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”.