Costa Rican Ramón Obón scripted some of the best Mexican horror films, including the classics "The Vampire" and "Misterios de ultratumba" (The Black Pit of Dr. M), and little known effective works as "The World of the Vampires", not to mention the countless stories written for film series of charros, mounted avengers, masked wrestlers and other assorted idols of the Mexican audience. A year before his untimely death, Obón made his only film, a departure from those hurriedly-made products into which his scripts were turned. Made in the vein of the anthology films of the day, as Roger Corman's "Tales of Terror" and Mario Bava's "I tre volti della paura" (Black Sabbath), the 95-minute film tells two long stories in equal time, "Panic" (a story of adultery) and "Supreme Fear" (a tale of claustrophobia), both dealing with the concepts of terror, fright, anxiety and dread, and how they manifest and can be manipulated, especially to intrigue an audience through visual red herrings. It is also much influenced by the art films of the early 1960s, as Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'eclisse" (The Eclipse), suggesting a relation between alienation and death with landscape and structures, especially in the second episode, "Supreme Fear". Although the tone and feeling of the images are somehow betrayed by Rafael Carrión's trendy jazz score, as if it were a French New Wave film, for a first work Obón handled his script very well. It is a pity that he could not continue his career as director, when he was about to embark on a project with independent producer Antonio del Castillo to make 26 television movies for American television.
Review of 100 Cries of Terror
