1967's "Madame Death" (La Senora Muerte) was John Carradine's second Mexican feature for producer Luis Enrique Vergara, it began shooting July 4 right after completion of "Jekyll and Hyde: Pact with the Devil," from the same director and writer, Jaime Salvador and Ramon Obon Jr. As weak as the previous entry, this one at least benefits from a stronger turn from Regina Torne, doing a short topless bit instead of Isela Vega, truly giving her all for a sketchy character that we never warm up to, so devoted to her older husband that she allows Carradine as Dr. Favel to try to revive him after a near fatal heart attack. Blood is as always the needed ingredient for any mad scientist's success, but Regina's Marlene suffers the disfigurement of half her once lovely face when she becomes a willing donor, systematically stalking various girls employed in her fashion house (shades of Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace"), and neatly setting up an adulterous coworker as a suspect, then letting him off the hook by continuing her murder spree. The pacing drags for lengthy sequences where the girls show off their wares, and occasional attempts to earn sympathy for Marlene fall flat because she is never properly set up beforehand. Carradine was coming off the set of Ted V. Mikels' "The Astro-Zombies," looking quite at home in the same mad lab with deformed, mute assistant Laor. The scene where Laor gets out of line with Marlene forces the doctor to bring out the ever present whip, in a priceless bit that was copied by Woody Allen for 1972's "Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask." Also back from the Jekyll/Hyde fiasco, Isela Vega has more to do as model Lisa, though she still comes to a bad end. It is entirely due to Regina's performance that her climactic demise carries some meaning, Laor a tearful wreck over her corpse, which suddenly transforms back into her formerly beautiful self. This was clearly no stretch for Carradine, setting up the plotline for 21 minutes, then vanishing for all but two scenes the rest of the way, a miniscule 13 1/2 minutes screen time, never once shown doing anything with the blood that Marlene has extracted from her victims, ostensibly to keep her husband alive and not, as many reviewers state, to simply restore her beauty as in "Eyes Without a Face," "Atom Age Vampire," or "The Awful Dr. Orlof." Next up for Carradine will be "The Vampire Girls" and "Secret of Blood," opposite champion Luchador Mil Mascaras.
