by: Dr. Boogie

...CONTINUED

Getting back to the sole survivor of the group, Dallas has managed to fix the van. Unfortunately, she was listening to some music through her headphones, and missed the entire massacre. Unaware that her annoying friends have been defaced by El Mascarado, she goes a'lookin'. She doesn't look very hard, as evidenced by her completely missing Daisy's faceless corpse, which has been carted back into town. However, she does find (and discretely pocket) Jimbo's bag of weed. Inside the nearby shed, she notices a mirror with an unusual reflection...

Ladies, always remember to wear comfortable shoes. Even if you're going to a porn shoot in the middle of nowhere, remember to bring along a pair of sneakers in case you need to do some running.

Heels or no, Dallas gets away and chooses a nearby bus as the ideal hiding spot. She shimmies underneath and waits.

If you're reading this, sorry about the unflattering profile shot, Mr. Misterio... maybe El Mascarado has put on some weight because he hasn't had a challenging opponent in a long while.

Dallas's spot seems to have thrown El Mascarado off her scent, so she crawls out from under the bus, and back into the bus.

Dallas scrunches up near the front seat, right underneath the sugar glass window. Not a bad hiding spot, but she screams when El Mascarado uses a pipe to break the window. Refusing to stay in one place, she crawls to the back of the bus, an action which the camera follows very closely. Very closely, and from the back.

By now, though, it doesn't matter where she decides to hide on the bus. The back just gives El Mascarado the opportunity to reach in and grab her.

He almost gets her, but she manages to get the van keys out of her pocket and stab his hand with such force that she transfixes the stabbing key in his hand. He promptly withdraws his hand, taking the keys with him. Kudos on the powerful stab, Dallas, but you're going to have a long walk ahead of you, and those heels won't make good hiking shoes.

As was the case before, it takes El Mascarado a really long time to recover. During this extended period, Dallas flees to a restaurant and hides in a cupboard.

So I'm watching the movie and thinking that all the shots of the girls' hinders are kind of exploitive. Then I see this. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about seeing Leyla Milani, a gorgeous model and (thanks to this movie) actress, entering into such an esoteric yoga position. I just would have liked to have been in on the storyboard meeting where the writer/director/editor is drawing a little picture of a cartoon character hiding in a cupboard and forming an "M" with its legs. And I wonder, did he ask her personally to do this, or did it just... happen?

Well eventually, she is convinced that El Mascarado has passed her by. Only he hasn't, and he's standing right there. So she tips over some upturned chairs in front of him, boots down a boarded up door with her high heels, and moves onto her next hiding spot.

I'll say this: Dallas would make for a very tough game of hide and seek.

Dallas makes her way back to the van and gets all the way inside it before she remembers why the keys aren't already in the ignition. Luckily, the keys have made their way back to the van, courtesy of El Mascarado. Dallas decides to take off again, but her shorts get caught on the door as she's getting out.

She's stuck good, so she gives one good lunge, and her shorts come off. So, recap: in the past ten minutes, we've seen Leyla Milani spread 'em to fit into a cabinet, and get herself soaking wet hiding in a barrel of water, and now, she's lost her shorts. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesse Baget may very well be the greatest director of our generation.

Dallas finds her way to the same house that Debbie and Steve were in shortly before they lost their Mask vs. Face match with El Mascarado, and in due course, she too bumbles her way into El Mascarado's lair. Debbie is there to greet her, as are the faces of a number of other individuals, none of which you can really recognize.

Someone grabs Dallas by the ankle and gives it a good yank, sending her face first in a pool of blood. No, it's not El Mascarado. He's still taking a breather after missing Dallas at the van.

In between death rattles, Steve reminds Dallas that she must remove El Mascarado's mask to defeat him, as per the rules of wrestling. Dallas is grateful for the advice, even if it seems like surefire way to get her own face ripped off. In any case, El Mascarado is on his way, pipe in hand, so Dallas pries Steve's fingers off her ankle and looks for her own foreign object, again overlooking the folding chair.

Luckily, there's a nail board lying just outside the ring. Good thing Steve was too hung up on that "rules of wrestling" boloney to use it. Hiding behind the door, she waits for her heavily lobotomized prey...

The rules of wrestling are pretty much gone at this point. Count outs, foreign objects, and not a referee in sight. I'm beginning to think none of this was sanctioned by any of the governing pro wrestling bodies. Well, rules aside, having a bunch of nails embedded in his back does everything that Steve's half-assed wrestling moves could not. El Mascarado drops his pipe and is too preoccupied to stop Dallas from picking it up herself.

"Hasta la vista, you fuck!!"

Ugh, what a line to go out on.

She's going for the TKO!

Looks like Dallas's trademark "pipe in the gut" maneuver has won the match. Once El Mascarado finally stops twitching, Dallas goes for the mask. If he weren't dead already, I'm sure Steve would be bitching about how "impalements don't count." Sissy.

Oh no! His shoulders weren't touching the ground, so the pin doesn't count! Dallas struggles in El Mascarado's grip before finally wrenching the van key out of his hand and fleeing the scene.

El Mascarado, meanwhile, struggles with getting the pipe out of him. It's slow going, and Dallas already has a big lead on him. By the time he gets the pipe out, she'll most likely be back at the van and driving on to the next, hopefully monster-free, town.

D'oh! Looks like her legs gave out, and she's decided to throw in the towel. What a shame. All she had to do was let her adrenaline carry her out to the van she just fixed, and she would've been home free. Or she could've bashed the incapacitated El Mascarado with some other object in the room to finish him off. So many missed opportunities.

Anyway, that brings us back to the start of the film. The screaming girl? Dallas.

Whoops! How did that get in there?

Dallas, Dallas, Dallas. Victory was handed to you, and you whizzed it down your leg. You screwed up so bad, it wouldn't surprise me if you impaled yourself on that pipe.

Oh lord, now he's mobile! And I'll bet he swiped Al's cocaine pouch, too!

And so the tale of El Mascarado comes to a close. Sprinkled throughout the credits is an El Mascarado rap by Jeremy Radin (aka, Steve), and corny though it may be, it does include all the important kills and relevant background info on El Mascarado (i.e.: he's a masked wrestler who kills people and rips their faces off).

This movie surprised me. Was I expecting bad? Yes. Was I expecting some nudity? It is a horror movie, after all. Was I expecting to see the female lead rip her shorts off, dunk herself in a water barrel, and try to get her legs behind her head? Well... no. No, that was just a bonus.

If this movie does well, and I think it will because of what I just said, you can expect an explosion in the demand for breakaway Daisy Dukes.

Have any questions or comments about this piece?
Email Dr. Boogie