Cemetery Of Terror

Cemetery of Terror (Cemetario Del Terror) (1985)

Runtime: 91 minutes

Directed by: Ruben Galindo, Jr.

Starring: Hugo Stiglitz, Jose Gomez Parcero, Bety Robles, Leo Villanueva, Raul Meraz

From: Dynamic Films/Producciones Torrente S.A.

With gore, children, Pepsi Free, Hugo Stiglitz & an airbrushed Michael Jackson kids jacket.

For years now I've heard of this wacky 80's horror picture from Mexico. I have a copy of this film w/ subtitles (nevermind how I did so) and who knows if I would get the upcoming release of the movie on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome in time for Halloween-thus, I saw a not so great print of this wacky Mexican horror picture starring cult favorite Hugo Stiglitz.

This concerns some medical students dragging their significant others to a spooky old abandoned house on Halloween. If that wasn't bad enough, they happen to steal a corpse from the morgue in order to... do a Satanic ritual to bring him back to life?! In several ways, this is just like an old Italian genre picture, including “illogical moments.” I mean, they do this because the girls are “fussy” due to their men being dumb putzes and lying about their destination, then they somehow think that “scaring them some more” will make them “fall into their arms”? Oh, the patriarchy. Then again, the joke's on me, as somehow this scheme worked and all three couples were able to make out w/ each other!

Anyhow, woe is them that they happened to pilfer the corpse of a crazed serial killer, Devlon. Stiglitz is there as the Dr. Loomis of the film, telling disbelieving authority figures that Devlon is “a demon.” After that things get REALLY wild. There are also a quintet of children who appear and thankfully they weren't as irritating as they could have been. Furthermore, I can't get mad at them for doing dumb things like visiting a graveyard on Halloween night as a dare to test their mettle or hitching a ride to said graveyard in an early 80's van that might as well have said “free candy” on the side. Speaking of that decade, the characters drank Marty McFly's favorite beverage, Pepsi Free.

It is easy to criticize this motion picture as it's silly nonsense which liberally borrows from a number of famous films. Personally, once this gets going it's a blast... fast-paced, a few gory moments, plenty of wild moments in the graveyard and kids who actually were all tolerable. Of course I laughed that one of them wore a shoddy-looking airbrushed Michael Jackson jacket. Your mileage definitely will vary but Cemetery of Terror was more fun than expected.