ABSTRACT
The directorial career of René Cardona Jr. (1939-2003) spanned fi ve decades and almost every genre from horror to comedy to melodrama, including several of the biggest box-offi ce successes in Mexico’s fi lm history.1 While clearly infl uenced by his father’s directorial work in horror and lucha libre cinema, Cardona Jr.’s obsession with the ocean and his participation in the fi rst Mexican fi lm to use an underwater camera (Un mundo nuevo/The New World, directed by René Cardona Sr., 1956) informs a recurring diptych in his fi lms of the 1960s and 1970s: fi rstly, the seductive female fi gure, swimming or emerging from the sea, nude or in bikini; and secondly, the menacing image of the shark, as it prowls the ocean fl oor for prey. In a number of his fi lms, skin-fl ick titillation combines with underwater danger to produce differing narrative dynamics through a variety of genres with similar settings, such as espionage-action (S.O.S. conspiración bikini, 1966; Peligro . . . mujeres en acción!/Danger Girls, 1967), natural-disaster survival dramas (Ciclón/Cyclone/Terror Storm, 1978), erotic thrillers (Tintorera!/Tiger Shark, 1977), and sci-fi horror (El triángulo diabólico de las Bermudas/The Bermuda Triangle/The Devil’s Triangle of Bermuda, 1978). In this chapter, I will examine how the traditional vampire/monster trope of the dangers of ‘overexposed fl esh’ is reframed by Cardona’s underwater gaze and recycled to meet the genre needs of his stories.2 In Cardona’s movies, female secret agents and sexually liberated gringas, often in bikinis, pose a threat to a patriarchal paradigm. What changes with each genre is the relative threat of the feminine fi gure as juxtaposed with the more bestial predators, showing her as victim or bait, or active initiator of the potential harm.
