Muertes violentas (1990)

... aka: Violent Deaths

Directed by:
Miguel Marte

This three-part anthology has flown completely under the radar because it's multi-genre (there are two standard crime stories plus one horror tale) and it's not usually listed under the horror genre on movie sites (if they bother listing it at all). The first segment revolves around thug Asensio Martínez (Manuel 'Flaco' Ibáñez), who wants to give up his life of crime. Or so he claims. He's managed to get millions of dollars but had to leave a friend bleeding to death to get it. He's also fallen in love with a beautiful prostitute he frequents named Susana (Jacqueline Castro) and wants to marry her. She however is resistant and you can soon understand why as he's short-tempered and violent, screams at her, slaps her around and pulls her by the hair. Asensio promises to use his newly-acquired fortune to start a new life, buy a house, marry Susana and live a normal life. However, a (comically clumsy) police sting led by Sergio Sánchez is closing in on him. They manage to track him to his hideaway, where they surround the place and then... simply start open firing! I guess had any innocents been inside they'd have just been collateral damage. Asensio manages to gun down several and kill two with a grenade, plus forces Susana to shoot one of them. Then, using Susana as a hostage and threatening to shoot her, he's able to get to his car and take off. However, things take a turn he's not quite expecting. This runs 30 minutes, is rather talky and drawn out.

Story #2 features two men, Javier (Claudio Rojo Rojo) and his father Diego (played by Rojo's real-life father, Noé Murayama), who plot a bogus kidnapping of Javier's sexy girlfriend, Paulina (Nora Torrero). Turns out Paulina's rich parents don't like Javier much so he's devised this scheme to try to extort money out of them. In broad daylight and with lots of people walking around, they slip pantyhose over their faces, approach Paulina in the park, chloroform her and then throw her in the back of the van. They drive off to a remote house and then have a change of heart about what they're doing once Paulina wakes up. Still, they're at a nice location so why not just enjoy themselves for a few days, right? Paulina starts behaving strangely, including flirting with and then trying to seduce Diego when Javier isn't around. When Javier finds out what's going on, Paulina suggests they battle for her affections during a game of Russian roulette. Whoever wins gets her. Things don't pan out exactly as she's expecting. This runs 25 minutes and, like the first story, is talky and mediocre.

And, finally, we get to the horror segment. This is the longest bit by a hair and, unlike the first two tame segments, actually justifies the title! Beret-wearing mercenary commander Armando Diaz (Ángel Sancho) leads a small platoon of freedom fighters consisting of Carlos, big guy Alberto (Walter Fuentes), Peque, Eagle and the dressed-in-cut-off-denim-shorts-while-the-guys-all-wear-jackets-and-fatigues lone female, Lourdes (Lourdes Tapia), through the woods to a foggy, abandoned monastery with an adjacent cemetery. They're trying to escape enemy troops and make it to the beach. Seeing how no one appears to be around, they decide to take sanctuary there to rest. While the others are sleeping, Alberto wanders off and comes into contact with a demonic spirit floating around. Soon he's possessed and transforms into a flaky-faced, bloody, laughing zombie killer. He spits up foam, can disappear and reappear at will and has supernatural powers.

Clearly inspired by the Evil Dead, with lots of invisible entity POV shots stalking the cast, this has a great shooting location, takes place entirely during the day and contains some surprisingly gruesome moments sure to wake you up after the first two stories. A man gets a hatchet to the head, baby snakes erupt out of a gunshot wound and the zombie rips off a guy's dick and chews on it! During the most disgusting bit (yes, even more disgusting than noshing a dick), the commander becomes infected with snakes and then chops himself up trying to get them out, which includes opening up his own stomach and pulling out his intestines. As a warning, real snakes get killed here. One is chopped up with a hatchet while the man playing the zombie actually puts one in his mouth, bites it in half and then spits it back out! While this is nowhere near as good as ED when it comes to camerawork, special effects, inventiveness or, well, anything else, it's still fairly entertaining.

Most of the actors who appear as cops in the first story also play the guerrillas in the last segment. The opening credits cast list is either screwed up or they filmed a fourth story that was later dropped. There are only three female roles in the film though five actresses are credited. Abril Campillo, who's given third billing, is nowhere to be found and neither is Claudia Fuentes. I'm not sure what happened there. Director Marte isn't someone I'm familiar at all with though IMDb credits him with directing over 100 films, some under the name Miguel Ángel Martínez. The site only classifies five of these as horror but there may be more. For instance, this one's currently labeled a "thriller" when it really should be "crime / horror" so it's entirely possible some of his others may also not be properly classified. There are a lot of direct-to-video Mexican films, many of which were shot-on-video, that still need sifted through to see just what turns up.

To my knowledge, this was never released outside of Mexico and there's no English language version available. All that's available are bootleg DVD-R's sourced from the VHS.

★★

Dorimu hanta Remu II: Seibishinjo Gakuen no Yomu (1986)

... aka: Dream Hunter Rem II
... aka: Dream Hunter Rem II: Dream Demon at Seibishinjo High School 
... aka: Dream Hunter Rem II: Seibishinjo Gakuen no Yomu

Directed by:
Seiji Okuda

This is a follow-up to the previous year's DREAM HUNTER REM, which began as a 20-some-odd-minute OVA horror with more graphic hentai scenes before having the more explicit shots removed and a second tale added to the works (this release was known as "Special Version") to push to run time up. Instead of containing two tales, this follow-up is just one story that runs 58 minutes.

Young Yumi is fast asleep when her mirror starts glowing and shooting off kaleidoscopic light. A female voice calls to her; encouraging her to come over. While still asleep, Yumi enters into her mirror. She finds herself on a giant chess board with giant chess pieces, then makes her way to a glowing door and enters. Now in a large clock tower with a long spiral staircase to the top, she ascends the stairs. An old, ugly, red-eyed female demon sitting atop a big, clawed monster with a mouth full of razor teeth awaits her at the top and she ends up being decapitated. Thus far, Yumi is the third schoolgirl killed at Seibishinjo High; an all-girls boarding school. Because the school is trying to cover the mutilation killings up, the police have hit a dead end and have no other alternative than to write the deaths off as suicides and something supernatural is clearly at play, Detective Sakaki calls teenager paranormal detective Rem Ayanokōji to help solve the case. Rem has the ability to enter into others' dream though she herself hasn't been able to have her own dreams since she was young. Part of her obsession with helping others comes from her desire to one day be able to dream again herself.

Because she's the same age as the three schoolgirl victims (which puts scenes of her being graphically tentacle-raped and shooting lasers out of her vag in the original into an even more tasteless light, no?), Rem slaps on a pair of glasses and decides to go undercover at the school as a student. She brings along her loyal sidekicks Alpha (cat) and Beta (dog) to assist her. The amazingly shallow and bizarre school principal is obsessed with beauty and thinks that the only way a girl can get the upper hand on a man is through her looks. That perhaps makes her even less qualified to be in charge of anyone else's education than Betsy DeVos. The principal claims that both her and the school's motto is "Ugliness is the devil!" Because no pets are allowed in the dorms, she confiscates Alpha and Beta, puts them in a cage, locks them in a room and informs them that "Ugly things must be erased from this world!"

Because they're suspicious of her presence at the school, Rem becomes the target of a girl gang called The Black Roses led by queen bee Saeko and becomes even more of a target when she shows Saeko up on the tennis court. Rem does manage to make a friend in the sweet Yoko, who's a shy loner who mostly sits in her room reading books and listening to music. The bullies have been teasing Yoko for being flat-chested but Rem assures her that having small boobs is A-OK cause she's got 'em too! Right after Yoko has her first period in the locker room shower ("I'm sure your breasts will start growing soon!"), the bullies attempt to scald them by cranking up the hot water in the shower. The Black Roses again try to attack Rem in the library but she assures Saeko, "I know that you're not the killer. You're just a regular human, although you might be a little messed up in the mind." Ha!

Dark secrets about the school, staff and girls eventually come to light which involve torture, whipping with a rose vine lash and a corpse locked up behind a red door in the clock tower. There's death by being burned alive, a face melting to mush (and the eyeball popping right out), a cleaver to the face and a head getting crushed, plus a perverted male gym coach who spies on the girls in the shower, a schoolgirl zombie army, snake-like ghost monsters, a "spirit barrier" forcefield, the giant dragon creature getting bisected from the inside out, our heroine (who we actually learn something about this time) getting trapped in a giant hourglass and almost getting crushed between gears and the clock tower turning into a giant robot! Rem's monk protector Enkou returns from the previous Dr. Death Resurrected episode, there's a brief "intermission" to plug the upcoming third video, a bunch of direct references to Carrie thrown in and a melancholy ending. This is entertaining, quite funny at times and an improvement over the previous video.

This has been issued on VHS numerous times and is now included in several different Rem box sets. A soundtrack album and comic books were also released. This was followed by DREAM HUNTER REM III: HIDDEN DREAM - LEGEND OF THE HEADLESS WARRIOR (1987) and then the New Dream Hunter Rem series starting in 1990.

★★★