Actor Mario Almada dies at 94
Mario Almada, Legendary Mexican Actor of Ultraviolence Cinema, Passes Away
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2016 AT 12:44 A.M. BY GUSTAVO ARELLANO
The most prolific, legendary, influential, successful underground movie actor in North America cinematic history passed away yesterday at age 94. His name was Mario Almada, and he was Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Dolemite, and Billy Jack rolled into one grizzled, taciturn, Stetson-wearing, gun-slinging viejo abrón.
Don't believe me? All you have to do is look at his filmography, with some of the greatest sanguinary titles outside of Italian cannibal cinema. Here's just a sampling of the 365 films that IMDB attributes to Almada over a career that began in earnest when Almada was in his late 40s and didn't end until this year: Cazador de Asesinos (Hunter of Assassins), Debieron Ahorcarlos Antes (They Should've Hung Them Earlier), Pistoleros Famosos (Famous Gunslingers), Treinta Segundos Para Morir (30 Seconds to Die), Escape Sangriento (Bloody Escape), Yo El Ejecutor (I, the Executor), Cabalgando con la Muerte (Riding with Death), Tengo Que Matarlos (I Have to Kill Them), El Pistolero del Diablo (The Devil's Gunman), Un Asesinato Perfecto (A Perfect Assassination), Traición con Traición Se Paga (Betrayal Gets Paid with Betrayal), Plomo Caliente (Hot Lead), Tumba Para Dos (A Tomb for Two), No Mataras...y Yo he Matado (Thou Shalt Not Kill...And I've Killed), and—in perhaps the most Mexican-named film ever—Los Hombres no Lloran (Men Don't Cry).
No matter the title, whether hero or anti-hero, lawman or villain, a country boy or an urbanite, Almada (usually joined by his brother Fernando) played the same character: a man pushed by violence to levels of vengeful ultraviolence that made Bronson's Death Wish character seem as vicious as the Cowardly Lion. Sometimes, there were political overtones to his films—critiques of the Drug War, blasts against la migra or the pinche rinches of Texas, cuernos de chivos against corrupt politicians or creeping modernity. But really, an Almada opera was an excuse to offer an orchestra of blood, usually backed by the music of the day, whether it was Los Cadetes de Linares in the 1970s to the latest *beep* movimiento alterado of the present day.
Almada's genre, once known as a chile Western, eventually got deemed narcopelícula (or Mexploitation, for savvy gabacho film buffs); his outsider box-office success upended the Mexican film industry, which ditched the fantasy and charros of La Época de Oro to match the narcopelícula's bleak-but-realistic worldview. He became a victim of his own success—"I made films of other genres," he told Mexico City's Excelsior in 1989, "and they weren't successful; people didn't go see them. They prefer action and that's sustained the industry"—but cried all the way to the bank: More than just an actor, Almada was also auteur, nearly always played a role behind the scenes as financier, producer, advisor or others and adapting quickly to technology so that most of the films in his final decades were direct-to-video and found distribution online.
Almada's popularity was dismissed in polite and academic circles—typical of the latter was David Maciel, a Chicano Studies professor who wrote in 1990 of Almada's Siete en la Mira (Seven for Target) which broke Mexican box office records when released, that "given the lack of artistic merits, serious acting, or believable or interesting dialogue, the success of this film is surprising and disappointing," chockablock with "violent acts seldom ever witnessed on the screen." (homeboy obviously never watched Faces of Death, or even A Clockwork Orange). And Almada was a completely unknown figure to American viewers save for the thousands of newspaper clippings in the American Southwest featuring local movie or television listings. I can't find a single profile in Lexis-Nexis ever written about him, although he gets a whole chapter in last year's Narco Cinema: Sex, Drugs and Banda Music in Mexico's B-Filmography, an academic book that costs a whopping $95.
Their loss; much like the ignorance of Mexican music legend Jenni Rivera during her life, the press and professors alike lost out on a fascinating, influential cultural giant that the Mexican press is already deeming Mexico's biggest-ever box-office draw. So let's give Almada the final word with one of the most apropos, self-knowing quotes any actor has ever given: "My guns," he memorably told an auditorium full of Mexican movie royalty when he received a Ariel lifetime achievement award in 2013, "never run out of bullets."
http://www.ocweekly.com/film/mario-almada-legendary-mexican-actor-of-ultraviolence-cinema-passes-away-7566625