Vacaciones de terror

VACATION OF TERROR opens with the burning of a witch many years ago. Fast forward to the present (1989), and a family takes a trip to see the dilapidated old house they've recently inherited. Unbeknownst to them, there's a curse on the place, and strange things begin happening almost immediately. Soon, after a near-tragic accident, we're treated to a creepy kid / devil doll movie.

Director Rene Cardona III keeps it spooky with some nice touches including:

#1- A bleeding tree / walls / pictures!

#2- A refrigerator full of rats, snakes, and green slime!

#3- A closet full of rats, snakes, and tarantulas!

#4- A possessed truck!

#5- Self-throwing knives!

#6- A self-immolating portrait!

#7- The apocalyptic, everything-hits-the-fan finale, complete with explosions, flying dishware, and an inferno of doom!

A fantastic contribution from a true master of Mexican horror cinema...

This genre was very poor in the 80's in Mexico, in those years productions were bad and full of sluts, vicious, old ,morbid men, so this movie was a refreshing pause between all that kind of trash.

This movie is about a family going on vacation to their new bought country house, they don't suspect what horrible things are going to happen.

In this trip go mother, father, daughter , brothers (twins), a nephew (she is elder than children, she's about 19) and nephew's boyfriend.

When they arrive to the house, children went gone to explore, the little girl falls into a hole and then she found a DOLL!

If you saw the movie, you could see it hasn't spectacular fx, but only seeing that horrible doll you'll feel goosebumps, it is suposse that a witch spirit lives inside it.

Devil doll take control of a little girl mind, and it would try to kill all family members......Could it kill of them?????????????

The script is very predictable but this movie is very entertaining.

Vacaciones de terror believes it's the Mexican answer to Amityville Horror and Poltergeist, but it ends up feeling more like a mash up of Superstition and Cathy's Curse. Occasionally, the film musters up a tiny bit of atmosphere and there are a few images that conjure up more dread than they should, but for an 80 minute film, it feels endless.

It all deals with a family (husband, wife, two boys, one little girl, and the husband's teenage niece who lives with them for some unknown reason) inheriting a vacation home from his dead aunt. Little do they know this was the sight of a witch execution years ago and her spirit still lingers and has possessed a creepy doll their youngest daughter takes to and, pretty soon, eggs are smashing, the walls are dripping with blood, and knives start flying out of the drawers and attacking people.

It all seems like a solid recipe for fun (albeit a bit "been there, done that" fun), but nothing really happens until the last 20 minutes so we're stuck listening to the shrill shrieks of the two little boys in the film who feel like they must scream every line to hit the back of a theater somewhere. The thrills are strictly of the PG rated variety besides one attack via flying knives that recalls Piper Laurie's death in Carrie. It's too light weight to ever really scare or thrill and it's not quite cheesy or poorly made enough to be taken as a piece of camp.

... Just in a different way.

Some guy inherits a broken down cabin in the woods and decides to take his family to spend a weekend there sight unseen. His daughter finds a pretty fugly Victorian-looking doll in a suspicious cave. Just so happens the doll is possessed by a Satanic witch.

The doll has more powers than superman and uses those powers to........... harass this family for no reason at all.

The whole movie is basically the doll moving its eyes to the sound of a Pavlovian ringtone followed by some lame effect such as the stage crews making the set shake so that dust falls on the cast or filling a refrigerator with mice and snakes.

These effects are usually plagiarized right out of better Horror movies from the US. For example, a knife flies through the air (complete with cartoon sound effect), to stab the lead actor as in Carrey and the house starts to bleed as in Burnt Offerings. In fact, the very character of Pedro Fernandez is lifted straight from 80s horror comedies such as The Evil Dead II.

The doll's powers are limitless. It can control cars, make people see things, cause things to spontaneously combust, and make people fly.

The acting can't be worse for a serious professional production. The kids sound like someone is telling them what to say through an earpiece. The other actors are marginally better. The little girl was pretty good, truth be told, but it was the simplest acting gig of all time for her - just be as emotionless as possible.

As a child, I thought this movie was scary. But now I see it for the sad, silly, sloppy-gut production it is. I thought it was better than Annabelle (2014), but it's really not. The only good thing I can say is that the doll does actually look like a realistic but creepy doll and the cast acknowledges it (the mom even says at one point "and stop carrying around that hideous doll!"), whereas no normie woman in her right mind would be happily collecting dolls that look like Annabelle.

Terrible.

Honourable Mentions: The Evil Dead (1981). A cheap independent film but genuinely scary. Don't miss it!

Moving to a new house in the country, a family finds the site was used in a witch-burning ceremony hundreds of years earlier and must stop their possessed daughter from unleashing the witch back in their time.

About the top of the heap in terms of just plain cheesy Mexican horror cinema, this one is just a blast it's hard to really hold any flaws against it. Sure, the film is so clichéd it borders on a remake of numerous films, disregards plot for a never-ending series of special effect scenes and never really seems to be as exploitative as it really could've, that last one is really the only legitimate complaint that could be lobbied against this one. It's hard not to be entertained at what goes on here, from the opening witch-burning to the gradual realization of possession coupled all the way through to the film's last half hour, which just has so much fun it's almost criminal due to the fact that it comprises one sequence of the witch's powers being levied against her tormentors and seeing dishes thrown across the room, furniture toppled over, objects magically transform in front of their eyes and much more in one extended, dragged-out sequence is just wonderful cheesy good times, and the fact that the film copies a Gothic trademark with a stand-out burning-down-the-house finale leaves it in good taste afterward. About the only thing wrong with this is just how tame it was.

Rated Unrated/PG-13: Violence and children-in-jeopardy.