Curse of El Charro

Well, my luck has finally run out. After a run of mostly-decent slasher flicks, we come to this week's effort: The Curse of El Charro. If you were expecting a gorefest starring frequent Love Boat guest Charo, prepare to be disappointed, my friends! Ay-yi-yi, beyond this line will be SPOILERS! Kootchie-kootchie!

The very first attempt I made to sit through this, I lasted a whopping 5 minutes. Yes, it was THAT bad! The movie opens with a silent-movie sequence: There are lit candles everywhere, and enough religious imagery to make Damien Thorn's head explode. There's a somewhat attractive woman, and she has big, white, feathery wings sprouting from her shoulders. Is Charlie missing an angel? Does Victoria have a secret?

Angel-Girl is either deep in prayer or she fell asleep, because a guy dressed like a cowboy sneaks up on her. He starts caressing her hair, then he somehow removes her wings. Then, just to be a dick, he kills her. A young Hispanic woman sits up in her bed, tears streaming down her face. Dream sequence. Yay. Then the title comes up, and the screen turns black for several seconds. It's over! The world's shortest slash--

Oh. Nope, she's back. She's telling a priest about her nightmare, and he's pretty useless in the "helping others" department. Oh, and her name is Maria. She aspires to be a nun, and her own sister killed herself. She also has plans to go on a trip with her friends, and the priest encourages her to have some fun.

As Maria runs to meet up with her friends, the old priest calls his Monsignor for advice. It's revealed that her sister had similar dreams and visions leading up to her demise. Yikes! The priest is advised to keep an eye on her, which might have been good to know about 30 seconds ago...

We meet 3 girls, and only one of them considers Maria a friend. Chris is the friend; Tanya is the sassy black girl; and Rose is some kind of Goth girl, I guess. Why would ANY of them be friends with each other? It's as if the writer wanted to appeal to as many demographic stereotypes as possible, to get more suckers to watch.

Anyway, Chris tells Maria that she's going to have fun, even if it kills her. Heh. After a few minutes of witless banter, they get in the car. As they drive around aimlessly, they all start headbanging. Another demographic to cross off the list!

Maria somehow manages to fall asleep again(Has she been reading the script?), and dreams about a naked woman. Oh, she's flashing back to finding her dead sister. She jiggles the dead woman's breasts to revive her, then jolts herself awake. Rose whips out a bong, and passes it to Tanya. Tanya starts to choke, then the car veers around wildly, catching the attention of a cop.

The cop, who looks like he could be Ron Perlman's grandpa, asks to see Tanya's license and registration. She tries--and fails-- to seduce him, he gets impatient, and escorts her back to his vehicle. As the others girls watch in the rear view mirror, they see what looks like Tanya giving Officer Geezer oral sex. I may need to disinfect my eyeballs if I want to finish this one.

An indefinite amount of time passes, and the cop finally walks Tanya back to her car. He seems much more chipper, and offers to escort their car into town. After he returns to his own car, Rose confronts Tanya with what they saw, but she pleads innocence. Uhhh, how stupid does she think we are? You went down on Father Time LaFawnduh...own up to it!

So, where were we? Oh yeah, they drive into the nearest town and pull into a gas station. There, they all get out of the car to stretch their legs, and leave Maria behind to refuel, while they head into the local bar/nightclub/whatever. The place is darker than Paris Hilton's soul, and the volume level is suddenly cranked up to 11. Great, I get to go deaf, and this P.O.S. has no subtitles. Oh, and Maria pointlessly watches a little boy poking a dead bird with a stick.

I hate you, El Charro.

However, as they all order drinks(from a crazy-looking bald bartender of course) and Maria heads into the restroom, we get the best scene in the film so far. The already-dim lights go out, and a young blind man is helped onto a stage by a female assistant, who seats him in a comfy wheelchair in front of a microphone. She kisses him, then the magic happens...

Basically, the singer tosses his sunglasses aside, then launches into an apeshit-crazy-fantastic thrash metal song. One old guy is REALLY into it in the scene. I won't describe the entire scene here, because it's too funny and bizarre to do it justice, but you can watch it by typing "Scott Greenall performance from The Curse of El Charro" on YouTube. Great scene, and completely comes out of left field. Besides, aren't you supposed to be watching the movie as you read along?

Maria has a vision while she's in the bathroom, and a ghostly woman warns her that El Charro is coming. She rushes back to the bar and tries to convince Chris that they need  to leave town, but the bartender tells them that they can't, then Tanya tells off Maria. Oh, and the song comes to an abrupt halt.

When they exit the bar, it's dark outside. They drive around in the dark, and Maria has yet another dream. In this one, a man in a long black coat or robe warns her that "the dark one" is looking for her, and that he likes it when she's asleep. Then he has ANOTHER DREAM where she's back in the car, and there are more warnings, plus a bloody throat-slitting.

Maria comes to, and asks Tanya to pull over to the side of the road, so that she can hurl. While Chris is assisting her, Tanya and Rose freak when they see a maniac in a poncho marching straight for the car. They urge the others to get back in, and the guy disappears, then pops up at Maria's window. They speed away. Bye, El Charro!

They decide to keep driving until they reach their destination, and get there pretty darned fast. The house they're staying in is luxurious, and they all start to relax. Even Maria. As Maria and Chris unpack in one room, Rose and Tanya decide to tour the premises.

The first room they explore seems to be a mini-church, filled with a buttload of iconic religious objects. Apparently, the homeowner collects religious objects and artifacts. Oh, and Chris tries to cheer up Maria with a pep-talk. Maria, on the other hand, makes Debbie Downer seem like friggin' Pollyanna by comparison.

Chris gives Maria a glam makeover, and Tanya insults the effort repeatedly when she sees the new look. Bitchy much? Rose(actually "Rosemary") then emerges, wearing a sexy black outfit. And they're off!

They drive around until they find a club called "Seraph". Can we please knock it off with all of the symbolism here? It's not exactly subtle, seeing as how it's being shoved down our throats.

They dance around in a blurry, obnoxious mess of a sequence, then head to the bar for more drinks. This is more like one of those "World's Wildest College Girls" videos, as opposed to an actual movie, slasher or otherwise. As you might expect, 2 guys swoop up Chris, Rosemary and Tanya, leaving Maria behind to practice her Dramatic Pouting.

Despite her entire persona, Maria meets a guy at the bar. While they chat, a scruffy-looking guy stares at Maria from across the room. This new guy whispers something to an attractive woman in a cocktail gown, and she approaches Maria now. Wow, gloomy girls are shockingly popular! The guy trying to be nice to Maria is named James, by the way. As he continues to flirt with her, the mystery woman leans over to whisper something in Maria's ear. It sound like Latin, but I have no idea what she says. Anyone out there know what she's saying?

Maria, disturbed by what just happened, gets up and walks away from the bar, leaving James talking to himself. When he realizes that she left, he seems pretty disappointed. Oh well...that's why God gave us hands and lotion, man. (I know, that was gross, but I'm reallllllllllly bored by this one...)

Maria leaves the club to get some fresh air, and is approached by a blind woman. She has her one millionth vision, which I believe means that she wins a free toaster oven. In this vision, Maria sees El Charro, and learns his backstory:

El Charro was an evil land baron, and he fell in love. He wanted to marry this woman, but her religious faith led her to reject him, so he killed her family and friends out of sheer spite. The townspeople of Saguro wanted revenge on him for all of his past misdeeds, so they executed El Charro before he could kill this woman. Right before he died, he placed a curse on her and any future members of her bloodline, and Maria is his next target for revenge. Okey-dokey.

As Maria snaps out of the vision, James meets the other girls, and we discover that the other dudes who picked them up are his buddies. The 6 of them decide to leave the club without Maria, and 2 "little people" at the bar have a brief chat. Swear to God, that's how the scene ended.

Maria meets the group by the car, and refuses to speak. As they all start to drive away in different vehicles, a girl named Brittany arrives to create a scene, yelling at a friend of James' named King. As King tries to convince Britt that he hasn't seen her boyfriend all night, one of the little people walks up to King, telling him that James forgot his credit card. Whoops, I guess Britt knows the truth now!

As they drive away, King reveals that Britt is actually no longer dating James, she's just psychotic. What a relief, huh? She, of course, is following them to find her ex. Is this thing ever going to get to the slasher stuff? I've seen more horror in Saturday morning cartoons!

Back at the estate, everybody shares a bong, minus the pure, innocent Maria. She needs to chill. As she gets up to go inside, Britt encounters the "cock-sucking motherfucker" in the poncho on the road, and leaves the relative safety of her car.. Her words, by the way, not mine. He slices off the middle finger she shows him, then he cuts her head off as well. Yay!

Chris and King pick up another couple, Odie and Elvira, then continue to the house. Did this movie really need more characters? As they drive away, we get to look at El Charro's damn feet.

Tanya and her date leave the others to get acquainted, and she leaves him at the pool, so he decides to strip for a midnight swim. El Charro is still wearily trudging to the party, while Maria has more visions and a crying fit. Compelling stuff.

King's truck finally reaches the destination, and Chris leaves to check up on Maria. She finds her friend babbling, rocking back and forth, and in tears. Obviously, the very first thing she asks is, "Maria, are you okay?" (I had to pause at this point to laugh for about 3 straight minutes.)

Maria tries to tell Chris about the visions of her sister and El Charro, but Chris just thinks it's hysteria. Then there's an out-of-nowhere lesbian sequence, between Rosemary and (I think) Elvira, probably added in to wake us up. Just as it starts to get steamy, El Charro hacks them both up in the shower. Great, now I'm somehow excited AND bored. How does that work???

Maria meets up with James again, and has more visions. Shocking, I know. King and Chris start to make out on the hood of his truck, and El Charro swiftly kills them both, in a pretty unexciting and mostly bloodless sequence. Considering how much endurance it took to get to this point, you'd think that they could at least deliver decent kills.

Maria and James walk outside, where El Charro ambushes them. They make it to a car, but El Charro pulls James outside, and begins to slice him like a deli ham. Maria screams, then runs away, while El Charro's voice gets inside her head.

Maria gets to the shrine room, and starts to pray her ass off. El Charro looms large over her shoulder, still trying to seduce her with his whispers. He raises his blade, but before he can kill her, the bearded dude from the nightclub grabs his arm. Ah, the bearded guy has angel wings. El Charro is defeated by a combination of angel magic, prayer, and the magical power of a lousy script. Hooray.

The angel gives Maria a hug, and she finds herself alone in the shrine, cvovered in blood and holding a cross. She gets checked into a mental hospital, where she spends the rest of her days babbling nonstop. THE END...Wait, what? Weren't there other characters? Did Odie live?

Man, what a downer. A rushed ending, a sluggish opening act, and one epic song later, and I still can't believe how pointless it all seemed! And short! It's getting 2 killer trees out of 5, with both points going to that one song in the movie. Next up is Home Sick, which can't be half as dull as this one was.

Oh, and what did I get out of watching Curse of El Charro?

-People who have visions are no fun to be around.

-Old men are the best head-bangers.

-Ghosts have to walk everywhere.

Have a good week!

Detenti...nope, The Nun!

Wow...been quite a while since the last SAW, huh? Sorry about that! I've been in the process of moving from one apartment to another, and everything "extracurricular" has had to be put on hold for a little bit. Also, the last movie I selected, Detention, turned out to be narrative-proof.

Seriously! Among the many random elements the movie had, it featured(in no particular order): a stuffed grizzly bear statue that was revived and abducted by aliens; a student who was slowly turning into a fly; a slasher flick within a slasher flick within ANOTHER slasher flick; a cheesy 1980's body-switching comedy; another student who was in detention for 19 years; and time travel. There's a shitload more, but it would take years to dissect every element of the film.

So...instead, I popped in a nice, simple, non-brain-tumor-causing movie called The Nun. It's slashery, it's simple, and it can be described. Thank the Gods! Oh, and it's time for some real SPOILERS...

Our movie begins with the credits alternating between a murky body of water, and some yellow pages from an old book. Then we meet our cast of victims, female students at a parochial school. There's Joanna, Zoe, Eulalia(I shit you not, that's her name), Susan, and Mary. As the film begins, the girls are all smoking together in a classroom(except for Eulalia, a disabled girl who is standing guard at the door), until their teacher, Sister Ursula, nearly catches them in the act.

She lectures the girls about their lack of discipline, then moves to front blackboard, and writes "SIN", in letters big enough to be seen on the surface of Mars. One of the girls tries to hide a love letter in one of her books, but Sister Ursula hears her, finds the romantic note, and rips it to shreds. Yeah! Take THAT, human emotions!

You'd think that would be the end of the incident...Nope! the enraged nun grabs the frightened girl by her neck, and lifts her out of her seat like the Nuninator. She then uses her Hulk-like rage to slam the girl into a wall, and growls at her in a demonic voice.

Alas, this highly entertaing chaotic scene is just a nightmare sequence. The girl, now an adult, sits straight up in her bed. Damn, I was loving the idea of a demon-possessed nun terrorizing high school girls.

Then we get jolted away to a  loud, obnoxious prom or formal school dance. There, we meet Julia, a short-haired brunette; Eve, an attractive blond; Joel, who is making a prom night video; Artie, a wide-eyed doofus-y guy...and a few more whose name I haven't caught yet.

Joel listens to his friends yammer on and on about a trip to Spain, then takes his camera in search of the ever-elusive girl that Artie wants but can't have. He sneaks up on her make-out session, then watches as a water pipe bursts, drenching the horny couple in toilet water. Fun.

Eve's mother turns out to be Mary, the sleeping woman in the previous scene. She's restless, and decides to rummage through some of her old stuff from high school. Scattered in the pile is a newspaper article about a woman in London, who apparently died in a fire. Hmmm...could this have been the work of a certain Nun?

Mary hears a noise, and assumes that Eve has come back from the dance. Finding the house empty, Mary steps into the bathroom, where the faucet is dripping. As she calls out to her daughter, she discovers that a plant has fallen off of a countertop, spilling water in the living room. Idon't think this movie has enough water in every scene.

She then enters the kitchen, where the sink is overflowing with water. As Mary tries to use a plunger in the sink and clean up the mess, the water in the sink begins to flow up toward the ceiling. Mary sees her daughter pull into the driveway, then Sister Ursula bursts out of the water to lunge at her. Eve walks into the house just in time to see The Nun slit her mother's throat, before crashing out of the nearest window.

The cops arrive, and Eve describes the apparition that killed her mom, even suggesting that it resembled a nun. The lead detective assumes that Eve was drinking at the dance, takes a statement from her friend Julia, and we learn that Eve doesn't know the identity of her father. Julia tells him that Mary probably  committed suicide, because she had previously tried to kill herself, back when Eve was only about 5 years old.

There's an extremely brief flashback showing Eve glancing through that book we saw in the credits, then the movie picks up the story again in Barcelona. We catch up with the adult version of Eulalia, who lives in Spain, She gets a call from Zoe, who fills her in on the current body count.

At her mother's grave, Eve is encouraged by Julia to go along with her friends to Spain. Then the adult version of Christy shows up at the graveyard. She warns Eve that there have been other deaths, and that she and Mary were supposed to attend a reunion of sorts, with their best friends from Catholic school. Christy then hands her a business card, and they part ways.

Eve finds the school memorabilia that her mother was poring over on the evening of her death, and decides to look through the pile. There, tucked away among the old pictures and papers, she finds a love letter, a possible clue to the identity of her father. The author of the short letter is somebody by the name of Miguel.

Christy wraps up a phone call with Eulalia, promising to see her in Barcelona. When she hangs up the phone, we see a small puddle of water starting to take form on the bed. Uh oh...guess who won't be going to Spain?

She steps into the bathroom, and gets splashed when her hotel room's toilet sprays water into her face. This movie has a toilet fetish...and it's not as much kinky fun as you might think! I may get more grossed out by these scenes, as opposed to the actual killings.

Christy calls the front desk, and we can see The Nun morphing out of more levitating water in the bathroom mirror's reflection. Pretty cool effect, actually. Of course, Christy doesn't see a thing...the characters never do.

She slips on her bathrobe, and decides to leave the hotel room. Once she's in the hallway, she actually sees The Nun floating down a corridor, and gets understandably upset. She backs away until she gets to the elevator, and hurries inside.

While this is happening, Eve arrives in the hotel lobby. The elevator starts to fill up with water, and now Christy is really scared. The elevator stops between floors, and as Christy tries to pull herself up to the floor level, the door chops her arms off! Pretty nifty effects, too. The elevator then opens up at the lobby, where Eve gets a bird's-eye view of the stumpy corpse. As a really nutty way to end the scene, the elevator door closes again, which probably means that some random hotel guest is about to get a really memorable souvenir of their visit! 2 guests, actually...after all, we can't forget and the arms!

On the plane to Spain, there is mainly rain. Eve sees The Nun outside the tiny window, but it's another nightmare scene. Oh, and during the flight, there is a massive storm going on. Oddly enough, Spain appears to be the sunniest place in the world, when the plane finally lands. I guess the rain over Spain mainly hit the plane.

Eve decides to begin her investigation into The Nun right away, getting a ton of reference material from, in another ironic twist, a nun. Eve looks up her mother's old classmates in an old yearbook, and begins to match the old pictures with more current ones, as well as numerous articles about their deaths.

As Eve decides to make photocopies of some of the articles, a young man named Gabriel offers to translate them for her. He happens to also be studying to join the priesthood, so the information about the school(which has since been closed), is right up his alley.

Gabriel meets Eve and her friends a local nightclub, where he provides her with the translations that he promised. Her friends discover that Gabe is joining the priesthood, and crack jokes about it until he leaves. Oh, and the nightclub is filled with tanks of water, so expect a massive slaughter soon...

Eve catches up with Gabriel, and he confesses that he's joining the priesthood because of a traumatic driving accident. Meanwhile, Eulalia is feeding her dog, clipping her toenails, and drawing herself a bath. Of course, the water goes haywire, but eventually Eulalia gets it under control-ish. It feels like the camera crew just filmed everything that ever happened, then left the compelling footage on the floor of the cutting room.

She finds her dog dead, though. Except that it's just messing around with her head, gets up, and strolls away... Eulalia limps back into the bathroom, and finds the faucet in the tub running again. She switches it off yet again, and sits wearily on the bathroom floor, completely oblivious to the fact that The Nun has popped out of the tub behind her.

Seriously, The Nun just stays the like that, waiting patiently for Eulalia to turn around and see her. I kinda wished that she had said "Boo!" and made a silly face to cap it off. This movie is the best kind of "WTF?" there is. It's like The Blair With is pulling a move out of The Matrix. How long can she stay stuck like that?

Eve, of course, decides to visit Eulalia at that very moment, just because. She finds the disabled woman's corpse, crucified. She and Gabriel rush out of there as fast as they can. In the car, Gabriel, Eve and her friends Joel and Julia debate whether or not to tell the police what they know, and whether or not to warn the few survivors who are left. Then they run the car off the road to avoid a crash, and the car won't restart.

They walk home in the rain(!!!), only to panic when they can't find Susan or Zoe. There's a power outage, so they briefly switch on the video camera for night vision...and we get a cheap scare involving a flock of birds. Those mutha-flockin' birds, on that mutha-flockin' plane, man.

Eve finds Susan and Zoe wandering around, and she tries to warn them about The Nun. The adult pair then confess that The Nun can't be the killer...because they and their friends killed her back when they were students at the school. In a flashback, we see all of the girls doing something wild and crazy: drinking milk in the school's kitchen late at night. Those wacky rebels. They soon realize that Mary is missing from the group, and then they hear noises in the distance.

They find Mary being attacked by The Nun, and force her off of the frightened girl. In the scuffle, The Nun slips, hits her head, and falls into a tub full of water. The teenagers are stunned, then even more shocked when she opens her eyes. As The Nun attempts to sit up again, the girls decide, as a group, to drown her once and for all.

They take the body outside, and make it look like she slipped on a bridge and drowned in a local pond or lake. Then the flashback ends, and they wonder what their next move should be. One character even describes the predicament as I Know What You Did 18 Summers Ago. Heh. They wish.

Eve and Gabriel decide to poke around in the living quarters that The Nun and the students used to occupy. Eve tells him that part of her past is a mystery, because she has repressed memories. Meanwhile, Joel and Julia work on getting the power restored.

Gabriel and Eve decide to explore each other instead of the bedrooms. Nice way to prioritize, you dumbasses! Luckily, the lights come back on, and they decide to stop goofing around. Oh, and Susan and Zoe just stand around chatting. "So...what have you been up to since we murdered a nun as teenagers?"

Gabriel decides to leave Eve alone in the bedroom, and she sees water in the bed. Then a shape forms, and Eve has her lost memory restored. Gabriel returns, and he calms her down. Everyone else then joins them, and the pair reveal that they have discovered paintings depicting saints. Each of the murder victims was named after a saint, and the murders were all recreations of how each saint died.

Zoe then pulls a "Jennifer Love Hewitt", taunting the ghostly killer to finish what she started. She takes off down the hallway, and the others rush after her. Man, this thing is getting kookier by the second! Susan is left alone with Eve, and tells the teen that she and her friends are somehow responsible for The Nun coming back. She locks herself in a section of the old building to distance herself from the rest of the group, then freaks out as she realizes how utterly stupid that idea was. Susan Einstein, Resident Genius.

Susan's "alone time" doesn't last very long. As she races around the room, potential exits mysteriously begin to shut and lock on her. Meanwhile, the others catch up to Zoe, who is testing out random objects as potential weapons. Then she and the other couple finally realize that they abandoned Susan and Eve. Oops!

And speaking of Susan...the floor around her is suddenly getting very watery. She tries to use the Power of Prayer, but The Nun lunges at her, and passes through her body, Thinking that the prayer kept her safe, Susan doesn't realize that the spirit is behind her. The Nun grabs Susan, pushes her forward, and breaks a glass door, decapitating her victim in the process.

Then here's another flashback, showing The Nun abusing Mary with a shower head. Then, back to the plot. The surviors decide to shut off the water supply, and keep the pipes empty. An accident with one of the pipes reveals Gabriel to Joel. He looks like he was impaled on a pipe.

The water starts to flow again, and The Nun attacks Zoe. Then Eve devise the dumbest plan eve heard in he history of planning...Eve is going to explore, while Julia sits underwate, trying to lure The Nun into killing her. These folks are dead from the neck up.

Joel finds Julia and rescues her, then tells her that the killer is actually Eve. She seems to believe that The Nun is inside her, because she learned when she was a little girl that her mother had killed The Nun. In flashbacks, we see the murders, with Eve present at every scene somehow. Yeah, so this teenager went to London, New York, Barcelona, and wherever else, and managed to kill around 10 people without anyone ever getting suspicious. And believe  it or not, that's where the movie just grinds to a halt. THE END...Oh, and Eve ends up killing herself. Yay.

Geez, this one had a great concept and killer, but a terrible plot. And way, waaaaaay too many characters to keep track of as well. The Nun should have had more scenes, and not been a figment in a person's head. A near miss. 2 out of 5.

And what did I learn from The Nun?

-Ghost nuns look damn creepy!

-Guys training to become priests still want to "get some".

-Teens with mental disorders can teleport whenever the need arises.

Next movie on my queue is Phantom of the Mall, which sounds pretty odd. Cross your fingers!