Galindo III (who shares screen- play credit with Cesar Galindo) and again stars Pedro Fernandez. Here, the pop star plays Nacho, a young adult first seen defeat- ing a rival in a game of paintball, earning a violent display of poor sportsmanship in the process. As Nacho always seems to come out on top, he’s only too willing to accept a dangerous challenge: take part in an impromptu hunt- ing expedition and see just who’s going to bag a certain maraud- ing bear. But the two compet- ing camps quickly learn that they’ve got bigger problems than any old bear: a grizzled arms merchant (standing in for the grizzled gas station atten- dant) warns anyone who will lis- ten that they’re stumbling into the territory of a demented American Vietnam veteran who thinks he’s still at war. He’s right, of course, but it just so happens that this psycho soldier wears a close approximation of a Michael Myers mask, sports a Freddy Krueger glove and goes by the name of Jesse (read: Jason). Any questions?
HELL’S TRAP couldn’t be more obvious in its attempt to replicate fast-food American horror (before it’s over, you’ll realize that the Galindos also caught Wes Craven’s original THE HILLS HAVE EYES during their research), and one can’t hope for it to do much besides go through its paces efficiently— which it does with a running time that leaves little room for bore- dom or complaints. Well, per- haps one complaint: you’ll want to slap Nacho for failing to no- tice the pulled grenade pin dan- gling directly in front of his face... The remaining films in the collection were directed by Ruben Galindo, Jr. (whose father—still active today—was responsible for a significant percentage of the Western/action/police thrillers
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The strangely familiar Freddy-cum-Jason stalker of HELL’S TRAP.
easily found on Mexican video shelves—including 1985’s Narco Terror and at least two Santo outings—though he rarely dabbled in horror himself). Side B of Disc 2 serves up one of his most popular outings: 1985’s Cementerio del Terror. It re- mains a Telemundo staple come Halloween-time and seems tailor- made to appeal to American fans, yet BCI’s subtitled release (CEM- ETERY OF TERROR is not to be confused with GRAVEYARD OF HORROR) still marks its first offi- cially translated appearance. Hugo Stiglitz (“Steiglitz” here, of NIGHTMARE CITY) is Dr. Cardan, a man of medicine with an atypi- cally strong belief in the super- natural. He’s not convinced that the body of a recently-executed Satanic serial killer known as “Devlon” will stay dead unless he can get his hands on Devlon’s evil spell book. Unfortunately for all concerned, that would be the body a bunch of bored students liberate from the morgue in the name of a prank—and they man- age to take the book with them in the meantime.
While the film wears its heart on its sleeve nearly as blatantly as HELL’S TRAP, CEMETERY OF TERROR manages to stand out from the crowd by virtue of its very personality—and by the way it allows itself to be influenced by far lesser-known American hor- ror product. One could run out of paper trying to identify all of the films inspired by George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but how many films can be said to have taken their cue specifically from Bob Clark’s CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS? The mock ritual, the apparent failure, the unpleasant results and the se- quence of mass exodus from the grave were clearly modeled on Clark’s cult favorite, though Galindo took time to try his hand at John Carpenter stylings with a POV sequence in which the re- cently resurrected Devlon stalks his quarry HALLOWEEN-style. (It happens to be Halloween as the film’s events take place, and the young trick-or-treaters might be next in line.) CEMETERY distin- guishes itself by departing from
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