark and drag is ashore.  It's Mexico in the 70s so I am pretty sure it is a real shark.  No way this movie had any kind of budget over the fake looking red crayon blood.  For Mexican movie enthusiasts, here is one to watch on Taco Tuesdays.