Satanic Hispanics
When police raid a house in El Paso, they find it full of dead Latinos, and only one survivor. He’s known as The Traveler, and when they take him to the station for questioning, he tells them those lands are full of magic and talks about the horrors he’s encountered in his long time on this earth, about portals to other worlds, mythical creatures, demons and the undead. Stories about Latin American legends.
- Released: 2022-09-25
- Runtime: 113 minutes
- Genre: Comedy, Horror, Thrillers
- Stars: Michael C. Williams, Hemky Madera, Greg Grunberg, Patricia Velásquez, Efren Ramirez, Lombardo Boyar, Victoria Maurette, Morgana Ignis
- Director: Demián Rugna, Mike Mendez, Eduardo Sánchez, Alejandro Brugués, Gigi Saul Guerrero
Comments
- thesar-2 - 4 May 2024
Demon Knights
While you'll sorely miss Billy Zane, at least Greg Grunberg is in the bulk of this story.
If you made it to the fifth/final story and into the credits, lucky you. Not only will you be told "No Latinos were harmed in the making of this motion picture," you at least got to the only notable story in this anthology.
Sadly, of the four stories (with one main wraparound,) only one was really good. They must've known that, too, by saving the best for last. Though that said, the wraparound was interesting enough even if it's pretty clichéd and sometimes forces the storytelling of the chapters.
"The Traveler" is the sole survivor of a massacre and while being investigated by disbelieving detectives, he recounts Latino-based short horror stories, some of which he wouldn't/couldn't have known the details of. There's the tale of the Rubik's Cube stand-in for the Lament Configuration: "Tambien Lo Vi" - definitely the 2nd best one, "El Vampiro" which tries to be too slapstickish, "Nahaules" which makes the least sense about sacrifices I guess and "The Hammer of Zanzibar"...the very reason to watch this movie.
While it's perfect as a short movie and probably shouldn't be fleshed out, "The Hammer of Zanzibar" was incredibly funny, well thought-out and raised the bar on the entire anthology of so-so entries. Mercifully, this, in addition to the very well-done practical gore effects throughout and Efren Ramirez's charm as "The Traveler," I would recommend this feature.
You just gotta get through some rough, though not terrible, short stories and you'll be rewarded.
***
Final Thoughts: The reference to Billy Zane in the intro was to the 10x better movie, Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight. He had enough charisma in that movie to fill the entire Tales from the Crypt series. While "The Traveler" reminds me of more of his costar, William Sadler's character, this wraparound just gushed with Demon Knight vibes. Also, I always have a crush on Greg Grunberg. He better watch out, though...Efren Ramirez was far better looking in this feature... - guinden - 20 November 2023
weird spanish child or version of VHS
This movie is weird. Hard to describe cause it feels like the horror movies VHS but the tone is different.
Each chapter had different directors and it is clearly felt through the movie.
I still think the first and second one was the best which had serious tone and from that you can say the vampire one was funny cause it was but that huge tone shift a little bit killed the immersion for me.
Cause between the chapters we always go back to the wanderer which is serious so it was impossible to get back from comedy to serious to horror to comedy to serious these switching ruined the movie for me.
Overall i still think it is ok for a one night popcorn movie but i wish the director who made the first chapter or first two will have the opportunity to direct some full horror movie cause it was really well done.
