El Machete Satánico: The Curse of El Charro (2005)

The Curse of El Charro (2005)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Andrew Bryniarski, Danny Trejo, Drew Mia

Suffering from nightmares and bloody visions of a dark machete-wielding figure ever since she found her sister dead from suicide a year ago, Maria accepts an invitation from her roommate Chris to join her and her two friends, Tanya and Rose, at her uncle’s house in Saguaro, Arizona for some good old-fashioned debauchery, hopefully to get her mind off these ghoulish visages and relax a bit. Unbeknownst to her, these visions foreshadow a terrible fate upon her and her friends as Maria is actually a descendent of a girl from Saguaro who was terrorized and cursed by a wealthy yet diabolical land baron, El Charro, after she rejected his love for her. Now, El Charro wanders Saguaro as a murderous revenant, seeking to finish off the bloodline of the girl who broke his heart and he's going to do the same to just about anyone who gets in his way.

Or is simply in his way. As most undead murderers do. 

I wanted to like The Curse of El Charro (2005) a little more than your average slasher flick as it does have an interesting premise and some very artsy direction when it comes to its visuals, particularly during scenes involving horrifying visions and surreal nightmares. The mostly one-dimensional characters, though, as well as the fact that the plot really takes a while to get to the bloody massacre does test one's patience and knock the peg down a bit. 

The movie firstly spends a good deal of the its run on the girls' road trip misadventures like trying to seduce a horny cop into not busting them for speeding, encountering creepy rednecks at a dingy bar where the main attraction for the night is Lemmy Kilmister as a tuxedo-wearing crippled guy singing horribly off key, or picking up some guy dates who we all know are just there to boost up the bodycount, all the while our lead gal Maria's otherworldly trances kick in and out to keep things spooky. It isn't until the last act that our villain, the dirty poncho-wearing, mad machete-swinging El Charro finally waltzes in to do some murdering and, for its worth, the massacre is a messy yet respectable affair with a generous amount of blood work and sloppy body parts. The ending does veer into the outrageously silly with a downer of a swing, but at least it got a little chuckle out of me.

Bluntly, The Curse of El Charro (2005) is okay-ish. It certainly could've been better, but it's far from being completely awful. (I mean, it has Danny Trejo voicing El Charro. That has to count for something, right?) Pretty plain for a slasher flick and that's about the gist of it. 

Bodycount:

1 female seen dead from slit wrists (flashback)

1 female killed with a machete (flashback)

1 female killed with a machete (flashback)

1 male hanged on a noose (flashback)

1 female decapitated with a machete

1 male hacked to death with a machete

1 male slashed across the face with a machete

1 female had her jaw torn off

1 female had her throat slashed with a machete

1 female hacked to death with a machete

1 male decapitated offscreen, blood splash seen

1 female dragged away, killed offscreen

1 male hacked to death with a machete, decapitated

Total: 13