original production:

CIEN GRITOS DE TERROR

"This Picture was produced in Mexico by the Union of Motion Picture Technicians"

Cast:
("A Debt of Panic")
Ariadne Welter (as "Adriadne Welter") (Mary Louise), Joaquin Cordero (Howard), Ofelia Montesco (young woman)
("The Cript of Terror")
Jorge Martinez de Hoyos (Dr. Xavier Medina Donnas), Alicia Caro (young woman), Enrique Couto, Patricia de Morelos, Rosalva Welter and Monica Welter (young girls at funeral)

SYNOPSIS:
"A Debt of Panic":
A young married couple, Howard and Mary Louise, drive in their snappy sports car to a large house in the Acapulco countryside, which Howard has just purchased.

Howard is in love with the place, but Mary isn't so sure; she hates the furniture, and wonders why the place was for sale so cheap.

Howard relates that the previous owners had a family tragedy which may have explained the bargain sale price. As he relates this, a ghostly figure appears in the window behind him!

The couple admit to some previous marital difficulties. Mary swears to Howard that she will never leave him.

The couple go upstairs to retire for the night. They enter the master bedroom, and continue to bicker.

Mary opens a closet, and a length of heavy chain falls at her feet, scaring her. Howard then relates the story of the old woman who lived previously in the house, and died, while insane, wrapped up in those very chains!

Mary clutches at her heart. Howard sets her on the bed, and rushes into the nearby village to get a doctor.

While resting, Mary hears strange noises, which sound like that of a laughing woman, dragging chains behind her as she walks!

Mary goes downstairs to investigate. The "apparition" starts throwing pots and pans around in the kitchen, and laughing hysterically.

Mary grabs her overcoat, and runs downstairs to leave the house. She finds all the doors and windows locked.

Finally, Mary turns and sees the horrible ghost woman. Mary clutches at her heart, and falls to the floor, dead.

The "ghost woman" removes her mask and gloves, revealing herself to be a beautiful young woman in disguise.

The young woman packs the costume in a suitcase, and leaves the house. She walks down the road, and finds Howard, sitting in his car, waiting for her.

Howard and the young woman discuss their murder plan, how it was the only way to rid Howard of Mary. They go over their alibis, and their next moves.

The murderers return to the house. The young woman is still looking for loopholes, but Howard is confident that they have just committed the perfect crime.

They enter the house, and find that Mary's body is missing!

The two hear noises elsewhere in the house. Howard pulls out a pistol, and goes to investigate.

The couple start to argue over what has happened. Suddenly, the lid of the grand piano slams shut, scaring them.

The young woman now believes there is a real ghost in the house, and runs to leave. Howard stops her, and insists they remain calm while they figure out what has happened.

Howard insists they search the whole house; the young woman follows reluctantly.

Howard investigates more strange noises. The young woman, alone upstairs, hears the cry of a ghost woman.

The young woman hears someone trying to get into the bedroom, and shoots Howard's pistol. The door opens, and Howard falls to the floor, dead!

The horrified young woman runs downstairs, and tries to escape, but all the doors and windows are locked, as before.

The young woman looks down at the floor, and sees Mary's body, once again where she had left it! She faints, hits the edge of a table, and falls to the ground, dead.

Finally, Mary moves her eyes; she is still alive!

Mary gets up, and retrieves a letter from Howard's suitcase, in which the young woman confesses to Howard's murder.

Mary places the letter on Howard's body.

Mary hides the evidence, packs her luggage, and leaves the horrible house of betrayal and murder forever, having committed the perfect crime.

"The Cript of Terror":
A man, Dr. Xavier Medina Donnas, visits a local cemetery, and requests to visit the tomb of his fiance, Elizabeth Castro Jimenez, who died six months ago.

The caretaker directs Xavier to the correct location.

Meanwhile, a family funeral is in progress. A young girl insists on seeing her aunt's coffin, and also wants her pet turtle Lulu to say goodbye.

Xavier approaches the same crypt in which the funeral proceeds.

He walks to the location of his fiance's tomb, and relates his final thoughts.

Meanwhile, the coffin at the family funeral is placed inside its tomb, and masons seal it with brick and mortar.

The family leaves the mausoleum. Xavier is overcome by grief, and faints. The masons finish their work, and leave the crypt, unaware that Xavier is still inside. They lock the place up for the night.

Shortly, Xavier regains consciousness, and realizes he is locked inside the creepy tomb for the night! Outside, a lightning storm approaches.

Xavier soon hears a terrifying sound: the cry of a woman, banging on her coffin, trying to get out!

Xavier easily dissembles the newly-laid brick, and opens the coffin in question.

The woman, dressed in a flowing white robe, jumps out of her coffin, and runs down the mausoleum hall, screaming hysterically.

Xavier follows her, and tries to explain what has happened to the near-mad woman. The woman can't handle this spooky revelation, and faints.

Xavier carries the woman back to the main crypt steps, and covers her with his jacket.

Xavier retrieves some medicine from his medical kit, and gives it to the woman. He then takes off his socks, and places them on the woman's bare feet.

The woman comes to, and begins to lose control again. Xavier tells her he has given her a sedative, to calm her down. Xavier then tells her the other bad news: they are locked in the crypt for the night!

The woman rises slowly to her feet, but then goes nuts again, and starts running through the halls, screaming.

Xavier tells the woman it is good to cry, for it may calm her down.

The young woman thinks she hears someone else in the crypt. Xavier is skeptical, but insists they should both investigate, in order to clear her mind.

The young woman asks Xavier to hide her casket.

Xavier goes to investigate the crypt alone, and passes his lover's tomb again. The young woman joins him, and is somewhat calmer.

The young woman confesses that her real fear is that of going insane, and she fears that once the sun goes down and the crypt becomes dark, she will lose her mind.

Xavier counters that they have candles and fuel to keep the crypt lighted through the long, dark night.

Later that night, after the sun has set, Xavier has set up several torches, which burn eerily in the crypt.

The young woman asks Xavier to explain how she could have been buried alive, and Xavier describes the rare, but not unheard-of, cataleptic state.

Xavier and the young woman wax philosophical, but soon hear more creepy noises.

They investigate, and see the young woman's shawl crawling along the floor by itself. Xavier picks up the shawl, and finds Lulu the turtle walking beneath it.

The young woman recognizes the turtle, and relates the story of it.

The torches begin to die out, which Xavier thinks is odd, as there is more than enough rosin left for fuel.

Xavier tries to relight them, to no avail. He blames the humidity.

The young woman believes that the spirits of the dead are doing all of this, for they want her to rejoin them in death! She becomes hysterical again.

Xavier loses track of the young woman, who has run off in the dark, screaming. Lightning periodically illuminates the crypt, and we can see that Xavier is getting spooked as well.

Suddenly, the young woman jumps out of the shadows, and tries to stab Xavier with a knife. The shock of the attack makes Xavier snap, and he strangles the poor woman to death!

The next morning, the caretakers open the crypt, and find the woman's tomb still sealed.

They find Xavier still praying at his lover's tomb. He explains that he was locked in for the night, and slowly walks out of the tomb, contemplating the curious nature of reality.

THE END

REVIEW:
100 CRIES OF TERROR starts off strong, with a powerful opening, featuring a brisk montage of scenes to come, to a jazzy score, implying an attempt at a modern horror film. What follows is an interesting, if uneventful, anthology feature which owes a significant debt to THE TWILIGHT ZONE and others of its ilk.

In the first segment, "A Debt of Panic", a bored rich couple buy a haunted house, and suffer betrayal, murder and terror.

The thought of a horror film about a laughing ghost-woman in chains looks promising at the start, but the segment turns out to be a fairly predictable story of human perversity and supernatural justice, with some interesting, if rudimentary, poltergeistian activity.

The ending, also, is downbeat and ironic in the NIGHT GALLERY vein.

In "The Cript of Terror", an arty montage of crosses, poplars and high tension towers segways into a stylized tale of being buried alive.

The morbid notion of being trapped in someone's tomb was done better years later in TILL DEATH (1978), which surely stole some ideas from this film, but the idea is spooky enough to work fairly well here, at least for awhile.

And the spooky Alicia Caro, also great in SPIRITISM, does convey well the curious paradox of a woman going mad, being both alluring and offputting at once.

But in the end, "The Cript of Terror" uses its jazzy music and arty visuals to try and liven up what is essentially a pretty mundane affair.

There is a good deal of rich, florid pseudo-psychological gibberish which makes for some great soundbites, but halts the flimsy non-drama dead in its tracks.

When the preachy doctor snaps, and turns on the woman, the event is expected, (and over-edited in a snappy montage), but still somehow disturbing.

As opposed to the advertised "Study in Panic", one might say that the theme of the piece is the difficulty of honest communication between modern men and women, but that may be stretching things, the message being bungled.

Even scarier, 1COT may be a brave, ill-conceived attempt at existentialist cinema, similar to its near-cousin BLOODY SEA (same time period, country, heroine and producer), but as in BS, it doesn't quite work. The bravura attempt, however, to fuse gothic horror style with aesthetic and philosophic modernism, is certainly disarming.

These two films also remind one of the Cuban existentialist masterpiece, BACKS TURNED (aka CUBAN CONFIDENTIAL).

Film ends with another arty montage, this time of modern Mexican skyscrapers, and alot more credits than we're used to in the average Mexi-Monster Mash, leaving us with a question: is this flick an upscale cinematic curio, a botched psychological horror film, or a failed, bizarre exercise in post-sexual modernism?

Ironically, (perhaps unwittingly), 1COT does achieve what it set out to do; it may be Mexico's first "modern" horror film. It is also, alas, a failure by any accessible standards.

COMMENTS:

* (updated 02-14-06) Thanks to a terrific new book we just received, "Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold" by Kevin Heffernan, (2004, Duke University Press), we have been able to update the U.S. television release date for this Murray horror title to 1965. The appendices to this study of the horror film in America, circa 1955-1968, include complete listings of syndication feature film packages from many distributors, including American International Television, who subleased the K. Gordon Murray film catalog under the title THRILLERS FROM ANOTHER WORLD. It seems that 1965 was the watershed year for genre film sold to television, with a veritable flood of titles released by both domestic and foreign distribs.

* (effective 05-01-03) After a very brief window of availability, this long-sought K. Gordon Murray title is once again out of print, due to international copyright issues. Used video tapes of this title may be found on online video dealers and auction sites. Stay tuned for further developments!

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