Horror films of Mexico

Horror films in Mexico form part of cinema of the country.

The rise of horror films in Mexico in the 1930s started with films like El fantasma del convento and Dos monjes from the writer-director Juan Bustillo Oro. Until about the 1950s moviehouses mainly showed melodramas and westerns, which caused difficulty for Bustillo Oro; his films may have been popular, but they were not necessarily welcome on the big screen. As a result, owing to their outlandish costumes and makeup and their violent nature, his movies were associated with wrestling shows. Lucha libre, the term for professional wrestling in Mexico, became an important part of horror film in Mexico. Writers and producers introduced the spooky aspects of horror films, like vampires, werewolves, and mummies, into the lucha libre films.

U.S. producer K. Gordon Murray introduced Mexican horror films to an international audience. Murray acquired nearly seventy Mexican films, with many different genres among the mix and about thirty horror films, and distributed them in the United States. This was only the start of Mexican horror films gaining popularity in other countries.