Census Bloodbath: Hellenovela

Note: The only version of this Mexican slasher movie that I was able to get access to was in unsubtitled Spanish. While my AP test scores allow me to claim that I am bilingual, it has been a long time since high school. So take my review with a grain of salt, considering the fact that I was understanding at most 50% of the dialogue in any given scene.

Year:
1988
Director:
Julio Aldama
Cast:
Julio Aldama Jr., Grace Renat, Norma Lazareno

Run Time:
1 hour 22 minutes

Plot: In Terror en los Barrios, Pedro (Julio Aldama Jr. - now how did he get the job?) is a promising young lawyer with a wealthy adopted mother and a gorgeous fiancé, Ángela (Claudia Guzmán). Watching a play about a sex worker's murder triggers a buried memory of his biological mother and her lover being shot by her pimp. This causes him to go mad, dress up in a revolving door of costumes, and murder sex workers and their johns around Mexico City. Frankly, the play was pretty terrible, so maybe I'm misreading the situation and he just decided to go on a killing spree simply to liven up the night.

There's also a bunch of supplemental dramatic material with a pregnant woman - I think her name was Adriana (María Elena Robles, who also wrote the screenplay, making her the rare above-the-line female crew member on a 1980s slasher) - who Pedro hires to be his secretary, and her boyfriend Luis (René Cardona III of Cemetery of Terror, who is the grandson of the director of the exquisite La Llorona). Oh, and a dancer named Rita (Grace Renat), who is trying to support her two kids. Listings allege that there's also a woman named Gabriela (Norma Lazareno of Hasta el viento tiene miedo) kicking around, but I can't for the life of me figure out who that character is supposed to be.

Analysis: It might be time to name a new sub-subgenre here, because Terror en los Barrios is another in a string of what I'd like to call "filler thrillers" that dotted the 1980s. This species of slasher can be spotted by its distinct disinclination to have narrative thrust. Instead of telling a story with forward momentum, these movies lurch to a halt every 15 minutes or so to spend a full scene in the company of time-wasting filler. 

This can take many forms, such as the striptease performances in Stripped to Kill or the aerobics sequences in Killer Workout. Terror en los Barrios is at least more generous than either of those two movies due to the fact that it alternates between two types of filler: weird burlesque dances and mariachi performances.

The mariachi performances are quite good (the burlesque dances considerably less so), but that fact doesn't prevent them from being absolutely fucking useless. Unfortunately, the slasher movie that they're interrupting is pretty bland, so there isn't even much worthwhile to have your attention pulled from.

Terror en los Barrios is fumbles its slasher tropes so much that it even tries to deliver a shocking mid-movie reveal that Pedro is the killer, even though the movie is literally about his mental breakdown. And I'm sorry, but his parade of the frumpiest outfits in the history of drag isn't going to cut it as a disguise.

The kills themselves are also pretty unremarkable. They're not bad, I guess. It's just that the blood budget is essentially nonexistent, so the majority of the murder sequences are awkwardly staged in ways that underscore their artificiality. Thankfully, the story around those kills is where the movie lets loose and gets wet and wild.

Robles' screenplay is clearly influenced by telenovelas, much to its betterment. While the third act of the movie pretty much forgets that it's a slasher (just look at the marked change in the types of deaths that follow #6 in the Body Count), it replaces the insipid mush of the psycho-killer storyline with a string of shocking reveals and melodramatic clashes between the coterie of characters who were previously just sitting around with their thumbs up their asses, taking up space and refusing to die.

At the very least, the way that Terror en los Barrios is a bizarre mishmash between a Los ricos también lloran-era telenovela and a 1980s slasher makes for a fascinating case study. Considering the fact that I'm about to hit my 300th Census Bloodbath title, I'll welcome whatever interesting texture the slasher genre wants to throw at me.

Killer: Pedro (Julio Aldama Jr.)

Final Girl: The woman who I think is Adriana (María Elena Robles)

Best Kill: Pedro slits a woman's throat (with the tip of his knife for some reason) and her gurgling, choking noises really sell the whole thing.

Sign of the Times: The biggest sign that it was shot in 1983 (even though it was released in 1988) is the fact that there's nothing supernatural at all going on here. The influence of 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street did spread as far South as Mexico, after all, as movies like Cemetery of Terror can attest.

Scariest Moment: After shooting his fiancée while wearing the above mask (The Hulk? Frankenstein? both?), Pedro breathes so heavily that the mask pulses outward.

Weirdest Moment: After his adopted mother dies, Pedro goes to the woods and stares at a river. And stares. And stares. The movie keeps cutting to establishing shots of the river, then back to him contemplating the water from different vantage points.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 12

1. Pedro's Mother is shot by her pimp.
2. Pedro's Mother's Lover is shot by her pimp.
3. John #1 is stabbed in the side.
4. Cheetah Print Dress Lady has her throat slit and is stabbed in the boobs.
5. Sidewalk Lady is strangled (or something) in a bush.
6. John #2 has his head slammed against a footstool.
7. Mamacita dies of old lady disease.
8. Luis dies in a car crash.
9. Ángela is shot.
10. Pimp #1 is shot.
11. Pimp #2 is shot.
12. Pedro jumps from a balcony.

TL;DR: Terror en los Barrios is a serviceable enough telenovela slasher, though it isn't particularly well mounted.

Rating: 5/10