The Brainiac

Not a Santo film, but a Mexican horror oddity too strange to leave out. A baron burned at the stake by the Inquisition returns three hundred years later as a forked-tongue demon who eats the brains of his persecutors' descendants with a spoon, transforming between suave nobleman and rubber-faced monster. The effects are hilariously crude and the atmosphere bizarre.

It is a beloved example of the peculiar flavour of Mexican gothic horror, dreamlike and cheap and unlike anything from Hollywood or Europe. The brain-eating monster is an all-time low-budget creation.

A midnight-movie treasure from Mexico's horror tradition.