Rene Cardona Jr. made Survive!, a movie that gets into the cannibalism after some rugby players on Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 that had to confront the need to survive or eat their fellow players. He followed that up with this movie, also known as El Ciclon and Terror Storm. It’s also kind of stolen from Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.
An airplane goes down during a storm and the few survivors pile on to a small tour boat that is swept out to sea, where they have no food or fresh water. Will they decide to eat one another before the sharks eat them? Or will they be saved?
This movie is ridiculous and even more so because it has an all star cast, and by that, I mean a cast of people I would see as stars, including Arthur Kennedy (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue), Carroll Baker (oh so many Umberto Lenzi films that I enjoy), Lionel Stander (from Hart to Hart!), Andres Garcia (Tintorera), Hugo Stiglitz (Nightmare City) and Olga Karlatos (Zombie, Murder Rock).
This movie takes things from bad to worse and it gets even rougher from there. I adore movies that put actors through horrible things and this is definitely one of those.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This originally ran on the site on January 1, 2019. I love this movie so much and hope that it convinces you to check it out.
My wife wants to go away on a fancy vacation. While horror films have forever enriched my life, they’ve also damaged her chances of going anywhere. The tropics? Have you seen Zombi? A resort like Sandals? I assume that Laura Gemser will show up and I’ll be boiled in a pot. And now, thanks to this movie, we can also cross Mexico off the list.
As much as horror may have curtailed my partner’s opportunity to globetrot, it’s also imparted several important lessons to me. To wit: if your mine is over a Satanic temple where left hands were severed to honor demons and every single worker refuses to go any deeper, perhaps it’s time to find a new mine. And if by chance you discover a miniature coffin with a hand inside it, just leave it where you found it. Don’t take it back to your hotel room. This is why I’ve made it forty-six years on this Earth without being possessed or dealing with a face-melting cult in the desert.
My true joy in the movie Demonoid comes from reading the review that it received when it was released in 1981 and laughing in their prose faces. How can anyone dislike a movie where a possessed man decides that old school Las Vegas is the best place to hide out? Who can dismiss a film where Samantha Eggar obviously dressed herself in some of the most astounding fashions that the early 80’s could unleash? The woman wears an ascot and oversized orange counter to explore a mine (let’s be fair, every outfit she wears in this movie are a paradox, somehow both gorgeous and ridiculous at the same time). And damn anyone who speaks ill of Stuart Whitman! This former boxer and soldier had already played Jim Jones — I’m sorry, James Johnson — in Guyana: Crime of the Century, released less than a year after that tragedy? Here, he plays a battling Catholic priest who we just know could win over Ms. Eggar if he didn’t have that pesky collar and angel on his shoulder to worry about.
Maybe they weren’t watching the Mexican cut (Macabra!), which has more dialogue, more death and a different ending? Look, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. And most of those critics, they never got pleased all that much anyways. Demonoid is worth the whole lot of them. Would they dare to feature an ending so downbeat after 98 minutes of rooting for our British heroine? I dare say no. They’d be afraid to insert so many flashing shots of a demon raising his fist, they’d be too concerned about a soundtrack that practically screams in your face and they’d sooner hide behind their film theory books than make a movie in 1981 that feels like it came from 1974.
Demonoid is why I watch movies. Samantha Eggar screaming at the top of her lungs while a mine explodes all around her? There. An appearance by Haji, she of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Bigfoot, Supervixens and the wonderfully titled Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman(whose real name Barbarella Catton wasn’t sexy enough for a stage name)? You got me. Overacting in nearly every scene? I’m riveted. A poster that promised nubile ladies reclining for a fallen angel carrying a gigantic sword? I might have piddled a little.
Keep your Oscar picks and guilty pleasures. I have no such taste or qualms. Give me Demonoid or give me a severed left hand!
This article originally appeared in Drive-In Asylum #13, which you can get right here!
I was wondering if I could love the sequel as much as the original and I am here to tell you that I love this movie more than is humanly possible. Vacaciones de Terror is fun. The sequel, that also has the added title Diabolical Birthday? It might be the best movie I’ve watched this year.
The niece’s boyfriend from the first vacation — Julio (Pedro Fernández — is in his own adventure, helping the daughter of horror movie producer Roberto Mondragon (Joaquin Cordero, who was in Dr. Satan and El Gato) celebrate her birthday. Of course, the witch from the first movie and comes back, gets split in half and become a lizard-like monster while possessing everyone through an evil birthday cake that bleeds rivers of blood.
What would make this movie better? What if Mexican pop star Tatiana shows up and has a musical number? Yes, this happens. It makes the movie so much better than it has any right to be.
Pedro Galindo III took over the director’s chair from Rene Cardona III and honestly, he knocks it way out of the park. I mean, the witch is oozing sores all over the place and launching fireballs at people at a kid’s birthday party on Halloween while a longhaired singer and another singer do battle against her.
The moment that Tatianna — playing Mayra Mondragon — sings the song “Chicos,” I lost my mind. Seriously, my dog is a chihuahua and I think he must have some instinctive Mexican heritage because every single time I play this song — and trust, I’ve watched this movie double digits in the last few weeks — he goes absolutely loco. Watch it for yourself.
There’s also a moment where Studio Mondragon has a Cocktail poster up and you wonder, “In the strange Mexican universe that is this film, did Roberto Mondragon produce a Tom Cruise movie? Or is so unprofessional that he has a poster of a movie he didn’t make up in his studio?”
Have you ever watched Troll 2 and wished, “I wish someone made this in Spanish and added musical numbers, but also crazier special effects and strange Mexican sorcery and baby dolls?” Have I got amazing news for you. This movie has all of that and so much more.
I went into Mexican Horror Week with the hopes of enjoying some films. I have somehow discovered a movie that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Known in France as L’Amérique Insolite, or Unusual America, this film is all about the 18 month journey that Francois Reichenbach, who shot the video for Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot’s “Bonnie and Clyde” as well as parts of F for Fake) took across America.
With a script by Chris Marker and narration by Jean Cocteau and June Richmond (Paul Klinger did the German version), this is a playful look at America before the many changes that the 60’s would bring. From prison rodeos to Miss America, Disneyland to a town of twins, this film captures the eccentric side of America, including a shocking moment where a rider continually pushes a horse to greater heights, diving into a small pool of water. While this image is upsetting, the dialogue juxtaposed with it is uplifting: “The golden age is the only time when magic is called by its proper name. It’s the only time when you need to believe in miracles. When pigeons fly, horses fly. Angels fly. Man flies.”
While this film was released two years before Mondo Cane, make no mistake. It is a mondo film. That said, this is the gentle side of mondo, a movie given to the celebrations of small dogs at play on Fire Island. It’s utterly charming.
This has just been released by Arrow Video with new English subtitles and a 1080p presentation. I totally didn’t expect to fall in love with this film, but I did. You can get it right here.
I’ve spent around half my life as a pro wrestler. So when a movie comes out about a man who takes his wrestling knowledge and becomes a killer comes around, I’m going to do what i can to find it and watch it and share it with you.
Randy (Bruiser Brody lookalike Richie “The Cuban Assassin” Acevedo) is a groundskeeper who is obsessed with being a pro wrestler like his father (who is played by Nikolai Volkoff). When he decides to try out at “Boogie Woogie Man” Jimmy Valiant’s wrestling school, he gets treated like a green boy and goes off the deep end, wiping out anyone he can get his hands on and making a belt out of human faces to defend against all manner of scum.
This movie is packed with real wrestlers, like The Sandman and Tony Atlas as mob goons, Manny Fernandez as one of Randy’s lawn technician friends, NOAH Global Tag League co-winner Rene Dupree and more.
What I loved about this movie was that all of the fights have completely worked wrestling punches and holds, yet body parts fly through the air, blood gets sprayed non-stop and people still sell damage like a comedy match.
Sure, this is a digitally shot low budget movie, but it has plenty of charm and a completely out of nowhere ending that amused me way more than I thought possible. As the dirtsheets say, ****.
Our friend Paul Andolina watched this as well, so you can check out his thoughts on his site.
You can learn more at the official Facebook page. Wrestlemassacre is now available on DVD and on demand from Wild Eye Releasing.
DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR company.
This movie actually played in the U.S. as a bad translation — but one more apt to get people into the theaters perhaps thinking they were seeing another film — The Body Snatcher. It was inspired Universal’s Frankenstein and was an attempt to take as much of that film as possible while avoiding any potential lawsuit.
Between this film and El Vampiro, Fernando Mendez was able to usher in what many see as a golden age of Mexican cinema.
Police Captain Carlos Robles has a problem. Someone is killing Mexico’s greatest athletes and he doesn’t know that it’s scientist Don Panchito. Turns out that Don is slicing the heads of these sports stars open, plopping in an animal brain and conquering death itself. Who knew it was so easy?
Robles gets pro wrestler Guillermo Santana (Wolf Ruvinskis) to act as bait. There’s a great wrestling training scene here that shows just how hard hitting 1950’s lucha was, probably due to how much harder the rings themselves were.
The plan goes wrong and Santanta is now transformed into an ape. So Evil Don does what mad scientists in Mexican movies do best: he sends him to the wrestling arena with a mask on and tells him to kick some culo.
Don’t ask how the monkey brain keeps his personality or why he’s wrestling, just go with the flow.
Santana goes wild, breaking free of his programming somewhat to kill Don, kidnap an old girlfriend and lead police on a chase across the rooftops of Mexico CIty before his best friend has to gun him down.
This is 80-minutes of sheer delight. You really owe it to yourself to track this down, because it’s an absolute blast.
Not to be confused with Beaks: The Novel, this movie is also known as El Ataque de los Pajaros (The Attack of the Birds), Birds of Prey,Evil Birds and Beaks: The Birds 2, which is some Bruno Mattei-level skullduggery.
It was directed by Rene Cardona Jr., who made King of the Gorillasafter King Kong, Tintorera after Jaws and Survive! after an Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes Mountain and ate one another. So what you need to know is that this is a filmmaker who only cares about entertaining you, not lawyers or the sensibilities of average folk. This is a guy who had so much fun making a film with cannibalism in it that he went back and did it again with Cyclone and got some Hollywood stars to go along for the ride.
Rene, I love your whole family. I love your father and his films. I love your son and his movies. And man, you know what’s up. I have no idea what you were trying to do here, but as a friend, I’m going to sit through it.
Michelle Johnson started her acting career leaving modelling behind and needing to meet with a judge before appearing topless at age 17 in Blame It On Rio. The rest of her career was spent in movies that I can instantly point to her being in, like Waxwork, Blood Ties, Dr. Giggles and the Andrew Stevens-directed Illicit Dreams.
She’s starring with another actor who got famous getting naked on a beach in some form of explotation magic kismet. Christopher Atkins was all of 19 when he appeared alongside Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon, playing cousins shipwrecked on an island who are destined to aggressively cuddle because it was 1980 and incest was seemingly everywhere (a cursory look at Pornhub says, nope, it hasn’t gone anywhere).
They both ended up on Dallas as well, with Johnson showing up in the TV movie Dallas: War of the Ewings and the rebooted 2000’s version, while Atkins played camp counselor Peter Richards for the 1983 season. He also had a singing career — “How Can I Live Without Her” peaked at #71 on the Billboard charts — and appeared in movies like Shakma, Mortuary Academyand The Little Unicorn before becoming a luxury pool builder and fishing lure inventor.
Here, the twosome play Vanessa, a television reporter, and Pete, her cameraman. They’re investigating stories of farmers being attacked by their chickens and then go to Spain to meet the survivors of similar attacks thirty years ago.
You have to give it to Cardona, because he realizes, “¡Hola, no soy Hitchcock!” and goes full gonzo, having children decimated by birds at a birthday party and a farmer and his wife killed by doves, the very symbol of peace.
Why are the birds doing this? Because they’re had enough with men and this time, it’s personal. As it always is, really.
Gabriele Tinti, who usually is in Joe D’Amato stuff like The Crawlers and Endgame, shows up here, uniting two of my favorite scummy movie worlds. Aldo Sambrell is also here, probably telling everyone at catering how many Sergio Leone movies he was in. I kid! They didn’t have a catering budget.
This movie still isn’t as bad as the Rick Rosenthal-directed The Birds II: Land’s End. That is such a small bar to trip over, however.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This week, we’re studying up on Mexican horror. That means that we’re also bringing back some of our favorite of la peliculas to share all over again one more time. This movie originally ran on January 1, 2020.
Oh René Cardona. Here you are remaking the lucha libre movie you did back in 1962, Las Luchadoras Contra el Medico Asesino, or The Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Doctor or Doctor of Doom, as it was called in the U.S.
While this was made in 1969 as La Horripilante Bestia Humana, or The Horrible Man-Beast, this one didn’t play in the U.S. until 1972. With alternate titles like Horror y Sexo and Gomar – The Human Gorilla, this is a fine blend of ladies wrestling with apes and, well, human heart surgery footage.
Female masked wrestler Lucy dresses like the devil and wrestles at the arena — dare we say Arena Mexico? — every Friday, where she often knocks out other girls who dress like cat girls. She wants to retire for a life of leisure — and less stress — with her cop boyfriend.
However, Dr. Krellman (Jose Elias Moreno, who was Santa Claus in the aforementioned film where he battles Patch the demon) wants to cure his son from leukemia. So he does what doctors have always said would work — he puts him a gorilla heart inside his boy. As we all know from health class, this turns his son into a deformed and murderous man-ape with the craziness of the organ donor to boot.
You won’t be bored, what with the nudity, real open heart surgery and rampant murders. A monkey man that rips off dudes’ faces and the clothes of girls? Si, muchacho.
This made the Section 1 video nasties list, probably because its VHS cover art was had a bloody surgeon’s hands holding a scalpel with the words “Warning: this film contains scenes of extreme and explicit violence.”
Let’s talk about family tradition. The Cardona family has it. Starting with the senior Rene Cardona, we got films like the brain-melting Santa Claus, Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy and Night of the Bloody Apes. His son would continue the journey with Night of 1000 Cats, Guyana: Crime of the Century and Tintorera.
Starting with this film, Rene Cardona III would put his own spin on horror films. This movie feels like someone stayed up all night mainlining every single Amityville unconnected sequel — trust me, as I have done this — and then decided to make their own cover version before the booze wore off.
Way back in 1889, a witch had taken over a small Mexican town, but an inquisitor was able to use a sacred amulet to force her into the flames and save his village. When he tosses all of her belongings — including a cursed doll — into a well, he never dreamed that a little girl would find it a hundred years later and put her family through hell.
This movie has it all. Bleeding walls, refrigerators teeming with rats and no small amount of snakes and spiders. It also has Julio, the affable teen who hopes to save the family and the babysitter that he is in love with. He’s played by Pedro Fernandez, who is more than an actor, as he’s a TV show host and singer.
This movie has a great scene where the kids play with a toy car — which has possessed their father’s car — and try to push it into the fireplace. These are the reasons why I love movies like this, the small moments that make me realize just how little reality can intrude within.
If this ever came out on blu ray — and it totally should, because the DVD versions are out of print and are prohibitively expensive — I will add my critic byline to it: “If you thought Ghosthouse was completely inane and ridiculous, have I got an awesome movie for you!”
PS: This pairs nicely with Cathy’s Curse so you get a real North/South exploitation exorcism adventure.
Catherine (Florence Guerin, Faceless, Too Beautiful to Die, Demons 6: De Profundis) is an adult magazine model who is being stalked over the phone. That’s not as bad as some of the other girls she works with. After all, they’re not just getting heavy breathing. They’re getting killed.
Brigitte Lahaie is in this, pretty much a perfect fit for her background. She rose from the X-rated films of France to be recognized by Jean Rollin, who cast her in his films The Grapes of Death and Fascination. This also makes sense as to why Claude Mulot directed this, as the majority of his career was also in adult films. He’d die a few years later in a drowning accident. He also made The Blood Rose, a film so close to a Jess Franco movie that Troy Howarth would say in So Deadly, So Perverse: Giallo-Style Films from Around the World Volume 3, “one would be forgiven for thinking that Franco had made it himself.”
This doesn’t do anything special or different than any other giallo. Both Guerin and Lahaie would make Franco’s Facelesssoon after, a much better film.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.