Census Bloodbath: Canta Y Llores

Note: The only available copy of this Mexican slasher was in unsubtitled Spanish. While I do speak some Spanish, take my review with a huge grain of salt.

Year:
1980
Director:
Mario Hernández
Cast:
Antonio Aguilar, Flor Silvestre, José Gálvez
Run Time:
1 hour 31 minutes

Plot: Taste of Blood (originally Sabor a Sangre), which is set in the early 20th century, follows Mauricio Rosales (Antonio Aguilar), a noble cowboy who nobly happens upon the corpses of six dead caballeros while traveling the country performing noble deeds with his companion. 

When they bring the dead men and their horses back to town, they learn that the group was on an excursion to catch the serial killer El Tigre, who has been terrorizing the area and seems to be targeting Rodrigo Arteaga (Bruno Rey, who later appeared in the Mexican slashers Yo te amo Catalina and El violador infernal). They did not succeed, but perhaps Mauricio can...

Analysis: In addition to somehow being the second slasher period piece we've covered in a row (after Taiwan's Keep Out of Danger), Taste of Blood has two other elements that had me intrigued right off the bat. The first is the fact that it's technically part of a franchise. Actually, you could even call it a very early example of a legacy sequel.

You see, Antonio Aguilar played Mauricio Rosales (one of those classic "drifter who changes people's lives, then breezes out of town" types who informed characters as far afield as Jack Reacher and Mad Max) in a series of nine matinee Westerns from 1955's El rayo justiciero through 1958's Los muertos no hablan. Sabor a sangre saw him returning to the role for the first time in more than a decade and the last time overall.

The second is the fact that, due to the nature of its franchise, it blends slasher elements with the tropes of both Western movies and mariachi musicals. How could you not at least quirk an eyebrow at that?

Unfortunately, it doesn't evoke any of those three genres particularly well. As a musical, it's pretty drab. The severe tonal shifts that are required to transition the characters from being menaced by a serial killer to singing mariachi tunes are entirely outside of director Mario Hernández's grasp. Taken on their own, the musical numbers themselves aren't much good, anyway.

Even though the singers are pretty good, the numbers are staged incredibly poorly, either involving characters standing still and staring at one another or showing dancing/horseriding people in prolonged, extreme wide shots that render the sequences static and tedious.

It's even worse at being a Western. It's tedious as all get out. When it's not delivering three scenes in a row of pairs of people yelling at each other, it's luxuriating in excruciating moments like Mauricio slooowly reaching for his gun over the course of what feels like the better part of an hour.

Typically, these genre mashups are worst at being slashers, but Taste of Blood does have some decent slasher elements. While it's really not a body count picture as such (there are too many shooting deaths, and the more slashery deaths aren't lingered upon), some of the murder scenes are reasonably shocking and they're liberally slathered in "killer POV" shots. By far the worst thing about the slasher component of the film is its droning synth score, which sounds like an electric razor, only less musical. 

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, Taste of Blood is unremarkable in a way that really shouldn't be possible.

Killer: El Tigre

Final Girl: Mauricio Rosales (Antonio Aguilar)

Best Kill: In a scene so out-of-nowhere that it can only elicit either a scream or a guffaw, a pregnant girl delivers a tearful monologue and is then abruptly shoved off a cliff.

Sign of the Times: The fact that a 1950s Western franchise returned in the 1980s as a slasher franchise tells you all you need to know about how the tides of genre changed in the intervening years.

Scariest Moment: The killer slowly approaches a terrified old woman after murdering her husband.

Weirdest Moment: Mauricio Rosales is introduced on horseback, making his horse do cute little prancey dressage moves. But the horse keeps doing that over the next couple scenes, so I think maybe Antonio Aguilar just couldn't get it to stop.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 25; though the movie is singularly unconcerned with presenting kills in a legible way, so the number could very well be more than what I'm counting. Also, while even the number that I have would put Jason Voorhees to shame, the number of deaths that feel in any way slashery is only 6.

1. Carriage Driver is shot.
2. Caballero #1 is shot.
3. Caballero #2 is shot.
4. Caballero #3 is shot.
5. Old Caballero is killed offscreen.
6. Caballero #4 is killed offscreen.
7. Caballero #5 is killed offscreen.
8. Woman is hanged offscreen.
9. Woman's Husband dies of wounds sustained offscreen.
10. Caballero #6 is shot.
11. Caballero #7 is shot.
12. Niña Arteaga is stillborn thanks to her mother being trampled by horses.
13. Viejo has a knife thrown into his gut.
14. Vieja is killed offscreen.
15. Flashback Man has his eyes poked out with a stick.
16. Flashback Man #2 is shot.
17. Abuelo is shot.
18. Muchacha,
19. Muchacho,
20. and Madre are burned to death in a hut.
21. Swimmer is shot.
22. Caballero #8 is shot.
23. Pregnant Girl is pushed off a cliff.
24. Captain Eyepatch is shot.
25. El Tigre is shot.

TL;DR: Taste of Blood is an intriguing combination of the Western, slasher, and musical genres, but fails to pay that off in any way.

Rating: 4/10