New movie 'Satanic Hispanics' tells tales of terror out of El Paso
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What the heck?
More than two dozen dead bodies are found when El Paso police raid a stash house, except for one survivor who has creepy tales to tell in the new Latino-themed horror anthology "Satanic Hispanics."
Efren Ramirez (best known for playing "Pedro" in "Napoleon Dynamite." If you vote for him all your wildest dreams will come true) is "The Traveler," the massacre's lone survivor who provides the wrap-around segment for stories by five Latino filmmakers.
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Just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month, "Satanic Hispanics" opened on Thursday, Sept. 14, at selected theaters, including the Alamo Drafthouse theaters in El Paso.
The short films, which are in English and Spanish, range from the ghostly gore of "También Lo Vi" (I also saw it) to the goofy "El Vampiro" in settings from Argentina to inside an El Paso police station by directors Alejandro Brugués, Mike Mendez, Demián Rugna, Gigi Saul Guerrero and Eduardo Sánchez.
The movie also stars actor Jacob Vargas as an antique dealer known as "El Jefe" in a dark comedy segment titled "The Hammer of Zanzibar." Native El Pasoan Lombardo Boyar is featured as a police officer. The movie does not show any actual El Paso scenery.
The film has what could be called a B-movie quality and has received mixed reviews. It had an 88% freshness rating Thursday on the Rotten Tomatoes movie review website.
A New York Times critic said the horror anthology failed to live up to its promise, while a review on RogerEbert.com gave the movie only two stars and described it as uneven and underwhelming.
In addition to "Satanic Hispanics," El Paso is having quite a current showing at movie theaters with Sun City-associated films such as the biopic of the Borderland luchador exotico "Cassandro" and "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe," the film adaptation of the young adult novel by El Paso author and poet Benjamin Alire Sáenz.
There is also "Blue Beetle" about the DC superhero from El Paso in the comic books but who in the movie only lives on "El Paso Street" in the fictional Miami-esque Palmera City.
"Satanic Hispanics" is rated R with a 1 hour 45 minutes running time.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: 'Satanic Hispanics,' El Paso part of new Latino horror anthology
