Curados De Espantos (1991)
Mexican Lobby Card
I love this lobby card, but I haven’t watched Curados de Espantos yet, so had to look this one up. It’s a Mexican comedy with vampires, featuring a roster of old-school comedians like Alfonso Zayas and Roberto Guzmán, with Lina Santos (who stood out because she insisted on not appearing nude onscreen, something commonly expected in this type of movie). The humor feeds off of lust, of course, and double-entendres. There are witch doctors (Alfonso Zayas and Cesar Bono) who use very questionable ingredients in their craft. There’s also an exorcism scene involving a boy possessed by a demon, which ends in an unexpectedly simple and hilarious way (TrashMex). The two defining elements for this film are cine de ficheras and albur comedy.
Albur is a uniquely Mexican form of wordplay that is essentially a battle of double-entendres, usually with sexual undertones. The goal is to trap someone into saying or agreeing to something with an obscene second meaning, without them realizing it in a rapid back-and-forth exchange. It works through puns, homophones, innuendo, and creative license with innocent phrases. It’s hard to translate because much depends on the sounds and meanings of Mexican Spanish slang.
The term cine de fischeras comes from fichera–a woman who worked in cabarets and dance halls, getting paid per dance “ticket” (ficha) bought by male customers. Starting in the 1970s and running through the 1980s and into the 90s, a whole genre of Mexican films was built around these settings. The movies typically took place in cabarets, brothels, or seedy nightclubs and featured a mix of comedy, music, light romance, and a lot of nudity and sexual humor.
So now I know. I look forward to watching this one.
