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Damiana y Los Hombres(1967) is a Mexican soap opera made as a big budget movie. The title means "Damiana and the Men". Mercedes Carreno portrays Damiana, a girl from a rural area who has to choose between a career as a supermodel or life with a guy she loves. Damiana y Los Hombres is "really good" compared to bad, vile Mexican movies made in the 1980's. There are some fun scenes such as Carreno dancing in her underpants to something that sounds like a Canned Heat cover band. Carreno does appear topless in the film for six seconds! How did they get that past the censors? The film is soaked with 1960's pop culture. You can see a Donald Duck LP in the background. This film may have worked better as a twenty episode Mexican soap opera on TV. Damiana y Los Hombres is no masterpiece, but it's worth a look if you enjoy Mercedes Carreno and her sensuality.

La Inocente(1972) is a solid tear jerker drama starring Mercedes Carreno and Lilia Michel. Once you get past the bizarre, corny surface, it's an engaging melodrama. Mercedes/Meche Carreno plays Constancia, an adult woman who suffers from Down syndrome. She has a childlike innocence and natural beauty. Michel plays Alicia, Constancia's loving, stressed out mother. Lorena Velazquez is quite good as an evil stepmother. Raul Lavista's music score for La Inocente is super. Constancia's theme music is catchy. There's some 1970's hard rock in some scenes. It sounds like Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix, and Iron Butterfly showing up for a gig. Carreno has appeared nude in many films. In this film, all we see is a couple shots of her underpants. Carreno could have ruined the film by winking at the camera and camping things up. She gives a sincere performance in the film. When Constancia gets raped, I couldn't stop crying for days. There are lighter scenes with Meche Carreno eating junk food and playing with dogs and cats. The film was directed by veteran Rogelio A. Gonzalez Jr. La Inocente is an underrated drama from 1970's Mexico.

El Oficio Mas Antiguo Del Mundo(1970, The Oldest Profession in the World) is a dark Mexican drama with a fair amount of humor. Two drunken prostitutes, Libertad (Maricruz Olivier) and Graciela (mega babe Jacqueline Andere) walk back to the brothel where they live. On the sidewalk, they find an injured man(Oscar Chavez) dying! In the brothel, the madam(Gloria Marin) and the rest of "the women of the night" nurse the man back to health. How are they all going to react when they find out that the injured man is a priest?!

This is a plot, character, and dialouge-driven drama and it's helped by good editing. Director Luis Alcoriza jams as much sex appeal as he legally can into the film. He'll order the cameraman to shamelessly film Lina Marin's cleavage or Lupita Ferrer's legs! Oscar Chavez does a good job playing a shy, timid, nebbish priest trapped in a brothel and the late Maricruz Olivier is memorable as an intelligent, strong willed prostitute. El Oficio Mas Antiguo Del Mundo may have seemed very decadent and perverted in 1970, but it's tame by today's shameless standards...and it's nowhere as perverse and low brow as the Mexican films made in the 1980's!

The jazzy/bossy nova music score by Enrico Caviatti is very catchy. It makes me want to jump around and dance until I puke on someone! Isela Vega co-stars in this film. She played Warren Oates' girlfriend in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia(1974). The lovely Heidi Blue co-stars in the film. I don't know where she's from, but she looks "Nordic". Eduardo Lopez Rojas plays a butler in the film. Fans of the film My Family(1995) may recognize him. Lupita Ferrer went on to co-star in the 1999 telenovela/soap opera Rosalinda. The TV version of El Oficio Mas Antiguo Del Mundo that airs on Telemundo is actually an alternate version of the film. Takes run 2-3 seconds longer and there's an alternate take when Gloria Marin yells at Jacqueline Andere. Also, the footage of Estela injecting insulin into leg is snipped out. This film is a classic of Mexican cinema.