Sometime in the 1500’s Canuto Perez (Basil Rathbone) committed suicide, by stabbing himself four times with a knife. He did this to avoid punishment. Perez was a womanizer and an all-around not nice guy for having seduced and taken advantage of young maidens. Before he died, he repented but because he took his own life he was condemned to haunt the dungeon of an old castle. Perez is a ghost that has the ability to separate his body from his skeleton. He spends his days talking to his skeleton and calls it Canuto (voice of Hermanas Tejada).
After 400 years Perez is visited by Satan (John Carradine). He is there to witness Perez’s judgment. God determines that because Perez did repent, he is to be given four chances to save his soul from eternal damnation. To do so he must win the love of one of four women that will cross his path four days from now. The catch is that the woman who loves him must be willing to sacrifice herself for him. Sounds a little Faustian to me, but that’s God for ya, misogynist to the core.
Another catch is that Perez is not allowed to leave the castle. Satan says he will deliver the women to the castle. He then finds a mad scientist, Professor Moleculo Pulido (Cameron Mitchell) and arranges for him and his extended family to live in the castle so that Perez can try his luck with the professor’s daughter, Galena Pulido (Amadee Chabot) or his housekeeper, Susana (Susana Cabrera). In addition, bank robbers have hidden a stash of money in the house. Among them is another potential lover, Vitola (Famie Kaufman). Also involved is Secret Agent 7 and a half, Jaime Blondo (Carlos Pinar). What follows is a bunch of skits of juvenile comedy, pratfalls and ridiculousness.
“Autopsia de un fantasma” AKA “Autopsy of a Ghost” was released in 1968 and was directed by Ismael Rodriguez. It is a Mexican horror comedy farce with slapstick. The movie was only shown in America in a few Spanish speaking theaters. I’m not aware of it ever being dubbed in English.
The movie boasts three Americans in the cast, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, and Cameron Mitchell. Both Rathbone and Carradine spoke their lines in English, which were later dubbed in Spanish. Mitchell, on the other hand, was fluent in Spanish and so spoke his lines in Spanish.
I’m really not sure what I just watched. The movie is neither funny nor scary, but it is bizarre. It’s probably the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen. To me, the best part of the movie was the puppetry effects used in the opening and closing credits. I’d only recommend it for Rathbone, Carradine and or Mitchell completeists or fans of bad Mexican movies or just plain “so bad it’s bad” movies.
Rathbone died July 1967. “Autopsia” was released posthumously in 1968. Some believe that it was his last film. Others believe his last film was actually “Hillbillys in a Haunted House”, another gem (?), which was released in 1967. John Carradine, who worked with Rathbone in both “Autopsia” and “Hillbillys”, said that “Hillbillys” was done last but released before “Autopsia” so that could be where people get confused.