Friday, September 23, 2011

Take Their Photo. Drink Their Blood.

Somewhere in Mexico, young & attractive chicks have been getting raped and killed by a psycho photographer named Joel (played by Sadico Amor's Guillermo Quintanilla). Joel does this because when he was a child, he caught his awful mother in bed with a strange-looking woman (wearing a cheap wig). In his mind, some women are wicked like his mother and they need to be punished by getting raped brutally and getting their necks stabbed so that way crazy Joel can drink their filthy blood (Yum! Yum!). At the same time, a dude is making a name for himself in the Banda music scene—he’s called El Puma De Sinaloa and nightclub goers love him, but not as much as the two main women in his life; A fine-ass thick beauty named Montserat (Leticia Alarcon) and his lady manager that has a speech impediment and wears very loud dangling earrings. One day, Montserat is offered a modeling job by Joel. She then gets her pictures taken and then forcefully taken to Joel's lake house where he then beats her and has her tied in a bed with no clothes on (Wowza!). Will Joel kill her? Or does he just want to keep her? Will Puma find his beloved blonde? Will Puma's manager make him forget about Montserat? Those important questions are answered in Fotografiando A La Muerte ( aka "Photographing Death").

Fotografiando A La Muerte is a fun movie. It starts off horror like, then next thing you know, we enter Puma's dramatic life which deals with trying to make it big in the Banda music scene and falling in love..... Then... Back To Horror! More girls get raped, killed, and their blood drunken. The movie has some pretty darn violent scenes, but they are very cheap of course. The first dead body we see is hilarious because you can clearly tell the actress is smiling and wanting to laugh. Then there's the parts where Joel is drinking blood. The blood looks like clamato juice. Ahhh tasty... Not. The music in the movie is great, it has your typical 1995 scary stock music and Puma's Banda hits that are ridiculously catchy. Damn Puma, why must you sing so dang good?

Blood, Banda music, and a fine-ass thick beauty. The perfect 1995 Mexican Horror/Romance/Crime film. I like Fotografiando A la Muerte and you should like it as well. Especially if you're a fan of Puma! After all, he is extremely glorified in this movie. VHS copy of this movie is hard to find but there is a legit DVD available, so please buy it!



Thursday, September 22, 2011

Terror In The Neighborhoods.

A little boy named Pedro has witnessed his alcoholic hooker mom getting killed by her pimp. Fortunately for Pedro, a rich woman adopts him after what’s happened and raises him in a loving & caring home where he forgets all the bad things he had gone through prior. The now grown Pedro (Julio Aguirre) is a successful lawyer and is engaged to be married to a gorgeous wealthy girl (Claudia Guzman) and it all seems to be going very well for him up until he witnesses a stage play that is just like his bad childhood. This play triggers many bad childhood memories and especially of the time when his mom was killed and this particular memory makes him very angry at prostitutes & dirty old men from the Barrios he grew up in. Filled with so much rage—Pedro dresses up in weird costumes and goes out into the barrios at night to brutally kill prostitutes & their johns.

Terror en Los Barrios (aka "Terror In The Neighborhoods") is a crazy movie. The good kind of crazy too since our killer wears a variety of costumes and all of his kills are entertaining to see. When Pedro finds out his bride to be is cheating on him; he terrorizes her at night with a green monster mask & gun in hand. Other kills consists of stabbings & neck slits. The violence in Terror En Los Barrios is not too brutal, but it still manages to deliver plenty of intensity & madness. Leading actor Julio Aguirre can play one mean psychopath and he also sings in the movie, something that becomes the norm for him later on in his career and by that I mean he plays all of his roles perfectly & sings too much in movies. 

Aside from the madness unfolding in Terror En Los Barrios—there's also a melodrama sub-plot involving poor people from the barrios. This all of course aligns with crazy Pedro and two poor women he helps out. One being a dancer in a nightclub (Grace Renat) who's trying to makes ends meet and the other is a married woman trying to survive with her husband (Rene Cardona III aka Al Coster) who's from a wealthy family, but is outcasted by them due to marrying someone from a "lower" class.

Terror En Los Barrios is a crazy movie that’s very enjoyable. It has a good plot and a great cast as well. It’s unfortunate how long-forgotten this movie is because it truly deserves to be seen & appreciated. This is a unique movie as well since it blends psychotic thriller-horror with the very familiar Mexican poverty-drama sub-genre. Think of it as a “Nosotros Los Pobres” mixed with “Psycho”.