279. Voodoo Black Exorcist

279. Voodoo Black Exorcist aka Vudú sangriento (1974)
Director: Manuel Caño
Writer: Santiago Moncada
From: Cult Cinema, Drive-In

A voodoo priest sealed in a sarcophagus 1000 years prior awakens on a cruise ship bound for Jamaica.

I know I’m in for a hurting cause this was the third movie in a row that I kind of liked. The other shoe is going to fall and fall hard.

Open on Guedé rowing to shore to meet his lover. However, another man comes out, they fight, and the other man dies. That night, Guedé is standing in the center of a ritual. His lover is beheaded and he’s stabbed in the neck with an asp ring. His body is placed in a sarcophagus.

1000 years later, that sarcophagus is hauled onto a cruise ship that’s headed across the South Seas. What could possibly go wrong?!

Obviously Guedé wakes up. He steals some clothes, but upon seeing Sylvia, the secretary/lover of the archaeologist who brought the sarcophagus on board, he reverts to his mummy form. He sees her as the reincarnation of his lover from back then (who was, I think, played by the same woman in blackface. So, yeah).

These are the only characters you really need to know about. A few others are introduced who are either clearly deadmeats or intended to be comic relief. They, of course, aren’t funny, but the movie itself is. We’re in pure good-bad territory here with hilarious dubbing and just strange lines. When a detective comes on board to investigate a murder, he says, “When I don’t have a lead, I drink gin,” then raises his glass. When the mummy leaves a severed head in a woman’s bed, he runs from the scene with an “oh jeez, oh jeez” look on his face.

Unfortunately the energy peters out in the third act. The movie shifts from the mummy running amok on the ship to the mummy pretending to be an expert on Voodoo and then the detective leading the investigation. While the mummy does kill the expert whose identity he's stolen in a hilarious way, the story really should have stayed on the boat with a gradually increasing body count and passengers beginning to panic.

Still, the first hour is very funny and I’d give this movie a light recommend for that reason. Also, the concluding moments really lit me up and it’s worth sticking around for. The movie’s not hard to find so do yourself a favor, gather some friends and snacks and go to town.