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. History The Mexican horror film proper came into its own with the release of El fantasma del convento (1934), Dos monjes (1934), and El Misterio del rostro pálido (1935), three films from the writer-director Juan Bustillo Oro. Oro is considered by many to be the true Father of the Mexican horror film. He directed more than sixty films over five decades, including El Hombre sin rostro (1950), a film of significant importance in Mexican cinema of the 1950s. Still, as potent and popular as Bustillo Oro's efforts were, Mexican movie houses were overwhelmingly dominated by melodramas and westerns up until the 1950s. On television, lucha libre--professional wrestling--captivated the country. The sport lent itself well to big-screen adaptations with its costumed heroes and villains, larger-than-life personalities, and impossible feats of strength played straight. Monsters and supernatural storylines complemented these mass-produced wrestling movies perfectly. Numerous lucha libre films incorporated familiar spookery such as vampires, robots, werewolves, and (especially) mummies. In 1953, however, Mexico mounted its first-ever serious treatment of the Frankenstein myth, El Monstruo resucitado. Directed by Chano Urueta, El Monstruo resucitado presents Spanish actor José María Linares-Rivas as a deranged plastic surgeon who keeps an ape-monster in his basement and successfully reanimates a corpse, albeit as a mindless zombie. El Monstruo resucitado was a success in Mexico. Suddenly, the Western