The Curse of El Charro

Watching this movie is like watching a car crash in reverse. It begins as a blurred, direction-less, and confused mass of visions and concludes with the climax and falling action occurring in a ten minute span. It's an hour and fifteen minutes of sex and drugs, until the director remembers that it's a horror movie and kills almost everyone in a ten minute span. To give a basic plot summary, a group of young women driving through the desert are stalked by a killer "ghost," who is really just a really tall guy in a poncho. The most frustrating thing about this movie is that you don't care for the characters, in any way at all. They aren't likable enough to make you want them to pull through, but aren't annoying enough to pray for a painful death. All except one particularly foul-mouthed girl, who is thankfully given minimal screen time and an extra bloody death, but I digress. Three of our four heroines seem to have double parked outside the studio, as they indulge in sex, drugs, and advanced stupidity as if they want to die as quickly as possible. Our fourth leading lady is plagued by constant violent visions and confusing flashbacks, including a memorable(for all the wrong reasons) flashback which takes the style of a Charlie Chaplin film, but without any humor or quality. Our evil ghost, channeling the spirit of Michael Myers, walks around in pure silence, the only problem being he is TOO slow and it takes an hour for him to get any serious killing in. Since our villain is traveling with all the speed of molasses in January, the director fills in time with enough bong hits to make Cheech and Chong envious. By the time El Charro actually begins his work, it's a good bet that you'll either be asleep or, in my case, toughing it out because you don't like leaving things unfinished. Either way, you won't see much.

OK, I love seeing Danny Trejo in films. I didn't actually see him in this one, as he was the voice of El Charro. El Carro (Andrew Bryniarski) was too busy swinging a machete to speak, I guess.

Maria is a neurotic mess whose sister committed suicide and is being stalked by El Charro because of some wrong done by an ancestor. She joins her friend Christina (Heidi Androl) and two other girls on a trip to Arizona. Good that they had Tanya (Kathryn Taylor, Miss Kansas USA) along to handle the cop when they got a speeding ticket.

Best performance in the film was definitely KellyDawn Malloy as a goth chick who did a shower duet with Tabitha Stevens.

Great looking slasher, but the appearance of Archangel Michael and the ending left a lot to be desired, as did the rednecks the girls hooked up with.

El Charro opens up in a fairly interesting way, leading me to believe it was some sort of religious supernatural thriller. However these themes are pushed aside, and not really developed. Later the group of friends run into a creepy Sheriff, who escorts them to bar, filled with assorted weirdos, including a wheel chair bound death metal rocker, suffering from some kind of mental handicap. At this point I'm thinking the film is going to become a Devil's Rejects, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre insane family type of film. No again, they simply leave the bar, and the Sheriff, and his wacky pals are never developed beyond that. Seriously, the writer or somebody has really messed up here, the film is a jumbled mess, and I can't begin to imagine where they went wrong. The film doesn't know what it wants to be, one minute it's going for the intense dramatic angle with a girl coping with the suicide of her sister, the next it features snore inducing stereotypes trying to party, and get laid. Finally by the end, it decides to go the slasher route, but it's far to late. I rate this a two, because I know some of the actors' are better then the material, and there are a couple decent kill scenes in the end, though nothing special. For those of you wondering, there is a brief lesbian shower scene with Tabitha Stevens, but it lasts all of three seconds, and you don't see much of anything. On a side note, Lemmy what were you thinking? You have to stick with Troma man, you were great in Tromeo And Juliet, but this garbage is beneath you.

I have watched some of the worsts wastes of film in my time but this is by far the very worst. Too bad the director and producer weren't among the victims so that we could have been spared this travesty to film making. The movie made absolutely no sense. The sound director didn't appear to know what they were doing. This movie was definitely done on the cheap since the lighting and the sound both were sub-standard, considering that the actors and actresses were all unknowns there should have been more than ample money to hire people to properly do the sound and lighting. The next time that the investors decide to invest in a movie I hope they remember how pitiful this one was and decide against it.

Maria, still plagued by recurring nightmares of her sister's suicide, is talked into a mini- vacation in order to alleviate her stress a bit only to be stalked by a murderer in the Arizona deserts in this infuriating horror B-movie.

Two of the main character's are under-acting blank slates, the other two are ultra-annoying awful bitches. I didn't care.if El Charro killed all of them so the movie would just be over and thus put an end to my misery.

Eye candy: Tabitha Stevens and KellyDawn Malloy provide the T&A ; Victoria Vangas gets topless (alas her character's dead)

My Grade: D-