(1982, Mex, 91 min) Dir Ramon Vélez. Cast Anthony Quinn, Gabriel Jurado, Katy Fernandez.
An apartment building in the centre of Mexico City in the middle of the night. Young Jorge (Jurado) wakes and from his bedroom window is the only person to see the new tenant arrive. This is Hector (Quinn), a suave older gentleman with a suitcase full of trinkets to captivate the children and a million stories to tell to the adults but who always seems to change the subject when the conversation turns personal. He’s so charming though that nobody seems to notice and this includes Isabella, Jorge’s mother (Fernandez, in what would turn out tragically to be her last role), who seems very taken with this grey-haired gentleman. Jorge thinks that he can see through the old man’s charm and takes to spying on him, trying to find out what he’s really up to. While doing this he sees Hector standing over the dying Poe in apartment 9a, his hands pressed to the old man’s temples, and realises what’s going on – he’s stealing the life force from the other residents. “He’s a Sun Devil!” he tells his mother as she prepares to go out for the night with him, “He’s stealing the life from us all to feed the sun inside him!” Of course she thinks he objects to him because of the memory of his late father and turns on him angrily: “Jorge!” she says, “There is no such thing! How can you make something like that up?” How can Jorge convince her? Will she be the next victim? An atmospheric production with a pretty shocking conclusion.
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