AR-15: Comando implacable (1988)

... aka: AR-15: Relentless Command
... aka: AR-15: Unrelenting Command

Directed by: 
Alejandro Todd

A quartet of robbers attempt to rob an armored truck and discover they've been set up by the police. As they try to flee, they hole up in a restaurant and take the patrons hostage. A shoot-out ensues with the cops open firing on the establishment! (Gee, good thing they didn't hit one of several dozen customers just sitting around feet from the thieves, eh?). Mustachioed police commander Alejandro 'Alex' Macebo (Sergio Goyri) decides he's finally had enough and simply leaps through a large window. He's able to shoot and kill three of them in a few seconds and the fourth gets taken out by sharpshooter lieutenant Jorge Falcon (Jorge Reynoso) after he threatens to shoot a girl. Not happy about the situation is criminal ringleader Marquez (Hugo Stiglitz), who's so pissed he just lost out on money that he turns to his buddy and calmly says, "Hand me the bazooka" before blowing the police helicopter out of the sky!

Soon after, the cops are investigating another murder they believe is completely unrelated. A woman has been both sexually assaulted and mutilated, with the wounds on her resembling animal claw marks instead of something done by a human. During the autopsy, coroner Roberto Robles (Juan Garrido, who also co-wrote the original story) determines that the woman was indeed killed by a large cat and that she was raped after being killed. Two more naked, violated female corpses turn up soon after, which pushes the body count up to double digits. It's all so much that Roberto is considering quitting his job and moving on to a much less gruesome line of work. However, his busy personal life is going to make that rather difficult.

Roberto has just purchased a country home he hopes to share with his lovely fiancée Lola (Edna Bolkan). His father (Roberto Cañedo), wheelchair bound mother (Carmelita González), younger brother Tony (Armando Araiza) and sister Silvia (Yirah Aparicio) have all decided to come stay for a spell to help him fix the place up. Unfortunately for them, Marquez and his three goon friends are camped out nearby in the woods with their pet black panther! Naturally, these are the same fellas who've been going on a rampage of rape and murder around the city, plus letting the panther mangle the corpses. Seeing how there's a couple of good-looking women at this home and no one within miles, they decide that's the perfect place to have a little fun. They hang the poodle, shoot the dad, suffocate the mom with a plastic bag, beat the brother's head against the floor until he's a bloody mess and rape and murder both the fiancée and sister. Roberto gets shot right in the head but it ends up being more of a graze and he survives the ordeal, though the traumatic event makes him snap.

Roberto returns to his job and lies about his family being dead, but it's difficult for him to hide the truth from Alex because Tony was dating the captain's daughter, Carla (Wendy Lozano), who confides to his wife Susana (Hilda Aguirre), that Tony hasn't been coming to school lately. Roberto asks to get out of the forensics department and become an officer again. He's accepted back onto the force and given his AR-15 but no one has any idea he's gone crazy. In fact, he's keeping the bodies of his family at home, which he continues to talk to and takes out and arranges around the dining room table when it's time to eat. Dressing up in leather, he then hits the streets and, determined to wipe out the high criminal element in the city, resorts to vigilante justice. He guns down three gang members harassing a couple, shoots two killers who've just gotten released from prison due to lack of evidence, shoots their crooked lawyer in the head and wipes out supermarket robbers, two guys attempting to rape an old woman (!) in the woods and others.

What's truly odd here is that many of Roberto's colleagues know what he's up to and do nothing to stop him! Jorge, who had previously lost both parents to criminals, and female police officer Mariana (Lina Santos), who's in love with Roberto, even discover the bodies of his family sitting around his home yet don't bother getting him any help. He's even given accolades for a sudden drop in crime in the city due to his killing spree! Sheesh. Alex appears to be the only person on the force against what he's doing and determined to stop him. While this is all pretty dumb, there's at least enough action, violence and tastelessness to keep the ball rolling in the brainless entertainment department. There's bloody bullet removal with a knife, someone thrown out a window and impaled on an iron gate and the main baddie being tied down to a table and disemboweled with a scalpel, including gory shots of the guts spilling out.

Many resources list this as having a 1992 release date, though the copyright date in the end credits is 1988. To my knowledge, it's never been available in English though it's not hard at all to follow if you're not a Spanish-speaker. The Mexican VHS release was from Cine Video Plus.

★★

El extraño hijo del Sheriff (1982)

... aka: El hijo del Sheriff (The Sheriff's Son)
... aka: Ritual diabólico (Diabolical Ritual)

... aka: Sheriff's Strange Son, The
... aka: Strange Son of the Sheriff, The

Directed by:
Fernando Durán Rojas

In 1890, a plague is ravaging the small town of Santa Rosa and surrounding areas... a bad time for the very pregnant Mary (Alicia Encinas) to go into labor. Her husband, Sheriff Frederick Jackson (Eric del Castillo) and his deputy, Jeremias Santos (Alfredo Gutiérrez), race to town to retrieve Dr. Jack Miller (Mario Almada) only to find he's far too busy dealing with dozens of plague victims in his hospital to tend to a mere child birth. He recommends they find a midwife and then sends them on their way. Mary ends up dying after giving birth to twin boys just as a lunar eclipse occurs. According to legend, the combination of the plague and the eclipse signals the birth of the Antichrist. Seven years pass and the Sheriff has had to raise the boys; Fred and Erick (both played by Luis Mario Quiroz), on his own. Because they're conjoined at the back and he's afraid of people making fun of them (and him), he's kept them locked up in their home away from everyone in town. He also blames the doctor for his predicament and wife's death, but he's able to put his grudge aside because he needs his help...

Sheriff Jackson lures Dr. Miller to a remote cabin to show him his sons and asks him to perform the operation to separate them. When Miller refuses because it conflicts with God, his ethics and his medical knowledge, the Sheriff holds him at gunpoint and forces him to try. Mid-surgery, Dr. Miller notices that the two boys are connected at the spine and it will be impossible to separate them without the weaker of the two, Erick, dying. The Sheriff forces him to continue. Suddenly, wind starts blowing, the cabin starts shaking and both men are knocked unconscious. When they come to, Erick is dead and Fred is alive but the boys are finally separated. They bury Erick in the hills by a tall tree in an unmarked grave and hope to just go about business as usual afterward.

Once Fred recovers, dad and Jeremias set about teaching the boy how to ride a horse and shoot a gun and do all of the other things you have to do in an Old West town. But things aren't right. Fred can't shut up about his brother and even goes around town telling people he's actually Erick himself and that he was killed by his father. Or is it really the ghost of the dead brother? Fred somehow gets his hands on a horse toy that was buried with his brother and other strange things happen. The mystery is solved rather early when Erick's ghost pays Dr. Miller a threatening visit. Since the Sheriff oversaw the hanging execution of his teenage son (who supposedly robbed and killed an elderly woman), Sam (Alfredo Wally Barrón) has a bone to pick and starts paying extra close attention to the son's strange behavior. Soon enough, Fred leads Sam to his brother's grave and the body is exhumed. Sheriff Frederick is promptly hauled off to jail and then taken before a court.

After hearing the case, the judge (special guest star Roberto Cañedo) rules that Dr. Miller lose his license to practice medicine for ten years, little Fred is to be immediately placed in an orphanage and the Sheriff must be put to death by hanging. After Fred is dropped off at an orphanage run by kindly Miss Julia (Rosa Gloria Chagoyán), the Sheriff makes his way to the gallows. There's an earthquake and then Erick's ghost shows up to make sure his father dies at his hands, not theirs. But if you think the bratty, jealous child ghost is pacified by the death of his father, think again. He now wants his surviving twin dead so that he can take his place and get all of the attention. It's up to Dr. Miller, Julia and Jeremias to protect the still-living boy and hypnosis is used in an attempt to finally banish the evil spirit.

I wish I could say this was a memorable killer kid movie but it's all rather bland, by-the-numbers, melodramatic and hokey. Like most older westerns, it shoves its “morals” right in our face with no subtlety whatsoever by blatantly insisting one should turn to God over medicine and science. (I'd love to know when the last time a seriously sick or injured Christian sat at home and wanted God to take care of their medical problems instead of, ya know, going to a hospital.) Discounting that, this doesn't really offer up much else of note. The actors are all sincere and try their best, the filming locations and outdoor scenery are both nicely captured at times and there are some minor special effects like eyes glowing red and a yellow spirit floating around a room but that's about it. Star del Castillo also wrote the original story and script with actress Bárbara Gil.

Strangely enough, this was released the same year as BASKET CASE (1982), which also featured a plot about separated-against-their-will Siamese twins, with the one left for dead coming back for revenge. The separated twins in this film also share a telepathic link just like in Henenlotter's film. This also had a lot in common with the made-for-TV movie Don't Go to Sleep, another 1982 release involving the spirit of dead child coming back to kill off members of her own family. But there's a reason the above mentioned movies are still talked about today and this one isn't. It's just not very good.

The director was another of those extremely prolific Mexi filmmakers, like the Cardona's, who had his hands on well over a hundred different films. Some of his other genre credits include Hot Snake (1978), Night Killer (1987), Angels of Death (1993) and Revenge of the Wheelchair (1993); none of which has ever been released in the U.S.

Some sources incorrectly give this a 1986 release date. I found at least three Spanish-language VHS tapes, one under the new title Ritual diabólico and another from an American company called Eagle Video. 

★★