Customer Reviews

The Curse of el Charro

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

It's easy to be cynical about slasher movies. The fetishization of women, the sex, the violence - par for the course, but horror movie fans know that many movies rise above these tropes. For every female that is fetishized there's the Final Girl who defeats the boogieman; for every oversexed character there's a morality message about abstinence; for every violent attack there's...well okay slasher movies ARE pretty violent.

The Curse of El Charro is every ridiculous stereotype rolled into one. It's that bad.

It starts with Maria (Drew Mia), haunted by the same nightmares that caused her sister to commit suicide. Maria spends the entire movie moping. She mopes about not having many friends, mopes about being at parties, and mopes about El Charro trying to claim her soul. We know that El Charro plans to claim Maria as his bride in hell because there's a movie-within-a-movie silent film that spells this out in black-and-white. Narration? Plot? The Curse of El Charro gives up any stagecraft and just tells the audience what's going on.

In orbit around Maria are three party favors: sex-bomb Tanya (Kathryn Taylor), goth drug-addict Rose (KellyDawn Malloy), and nice girl Chris (Heidi Androl). Not one of them has any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Rose gleefully distributes drugs to Maria even though she's clearly psychotic, Tanya never shuts up about having sex, and Chris is guilty of being the sole intelligent human being who exercises terrible judgment in men, friends, and vacation spots.

The slasher isn't even interesting. El Charro is a guy in a trench coat, broad-brimmed hat, and wields a machete. He has a bit of zombie-style makeup, but mostly he trudges through undergrowth. The most interesting thing about Charro is that he's voiced by Danny Trejo, who isn't anywhere in this film.

You could rationalize that the reason this movie is so carnally shallow is because Charro's lust-object chose a life of pious service to God over the sins of the flesh. But that's letting it off the hook. The real curse here is wasting 90 minutes of your life watching this film.

First, I feel misled by the cast listing, which said Danny Trejo was in the movie. Wrong! He appears nowhere and is just the "voice" of El Charro.
The movie itself was horrible. The characters were caricatures, the plot (if you can call it that) was laughable, especially the ending, the killings were lame, and don't even get me started with the "vision/exposition via silent movie."
There were only 2 scenes I will remember (hence my review isn't titled 91 Minutes Down the Crapper): the brief scenes with Britney, whose foul mouth probably garnered the R-rating by itself (but it was funny), and the scene that takes place at 1:17.
Note that the only 5-star review here was submitted by the director. I watched this on cable, and I wanted to like the movie, but I wouldn't recommend spending money to rent or buy it.

This movie was only 91 minutes long, thank goodness. Otherwise I would not have watched it.

Done in a typical slasher genre, this movie has to be the worst ever made. You should not be rooting for the killer! You count down the minutes for each annoying character to die.

Not recommended - boring and not scary. And most of all, no tension.

Ragsdale attempts to be Lynch and fails miserably until he finally shows his teeth creating a limp slasher flick. But bad performances, a nonsensical story, and horrible special effects makes this nothing but a forgettable vain horror entry...

it did not get scary because it was a bit too censur'd
and predictabl I think.
I did not like the acting, it seemed a little to desperate
to be more than it is

The Curse moves fast, has snappy dialogue and great visuals. The horror and humor are well mixed, and the music and sound effects are top o' the heap. This is a must see for action and horror movie fans.