by: Dr. Boogie

No two things go together quite as well as professional wrestling and horror. Pro wrestlers like Kane and Rowdy Roddy Piper have been doing horror movies for years now, but they were merely acting in their movies. What if, instead of having a wrestler as an actor, or a wrestler portraying the monster, you had a wrestler as the monster in a horror movie? Wouldn't that be scary?

No, it wouldn't be. What if you threw in some T 'n A? Nope, still not getting any scarier. But what if it took place in Mexico? Ok, a little scarier now. What if I said the Mexican wrestler/monster was the product of experiments intended to create the world's greatest wrestler?

Now the movie isn't scary at all. Nevertheless, I present to you a macabre story of gruesome death and figure-four leg locks, known to the rest of the world as "El Mascarado Massacre", but known in the US as Wrestlemaniac.

After a short establishing shot of some small Mexican town, we are treated to a shot of a surprised-looking woman running toward the camera and yelling her head off. Is she the Wrestlemaniac, as the title would have us believe? No, she is merely part of the cast, which we'll meet shortly...

Right after two-and-a-half minutes of credits set to mariachi music and vintage lucha libre footage. Can you feel the building sense of dread? Are you not on the edge of your seat right now, wondering if the footage is going to suddenly change into a monstrous wrestler hurling his opponents to the ground, ripping their heads off, and waiting for a reluctant ref to give him a three-count?

It doesn't. But hey, now I have no questions about who is in this movie, who produced it, or who was in charge of casting.

It's an unwritten rule that when making a horror movie, you must make your characters as unlikeable as possible so that when they die, the audience doesn't feel bad for them, but instead marvels at how they were killed. Case in point: Alfonse. When creating the character of Alfonse, writer/director/editor Jesse Baget must have been trying to create the most loathsome, repulsive human being he could imagine.

Everything about the character; his mismanaged facial hair, his fits of nasally laughter, his love of delivering poorly-constructed dirty jokes with hammy enthusiasm, every aspect is designed to tell you that this is someone whom the world will not miss. Indeed, I even had trouble finding screenshots of Al that didn't make him look like a douchebag.

Anyway, the first line out of Alfonse's mouth is a detailed explanation of the "Dirty Sanchez" maneuver, followed by a round of laughter from the other potential victims. Just for being in his company, they should all be killed immediately, but no. We'll have to wait several minutes before someone gets killed.

Riding in back are Steve and Jimbo. Steve, or "Fats" as Al calls him, works as Al's cameraman. Apart from looking like a young Jorge Garcia, Steve's purpose in the film is to provide some much-needed exposition. For instance, here he is interviewing the other passengers for a documentary, which I assume will be packaged with the amateur porn they plan on shooting.

Jimbo is along for the ride because he supplied the van, as well as the pot. He also points out that Al is making porn movie featuring his sister, which he objects to, kind of.

In back, and on the floor, are Al's performers, Debbie, Dallas, and Daisy. It's implied that Debbie is Jimbo's sister, but apart from that, we don't really know much about them. Al remarks that Dallas can put her legs behind her head, but that seems like speculation at this point.

Daisy, meanwhile, is completely blasted and passed out on the floor. Steve discovers, by way of a cheeky camera shot, that she isn't wearing anything beneath her blue nighty. And that, my friends, is all we know about her character.

Right now, Al is completely lost. While trying to find his way to Cabo, he left the freeway in favor of driving down an isolated dirt road for miles. Steve tries to find where they are on a map, but Al decides to toss the map out the window. Why? Because he believes Steve knows the country like the back of his hand. And why does he think that? Because Steve is Mexican. A Mexican from Seattle, yes, but as Al points out, "I know you can find your way to a taco stand." Try as I might, I could not reach into my television and strangle Alfonse.

Debbie needs to use the can, so they pull into what looks like an abandoned gas station, confident that there is someone still working there. Debbie jumps out and once again, the cameraman (not Steve, the one for the actual movie) comes in with a very tight shot of her hot pants. That just leaves Dallas left to round out the cheeky photography, and we're not even ten minutes into the film. That's going to have to wait, though.

"I SMELL GRINGOS!!!"

Out from the dilapidated building bursts a man in a luchador mask. Steve immediately recognizes the mask as being the one used by El Diablo Negro. He even happens to have his own El Tigre mask, which I guess he brings along as a lucky charm when he's shooting porn.

All joking aside, the Mexican "native" tells them that indeed, they are nowhere near the highway. He also tells them that his gas pumps don't work, which is good considering that Al has been smoking right next to one for the better part of the scene. Their only option is to travel to the next town to the south. But, as he warns them, they mustn't stop at the town of La Sangre de Dios.

Al is confused, so Steve lays out the rest of the film's backstory for him: La Sangre de Dios, or "The Blood of Christ" (or "The Blood of God", if you want to get technical. Technical and correct) is the town where the infamous wrestler, "El Mascarado", was taken after he gouged a man's eyes out. The old man urges them to drive past that town to the next one, which he never names, and gives Al a pouch full of what he claims is blow.

He goes onto say...

And so they do.

By the way, for those of you thinking that old man looks familiar, that's Irwin Keyes. He's done bit parts in a ton of horror movies, and he was even considered for the role of Freddy Krueger at one point. Now, he slums in movies about killer Mexican wrestlers.

Back in the van, there still seems to be some confusion about the town of La Sangre de Dios. Al claims it is the "daddy-o" of all amateur porn locations, but Steve knows that it is so much more. He lays out the details of El Mascarado's origin:

In the 1960s, the president of Mexico was obsessed with wrestling, and wanted badly to win gold at the 1968 Olympic games, but standing in Mexico's way was the impressive Russian wrestling team. El Mascarado then appears, while three other talented Mexican wrestlers disappear, the theory being that a team of scientists working for the Mexican government created El Mascarado using parts from the missing wrestlers. At some point, El Mascarado goes crazy and starts killing his opponents, so he is taken to La Sangre de Dios to be "fixed", thus dashing Mexico's hopes for taking home the gold.

Al thinks such a place would be a dynamite setting for a porno, but then again, he's been sampling that leather pouch full of blow. If you can't trust cocaine from an old man with a really half-assed Mexican accent that you met in the desert, well what's this world coming to?

A short time later, Al is being a jackass again. This time, he's so focused that he doesn't notice the very large rock in the center of the road. The passengers are tossed out of the seats as the rock slams into the undercarriage. At first, Al tries to play it off, hoping that more vulgar jokes will heal the injured van, but to no avail. Luckily, the van died just outside of...

La Sangre de Dios, which is Spanish for "the scene of the crime". The road leading into the town is blocked off, but luckily, the crew thought to bring bolt cutters on this particular porn shoot. All thought of fixing the van quietly vanish as Al looks around for a suitable location for the shoot.

He chooses a dingy old bar, because there's nothing quite as erotic as dusty, weatherworn countertops and tetanus. No explanation is given for why "Voorhees" appears on the building, and I have to assume it's another instance of a bad horror movie trying to score points with the audience by referencing a memorable one. Anyway, Al loves the filthy venue and declares, "this place better get ready for some good, hardcore, crotch-on-crotch action!"

What follows is a long, indulgent scene with Debbie and Dallas making out. Get it? "Debbie does Dallas"? Genius. Even Daisy joins in after regaining consciousness and stumbling over to the bar. Then Al takes off his shirt and joins the action as the "plumber". Daisy's reaction is understandable.

She struggles to hold the vomit in her mouth as she runs out of the bar. She's so repulsed that she can't bear to puke anywhere near the bar, so she runs all the way to the other side of town to let loose. Meanwhile, Al orders Steve to continue shooting the scene with him and the other two women. Oh, and another cheeky shot of Daisy as she's running to find a suitable puking spot.

Once she finishes throwing up, Daisy just... wanders off. For some reason, she starts walking out of town and further into the wilderness. I guess she just likes the feeling of dry brush against her bare feet. She looks like she's lost. Maybe all that drinking has ruined her short-term memory, blotted out her sense of direction, and severely limited her field of vision.

Yeah, that must be the case. How else do you explain her walking into a clearing full of garbage and stepping on a pile of broken glass? Maybe it was all to setup this odd tribute to Basic Instinct.

Blacked out crotches aside, as she's crying and pulling glass out of her feet, Daisy hears something. Then she sees something.

Poor Daisy. She only had one line in the whole movie.

Meanwhile, Steve has noticed a peculiar shadow in the footage he shot of Daisy running out the door. Al has an explanation: "that's the shadow cast by my big dick!" Ha ha ha, oh Al. I hope someone steals your penicillin.

Incredibly, the only person who notices that Daisy is missing is Jimbo. He claims that Daisy stole his weed, stowing it in one of the many pockets of that blue negligee. The others mistake his concern for competence and send him off to search for her. What could possibly go wrong?

"What was I doing?"

Ooh, tough luck, Daisy.

Jimbo wanders around the town calling for Daisy, unaware that he'll need to journey far out into the badlands if he ever wants to find her. While looking around and complaining about the munchies, a slat of sheet metal falls off a roof and gives him a good scare. As he jumps, the missing bag of weed falls out of his own pocket, so his search wasn't a total bust.

Oh cruel fate, to be strangled while suffering the munchies. Jimbo, we hardly knew ye.

There's still plenty more of Wrestlemaniac to see!
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