1964's "100 Cries of Terror" is apparently one of the least seen Mexican imports so popular in the 60s, courtesy of Florida's K. Gordon Murray, from the prolific pen of screenwriter Ramon Obon ("The Vampire," "The Vampire's Coffin," "The Swamp of the Lost Monsters," "The Black Pit of Dr. M," "The Living Coffin," "The World of the Vampires"), finally achieving his directorial debut on this two-part anthology, both stories running about the same 40-plus minute length (considering the morbid subject matter he sadly died shortly afterwards). The spirit of Edgar Allan Poe definitely thrives as we kick off with "Panico" (Panic), featuring a husband and wife spending a night in their new home, a deserted old mansion previously owned by a widow whose husband and three children were killed in a car crash. slowly going mad and dying in chains five years earlier. The possessive wife (Adriadne Welter) steadfastly refuses to part from her philandering husband (Joaquin Cordero) and suffers from a weak heart, easy prey once she's left alone with the eerie sound of rattling chains, hubby gone to fetch the doctor despite her insistence that she doesn't need one. It appears obvious as to what's going on, an unknown intruder witnessing their arrival through a window to later pose as the owner's ghost, yet a satisfying double twist worthy of Alfred Hitchcock keeps things honest (on location shooting in a real house also helps). "Miedo Supremo" (Supreme Fear) opens with a New York doctor (Jorge Martinez de Hoyos) visiting the grave of his late sweetheart, gone nearly 6 months, during the entombing of a young woman (Monica Welter) who inexplicably begins screaming from within her newly sealed crypt (cries of terror indeed). The doctor's untimely fainting spell had left him locked inside for the night, freeing his unlikely companion, obviously a victim of catalepsy, and offering a sedative to ease her growing loss of sanity. This tale tends to drag as she fails to come to grips with spending only a few hours in the darkness, believing that the dead are determined to claim her permanently no matter how much comforting knowledge the doctor possesses. Walter Stocker's 1972 "Till Death" would expand on this story, now a husband grieving for his newlywed bride (Belinda Balaski), killed in a car crash on their honeymoon six months before yet somehow alive and spending the night together in her locked crypt. Both tales served their purpose as neither could have sustained feature length, probably one of Murray's better imports with the emphasis on atmosphere over dialogue. As the clinging wife in story one, Adriadne Welter was no stranger to Mexican horror, previously the ingenue in both "The Vampire" and "The Vampire's Coffin," a small role in "The Brainiac," even costarring with elder sister Linda Christian in the ultra cheap US title "The Devil's Hand."
