A Mexican shot-on-video horror film from 1994? You have my attention. A midget dressed as toy clown murdering and molesting people? I’m salivating.

HERENCIA DIABÓLICA

USA, 1994, Alfredo Salazar





Tony (Roberto Guinar) and his wife (Holda Ramírez) move back to Mexico from New York after Tony’s recently deceased aunt leaves him her mansion. Arriving in Mexico, Tony begins the arduous task of finding a new job. Tragically, Tony is unable to find a job on his first day of looking. But thankfully the next day he scores some sort of big managerial position – the details of his job remain a mystery. Tony’s wife cleans the house while Tony works and, in her travels, finds a basement with a creepy clown doll and other weird shit. Tony casually explains that his aunt had the quirky habit of performing black magic rituals. Anyway, with the speed that he got his new job, Tony impregnates his wife in what has to put the haziest sex scene put to film (or in this case, video). Months later, Tony is away on business and his pregnant wife discovers that the creepy clown doll is alive. She becomes his victim in the first of several slow motion death sequences…

Lucky for Tony, while his wife dies, the doctors manage to save his son. Flash-forward six years, Tony’s son, Roy (Alan Fernando), is now an irritating little kid who obsesses over his creepy clown doll – unaware that it was responsible for his birth mother’s death. Roy is so lame that he has a poster of Lady from Lady and the Tramp in his bedroom. Tony’s tight-white-outfit-wearing secretary (Lorena Herrera) convinces Tony he needs to remarry. A brief montage later, and Tony’s secretary becomes Tony’s hot new wife and new mother to little Roy. It doesn’t take long for Roy’s clown doll to interrupt their marital bliss, and Tony’s new wife starts to realise that the doll is the source of their problems. Her attempts to rid the family of the doll fail miserably, especially when she attempts to distract Roy with a day at the fun fair, which features an amazing shot of the unemotional and bored Roy being spun around on a playground ride.

Herencia diabólica is not as bad as you’d think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s, by no stretch of the imagination, a good film. Most scenes are shot in wide shots, bumpy establishing shots and cutaways make it sometimes seem like a home video and the acting is somehow both stilted and melodramatic. The film’s best shot – a smooth tracking shot following Tony and his wife walking on their porch and ending with Tony’s wife commenting on the weather – is a bizarrely unnecessary scene. There’s literally no point whatsoever to this moment. Outside this weird moment of budgetary flourish, Herencia diabólica was obviously made with little money. Had this been made with a few extra dollars, it may have been a decent horror film, but where’s the fun in that? Although “fun” shouldn’t really be used when talking about Herencia diabólica. The film is unbelievably dull for the most part. But only a few minutes in, and after I’d sat through the most boring montage put to film – a gentle track plays over footage of Tony’s wife slowly cleaning the house, sandwiched between these shots the film cuts to Tony walking in and out of elevators – the dullness became almost impressive and I was glued to the screen. To be fair, I am easily hypnotised by excruciatingly boring films, so perhaps it won’t have that effect on everyone.

The dullness certainly make the film’s more horrific scenes stand out. And really, they’re the scenes that count in Herencia diabólica. Clowns are creepy. Dolls are creepy. An aged little person dressed up as a clown doll is really fucking creepy, and the crew behind Herencia diabólica are well aware of this. Doing a Google search on Margarito Esparza Nevare, the little person actor, he appears to have a certain degree of fame in Mexico as a comedian-songwriter known as “The Dwarf Margarito”. Based on Google images and YouTube videos, he also likes to dress up as a cowboy, which is pretty hilarious. But not as hilarious as seeing him dressed up as a demented clown, which is both hilarious and utterly terrifying. While the film’s murder scenes lack any kind of effects and tend to be shown in outrageously slow motion (each frame is extended to at least a second in length in one scene), they remain disturbing simply because of Margarito’s presence. Whether we’re watching this tiny old clown stab a bottle into a bum’s head or throw a babysitter off a roof using magical ropes, he is always something out of any well-adjusted child’s nightmare. I’m sure if I saw this film as a kid, it would remain a traumatic childhood memory. Even as an adult, watching a tiny old clown molest a woman had me feeling uncomfortable (while also chuckling)…