The Curse of El Charro

Beware the Curse of El Charro! This curse is worse than a case of the squirts. Hell… I figured that the film would have been much better if Spanish superstar Charo was the star of the film. Just imagine her happily saying, “Cuchi cuchi!” after every gory kill.



Our whiny heroine Maria heroine has been troubled with horrible dreams and visions regarding her sister’s suicide. That’s why her roommate Christina thinks it’s a great idea to bring her along for a road trip to Arizona. Christina’s friends Tanya and Rosemary aren’t quite happy about having Maria tag along.

Now here’s I go off on a short tangent. The names of these characters are irrelevant because they aren’t portrayed as anything more than shitty stereotypes.

From now on they will be known as:

Maria – Headcase
Christina – Girl Next Door
Tanya – Ghetto Slut
Rosemary – Goth Slut

Now back to the review.

The girls are thrilled to be leaving boring ol’ Los Angeles and going on a road trip to the boondocks of Arizona. Just thinking of all the desert sand gets them all hot and bothered. Along the way they are pulled over for speeding, but thankfully Ghetto Slut gives head… errr… uses her head to get them out of trouble. The very grateful cop leads them to the nearest gas station to fill up. That gas station just happens to be a bar in which the strangest musical performance in history is given by a crippled Marilyn Manson-clone. Obviously the redneck bar patrons love it. All rednecks love shitty goth-industrial metal. The shit hits the fan once they reach their destination though. Headcase finds that one of her ancestors rejected the marriage proposal of a cruel land baron named El Charro, and El Charro has cursed her bloodline (and slaughtered the original ancestor’s family)… blah blah blah blah blah. El Charro comes and kills her friends and the men they’ve picked up at a bar. It’s all incredibly boring and was making the idea of suicide be somewhat palatable. Being too busy with her non-stop crying, Headcase doesn’t even defend herself from El Crappo at all. She’s saved by a shitty-looking angel with dirty clothes, a poorly painted-on tattoo, and the fakest-looking angel wings in film history.

The Curse of El Charro sucks. I’ll state that right away. The writing is full of clichés, horrible dialogue, and trite characters. The direction is weak. The actors would be shamed by children in a third grade Christmas play. The kills are uninteresting and barely even shown. It’s not altogether horrible though. The visions that Headcase has are pretty interesting. They’re done almost with a silent film style cinematography, and one of them even has Motorhead front man Lemmy as a priest cautioning young Headcase about the horrors that await her. Plus that aforementioned musical number was pretty fucking trippy in a good way (the song’s horrible but so strange). That doesn’t save the film though. Watch this only if you’re feeling masochistic.

Cutting Class

I’ll watch about any 80’s slasher flick if given the chance. As a child, I had posters of Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers lining my walls. There’s something in my DNA that adores that particular genre in that particular decade. It’s probably the numerous outlandish ways they found to get rid of their victims. Cutting Class definitely has some classic kills. Death by copy machine! Baking the art teacher in the ceramic kiln! And who could forget the ol’ flagpole through the trampoline (Eli Roth stole this one for his Grindhouse Thanksgiving trailer to humorous effect)? It’s just too bad that the plot really gives no reason for them to happen.

High school senior Paula (Jill Schoelen aka teen Blake’s big crush) is being left alone for the week by her District Attorney father (Martin Mull). Before he goes on to hunting trip, he reinforces the rules he expects her to follow while he’s gone. “NO CUTTING CLASS” seems to be most important. It’s a lame setup to a joke that comes at the end of the movie. In fact, it’s so lame that I was shocked that something so stupid could be ever actually make it into a film. Thankfully Martin Mull had the dignity to deliver it anyway. This happens to be the same day that Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch) returns to class. Brian had the unfortunate luck to have been placed in a mental hospital after he did such a minor thing as murder his father. Unfortunately, Woods has taken a liking to Jill, and her asshole boyfriend Dwight (young Mr. Brad Pitt in a defining film role) isn’t down for someone else buttering his bread. Complicating the situation is the fact that Brian and Dwight were best friends before the murder (and that Brian refused to name Dwight as his unwitting accomplice). The school’s principal (Roddy McDowall feigning interest in a girl) is constantly sexually harassing young Paula (not that she really notices), and I would be completely retarded if I didn’t mention the bat-shit insane school janitor that tells students that he’s “custodian of their fucking destiny.” Long story short… a murderer kills various students and faculty of the high school while Paula studies through the entire film. She’s definitely taken her father’s rules to heart. She’s studying in every fucking scene. I’m not sure, but I think she might have been studying as she was running for her life. That’s taking overachieving to a whole new level. She’s so obsessed with making good grades that it carries over to others as well. Like any teenage boy, Dwight wants to have sex with his girlfriend, but she holds out on him stating, “Not until your grades improve!”

The film tries to make itself a “whodunit.” This might have worked if they hadn’t already told us that an insane murderer was released at the same time the murders start occurring. Seriously! Either the filmmakers are moronic, or they believe their audience is. Brian kills people for no reason at all. The art instructor makes him and Paula model for the class in an extremely close sexual pose, so Brian fries him in the ceramics kiln. He must’ve killed his dad because he gave him one too many Christmas presents. I might have forgiven this flawed narrative if the film had even tried to work toward some suspense, but the kills are dropped right in your lap with no build-up at all. At least I’ll always love the scene in which the math teacher’s head meets an axe because he couldn’t figure out a math problem that Brian wrote on the chalkboard.

All in all, Cutting Class isn’t that great of a movie, but if you stick to it you’ll be rewarded with some good kills and a very entertaining finale (battle in the machine shop!) and the comedic skills of Martin Mull.

Oh yeah… Brad Pitt’s head in a vice:

Machine Girl

Machine Girl is a strange beast. I mean… it’s a Japanese exploitation revenge flick, so the movie is automatically in the “fuckin’ crazy” category. I’m not even sure if it really qualifies as a horror film at all, but the over-the-top blood and gore really help move it into that category.



The premise of the film is insane. School girl Ami is left to take care of her younger brother Yu after their parents’ suicide after false murder allegations. Unfortunately Yu and his best friend Takeshi are bullied to death by the son of a Yakuza/ninja criminal and his friends. Ami takes the law into her own hands and tries to avenge her brother’s death with disastrous results. She’s found by Takeshi’s grieving parents minus one arm. Takeshi’s mother, however, blames Ami for Takeshi’s death, but that is all settled via an intense arm wrestling match. The next thing you know Takeshi’s father has fixed up a badass machine gun arm (and chainsaw arm for the Evil Dead fans) to facilitate her revenge. Ami and Takeshi’s mother then bring the battle to the Yakuza family in a spectacularly bloody finale with super-commando grieving parents, a flying guillotine, and a drill bra (I shit you not).



Any attempt to actually critique this film is pretty much useless. The film is way over-the-top and purposefully campy. Director Noboru Iguchi delivers on the promised buckets of blood and gore in a humorous way (this is played for laughs though I’m guessing most “regular” audiences would by a bit horrified by its excessiveness). I found myself laughing quite a bit at the crazy gore moments. As for the acting, Iguchi mostly hired Japanese porn stars for the film. It works. They are so excited to be in the film that they put their all into it.



Machine Girl was pretty fuckin’ rad. It had laughs, action, and tons of gore. I see Machine Girl becoming a cult cinema legend. If you’re looking to kick back and drink a few beers while watching a movie, Machine Girl won’t disappoint. I mean really… who could hate a Japanese school girl slaughtering criminals with her machine gun arm?

the Strangers

My family moved around a lot when I was a child. We lived in secluded homes in the middle of the woods several times in my youth. Believe me when I tell you that being alone at night in the middle of nowhere can be creepy as all hell. Every little sound carries a nervous fright with it. It puts you on constantly on edge. Now imagine that three psychos in masks are toying with you throughout the night, and you have the Strangers.



Kristen McKay and James Hoyt are returning to the Hoyt family summer home after a late night wedding party. The situation is tense, for Kristen has just turned down James’s marriage proposal. As James and Kristen talk about their situation, a knock on the door startles them. A young girl obscured by darkness asks for a person that doesn’t live in the house. She’s turned away, but she keeps returning. She’s not the only one. James and Kristen are terrorized as the night goes on with all of their escape options taken away by the strangers. How will it end? You’ll have to watch the film to find out.

The Strangers is one of those films that’s going to divide audiences. It’s going to upset those without the patience to see the story subtly build. Outright gore-hounds will also be disappointed as the film moves at a slower pace (although it never becomes boring). Writer/director Bryan Bertino slowly builds up tension throughout the movie making an altogether subtle horror film. These killers are not going for the outright kill. They’re toying with their victims. They relish the fear and panic they have caused. James and Kristen are not your usual horror movie victims either. They don’t fall into the usual horror movie clichés. Sure… some of their decisions aren’t the brightest ones, but the mistakes are made out of panic and not stupidity.



The Strangers definitely has a lot going for it. Bertino does a fine job on his directing debut. The film isn’t going to dazzle anyone with its inventiveness, but it’s a solid directorial work. Bertino does a great job on the screenplay though. He effectively builds realistic characters with James and Kristen. By showing us their heartbroken situation early in the film, the characters have our sympathies. This works to draw the audience in when the terror sets in. He also does right in not giving us all the facts. We are never told the motive of the strangers (nor are we told the reason Kristen has turned down the marriage proposal even though it’s clear that she loves James). Hell… we never even see their faces. I think this all works for the better as a random act of violence with no reason is more terrifying. Fear is about the unknown. It loses its power when it is explained (something that the Halloween remake should have learned). The Strangers has one major problem in my eyes though. The audience is never in doubt of the final outcome of the situation for James and Kristen. In fact the film starts with the two young boys discovering the aftermath of the strangers’ night of fun. That doesn’t change the fact that I was engrossed in how everything occurred though.

All in all though, I would definitely recommend the Strangers to those that don’t have a problem with a film that takes its time to deliver its scares. If you are down with a film that delivers horror with suspense instead of cheap scares and gore, then this is the film for you.

P.S. I thought the Strangers kicked ass.