Vacaciones de terror 2 (1990)

... aka: Pesadilla sangrienta (Bloody Nightmare)

... aka: Terror Vacations 2: Diabolical Birthday

... aka: Vacaciones de terror II: cumpleaños diábolico (Vacations of Terror II: Diabolical Birthday)

... aka: Vacation of Terror II

... aka: Vacations of Terror 2

Directed by:

Pedro Galindo III

Hard to believe anyone was eagerly anticipating a sequel to the very mediocre haunted house / cursed doll flick VACATION OF TERROR (1989), but they made it anyway. This one, which does not involve any kind of vacation despite the title, is directed by the first film's co-producer and brings back star Pedro Fernández in the role of Julio Aragón. From what little I remember of the previous film, Julio had accompanied his girlfriend's family to a remote old house for a summer vacation when the ghost of a witch started trying to kill everyone off. Now Julio has moved on with his life, runs an antique / curio shop and his mullet appears to have doubled in size. He's also not dating the same chick and also never even discusses the events of the first film. His love interest this time is played by real-life Latin pop star Tatiana, who really gets to stretch her acting muscles here playing a Latin pop star. OK, to be fair, she's cute, appealing enough and her acting isn't bad, and this is somewhat better than her next movie, FATAL NIGHTMARE (1990), where she was terrorized by a psycho armed with a Freddy-like clawed glove.

Tatiana's character, Mayra Mondragón, is a rising celebrity who's just recently been getting hounded by the press. Somehow (must be the power of the mullet), Julio manages to swindle a date out of her when she stops by his shop. As soon as Mayra leaves, a crazed man (Alfredo Gutiérrez 'El Turco') starts trashing the place and screaming about "the doll from hell!" He promptly runs outside and is hit by a car. Before he dies, he gives Julio some talismans to help ward off evil and recommends our hero consult something called "The Book of Tormented Souls." So off to the library Julio goes. He finds the book, rips out a few pages, sticks them in his pocket and leaves. Guess he forgot his library card.

Joaquín Cordero (DR. SATAN, PANICO), who's too good an actor for something like this but fine nonetheless, plays Tatiana's wealthy movie producer father, Roberto. He's planning an elaborate, Halloween-themed nighttime party for his daughter Tania's (Renata De Los Ríos) 7th birthday at his closed down film studio. To make things extra special, he's put his fx guy, Ramón (Ernesto Carregha), in charge of making it scary for all of the guests. His idea of "scary;" black streamers, strings of plastic pumpkin lights, balloons and cardboard cartoon replicas of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and skeletons, plus a bouncy synth-pop performance of "Chicos, Chicos" from Tatiana, doesn't quite get the job done. Thankfully, Tania is in possession of a cursed dolly, which goes through some strange metamorphosis and eventually transforms into a clawed mini-creature. Well, that's not really scary either, but it at least proves to be a little more entertaining.

The little creature slashes up Ramón underneath the birthday cake table, which causes blood to spurt out of a fountain, which causes the party to clear out quicker than expected. Later that night, Mayra and Tania very stupidly go back to the studio because Tania forgot some silver coins her father had given her. When they get there, Julio, who's revealed to be some kind of demon slayer, is still lurking around trying to find the creature, which has since grown into a big, ugly, slimy, monstrous "bruja" (witch) with claws, fangs and a tail. Tania ends up getting sucked into some kind of otherworldly void, which means Julio and her sister have to find a way to defeat the witch before morning.

As far as the witch's motivations are concerned, the book lays it all out in pretty simple terms. She's from hell and cannot accept the fact she's dead, so this is really all about jealousy and lashing out by capturing the purest souls they can and using them as instruments of evil. The only way to defeat her is by embedding a silver seal in her flesh.

Since there's barely any plot to speak of, this usually comes off less like a movie and more like a collection of cheap spook show effects, with Julio and Mayra (later joined by the father) endlessly running around the foggy, closed-down studio encountering one horror after another. There are souls trapped inside of screaming coins, plastic pumpkins turning into fireballs, a phone shooting out slime, a toothy jack-o-lantern coming to life, a girl turned into a little Play-Doh doll, a room doing 360 degree spins, a room rapidly filling with water from the ceiling down, a melting gun, an earthquake, the ground cracking open and swallowing someone whole, a stabbing via doll tongue (!) and the witch impersonating the little girl to attack someone in a moving vehicle. These scenes range from extremely silly to fun and imaginative.

In many respects, this seems more geared toward children and young teens than adults. Though there's some blood and slime, there's no explicit gore, no nudity, no sex, barely any profanity and a low body count, with almost all of the deaths taking place entirely off-screen. You could snip brief shots here and there and probably end up with a PG or PG-13 rating. The production itself is fairly solid for a budget movie, with great shooting locations, some nice atmosphere, acceptable acting and a witch that's both well designed and well performed (by Luis Camarena). This is also slightly more enjoyable than the original film.

The director, part of a Mexican filmmaking dynasty that goes back to the early days of cinema (similar to the Cardona clan), also made THE DEATH OF THE JACKAL (1984), its sequel Massacre in Rio Grande (which is listed some places as having been released in 1984 and others 1988), HELL'S TRAP (1989), Panic on the Mountain (1989) and Theater of Horror (1991). Though I'm not sure the relation (brothers or cousins perhaps?), the co-writers and co-producers were Eduardo Galindo and Santiago Galindo, who had also worked on the first film.

The earliest sign of a home video release I could find was a tape from 1995 that looks like it was issued from a subsidiary of Video Treasures out of Troy, Michigan (Platino Video and Mex-American Home Video are both credited). They re-titled it Pesadilla sangrienta / "Bloody Nightmare" and the write-up on the back of the box includes both English and Spanish language plot descriptions.

This is now very easy to find all over the place. For us English speakers, it made its English-subbed debut in 2008 as part of BCI Eclipse's 8 film set "Crypt of Terror: Horror from South of the Border, Vol. 1," which also included the first Vacation, Trap, CEMETERY OF TERROR (1985), both English and Spanish language versions of DON'T PANIC (1988), GRAVE ROBBERS (1989) and The Demon Rat (1992). In 2023, Vinegar Syndrome released a Blu-ray and paired with the first film. All of the new interviews on the VS release cover just the original film, not this sequel.

★★

Pesadilla fatal (1990)

... aka: El intruso (The Intruder)

... aka: Fatal Nightmare

Directed by:

René Cardona III

With the passing of René Cardona III earlier this year came the end of the nearly-century-long Cardona family film dynasty, which started all the way back in 1929 in New York City with his grandfather and namesake, René Cardona. Born in Havana, Cuba, Cardona the First and his family emigrated to the U.S. in 1926. Starting out as a film extra, the elder Cardona quickly moved his way up the ranks to become the very first director to make a Spanish-language film (1929's Sombras habaneras / "Havana Shadows") in Hollywood. After learning the ropes of the filmmaking business in America, he returned to Mexico in 1932 and became one of the most prolific of all Mexican filmmakers, churning out one title after another until the early 80s. Son René Jr. followed in dad's footsteps with over 100 directorial credits and Rene III (who started out acting in his father's films as a kid, often using the name "Al Coster") would begin his own filmmaking career in 1988, amassing over 80 directorial credits himself.

All three of the Cardona's also frequently produced, wrote and edited their own movies and made quite a few horror films between them. However, Rene III's output did not receive the same kind of international distribution that his grandfather and father often enjoyed. In fact, the only Rene III-directed genre film I'm aware of that received an English-language release was his 1989 haunted house film VACACIONES DE TERROR... and that didn't even occur until the film was nearly 20 years old!

The top-billed star here is the pretty Tatiana, who was born Tatiana Palacios Chapa in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but returned to Monterrey, Mexico at a young age, where she would start her show business career as a teenager. After releasing numerous traditional pop albums, she found her real niche in the world of children's entertainment and, to date, has released over 20 top-selling kid's albums, which have netted her over 9 million album sales, numerous #1 hits and five Latin Grammy Award nominations. In addition to that, she has hosted several children's TV shows and taken on the occasional film or TV role. Tatiana starred in this, as well as VACATIONS OF TERROR 2 (1989), several years before delving into the more family friendly / kiddie stuff.

Once an Olympics gymnastics hopeful, Marisol (Tatiana) had an accident on an apparatus when she was eight years old and has been blind ever since. Now a teenager, Marisol's affliction is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to her problems. While attending a Valentine's Day party, her father Ramón ("Victorel" / Víctor Badillo) gets into a heated argument with a shady, possibly mafia-connected man named Sergio Alatorre (Guillermo Buigas), who's also his "business partner," though it never tells us just what business that is. Gossips at the party suspect that Ramón has been having an affair with Sergio's much-younger sexpot wife Vera (Patricia Álvarez), whom the gossips claim "sleeps with everything that crosses her path." After leaving the party, Ramón stays up late to work on their car and ends up getting slashed to death in the garage. And, just in case you were wondering about the title and how it brings to mind another famous film, the killer's weapon of choice is a Freddy-like clawed glove.

Marisol, who found her dad's body and heard the sound of the metal nails of the glove clinking together, hears that same sound at her father's funeral and freaks out. Heading up the investigation is Lieutenant Javier (Arsenio Campos), who gets to work right away questioning everyone who attended the party... though it probably would have been far more polite and professional of him to wait until AFTER the memorial service to start drilling everyone in sight! Javier goes to his friend, Dr. Edgar Santos (José Manuel Fernández), a psychiatrist and criminologist, for help. Edgar hatches a plan to hypnotize Marisol, which may unlock parts of her memory that were trauma-blocked the night her father was killed. Even though their session provides no additional information, it does provide Edgar with the info he really wants: Marisol's phone number! Some more of that strictly professional behavior for ya.

The psycho then starts terrorizing Marisol at home. They sneak in and move furniture around so she'll trip over it, clink the nails of the glove together and grab and scratch her. Even cops posted outside the home 24 / 7 aren't able to stop the person from gaining entry. Because no one actually has to contend with the intruder aside from our heroine, the shrink, cops and even her own family start to doubt her sanity. As not to worry her, she starts hiding things from her frequently-absent mother, Magdalena (Nuria Bages), and convinces their maid / nanny, Lupe (Alicia del Lago), not to inform her mom she's been having encounters with the psycho. Lupe is eventually sent out of town to care for her ailing mother, leaving Marisol alone a large chunk of the time.

Meanwhile, Vera strips down to a lace teddy and stockings to seduce her husband's bodyguard, Guillermo (Guillermo Henry). The killer sneaks in, knocks Guillermo out, ties Vera to the bed and shoots her to death. He then places the gun in Guillermo's hand to make it look like he did it. Guillermo is then falsely arrested and charged with the crimes, though the real killer is obviously still out there and continues stalking and terrorizing Marisol. Whoever that person is, they have a sepia-toned childhood flashback to witnessing their own mother shoot and kill their father and his mistress to "save them from sin" and then committing suicide.

So this is basically A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET if you reduce the production values greatly and then take out the nightmares, the special effects, the body count, the comedy and all of the gore and replace that with a bunch of people sitting around talking endlessly, boring police scenes, gratuitous shots of feet walking around and the glove (which is only used to kill ONE person at the very beginning) and a lame killer reveal that's insanely easy to predict. This isn't incompetently made or anything, just really dull and entirely forgettable.

Pedro Galindo III, who directed the slashers THE DEATH OF THE JACKAL (1984) and HELL'S TRAP (1989), was one of the producers. This has been released several times on home video. There's a VHS from B&M and a DVD release from Imperial Films, though neither come with English subtitles. Fan subs are available, though.

★1/2