El Mascarado Massacre, more commonly known under the title Wrestlemaniac, starts as six friends are driving across Mexico to get to a location to shoot a porn film. The films actor & director Alphonse (Adam Huss), the cameraman Steve (Jeremey Radin), some bloke called Jimbo (Zack Bennett) & three porn actresses Daisy (Catherine Wreford), Dallas (Leyla Miliani) & Debbie (Margaret Scarborough) (yeah yeah make up your own 'Debbie does Dallas' porn jokes...) are forced to stop at a ghost town called La Sangre de Dios, or The Blood of Christ after their van breaks down. Since Steve is a geek he knows that La Sangre de Dios is a town of legend, a town where El Mascarado (Rey Misterio Jr.) the most fearsome, brutal & notorious Mexican wrestler is thought to reside. The six filmmakers quickly realise that the legends are true & that El Mascarado doesn't like visitors, in fact he likes to wrestle them into submission & then rip their faces off...
Originally worked on under the title The Mexican Porn Massacre which was at some point retitled to El Mascarado Massacre before some too clever for his own good marketing executive got hold of it & changed the title for a third time to the wonderful pun Wrestlemaniac, give that guy who thought it up a banana! Edited, co-executive produced, written & directed by Jesse Baget this is your average teen slasher flick but one also to say it's a particularly silly teen slasher. The basic idea behind El Mascarado Massacre is that back in the 60's some scientists created the ultimate wrestler so Mexico could win the Olympics from the body parts of other wrestlers but the experiment went wrong & the thing turned into an unstoppable killer whose only weakness is that he has to abide by the rules of Mexican wrestling when killing his victims! If he was created in the 60's he'd be in his 70's at least now, what did he eat in that ghost town for all those years? To be as big & beefy as that requires a lot of food. Why was there still electricity in the town? What did Mascarado do there exactly for all that time? Didn't he like get bored & want to move on? A totally deserted ghost town probably isn't the most exciting place in the world to be stuck for 40 odd years on your lonesome is it? Also where did Mascarado learn to drive exactly? If you can overlook the silliness of the central concept then to be fair to it El Mascardo Massacre isn't the worst slasher out there, at a little over 80 minutes at least it's short, there's one or two pretty gory moments, some of the dialogue is quite punchy while porn director & super stud Alphonse is around & it moves along at a good pace. It does end rather abruptly though, just as the film gets down to the last surviving teen & I expected a long drawn out stalk n'slash sequence of cat & mouse between her & Mascarado it suddenly finishes. Short & to the point even if it is rather silly.
Director Baget does a reasonable job & the film actually looks like it was made by professionals, by people who actually knew what they were doing which is not always the case with low budget shot on a camcorder & edited on a home PC horror these days. The gore & violence is odd, the first two murders happen off screen & we don't see a single drop of the red stuff but then we get a long scene where Mascarado beats a guy up, smashes his face on some stone work making his teeth fall out & then rip his face off. The rest of the film is also mixed as there are some graphic gore scenes while at other times it feels like the makers are going out of their way not to show you anything. There's a couple of gory impalement's, a wall full of ripped off faces, some more graphic face ripping & some more wrestling type fights. If you are interested keep watching as the end credits roll since there's some on the set outtake footage of star Jeremey Radin singing some songs to the crew about the films story that they seem to find very funny even though they aren't.
With a supposed budget of about $850,000 El Mascarado Massacre was actually lower budget than I thought, considering this came in at less than a million it's surprisingly well made with good production values. Although set in Mexico it was apparently shot in California. The acting is pretty good for a film of this type, Adam Huss certainly puts in a spirited performance as the sex mad porn director while Rey Misterio Sr. is a real Mexican wrestler & has won all sorts of titles & makes his feature film debut here.
El Mascarado Massacre turned out much, much better than I had anticipated, it still ain't no masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but it passes the time harmlessly enough & at least it's short. Silly but fun teen slasher flick with better productions values than usual.
Originally worked on under the title The Mexican Porn Massacre which was at some point retitled to El Mascarado Massacre before some too clever for his own good marketing executive got hold of it & changed the title for a third time to the wonderful pun Wrestlemaniac, give that guy who thought it up a banana! Edited, co-executive produced, written & directed by Jesse Baget this is your average teen slasher flick but one also to say it's a particularly silly teen slasher. The basic idea behind El Mascarado Massacre is that back in the 60's some scientists created the ultimate wrestler so Mexico could win the Olympics from the body parts of other wrestlers but the experiment went wrong & the thing turned into an unstoppable killer whose only weakness is that he has to abide by the rules of Mexican wrestling when killing his victims! If he was created in the 60's he'd be in his 70's at least now, what did he eat in that ghost town for all those years? To be as big & beefy as that requires a lot of food. Why was there still electricity in the town? What did Mascarado do there exactly for all that time? Didn't he like get bored & want to move on? A totally deserted ghost town probably isn't the most exciting place in the world to be stuck for 40 odd years on your lonesome is it? Also where did Mascarado learn to drive exactly? If you can overlook the silliness of the central concept then to be fair to it El Mascardo Massacre isn't the worst slasher out there, at a little over 80 minutes at least it's short, there's one or two pretty gory moments, some of the dialogue is quite punchy while porn director & super stud Alphonse is around & it moves along at a good pace. It does end rather abruptly though, just as the film gets down to the last surviving teen & I expected a long drawn out stalk n'slash sequence of cat & mouse between her & Mascarado it suddenly finishes. Short & to the point even if it is rather silly.
Director Baget does a reasonable job & the film actually looks like it was made by professionals, by people who actually knew what they were doing which is not always the case with low budget shot on a camcorder & edited on a home PC horror these days. The gore & violence is odd, the first two murders happen off screen & we don't see a single drop of the red stuff but then we get a long scene where Mascarado beats a guy up, smashes his face on some stone work making his teeth fall out & then rip his face off. The rest of the film is also mixed as there are some graphic gore scenes while at other times it feels like the makers are going out of their way not to show you anything. There's a couple of gory impalement's, a wall full of ripped off faces, some more graphic face ripping & some more wrestling type fights. If you are interested keep watching as the end credits roll since there's some on the set outtake footage of star Jeremey Radin singing some songs to the crew about the films story that they seem to find very funny even though they aren't.
With a supposed budget of about $850,000 El Mascarado Massacre was actually lower budget than I thought, considering this came in at less than a million it's surprisingly well made with good production values. Although set in Mexico it was apparently shot in California. The acting is pretty good for a film of this type, Adam Huss certainly puts in a spirited performance as the sex mad porn director while Rey Misterio Sr. is a real Mexican wrestler & has won all sorts of titles & makes his feature film debut here.
El Mascarado Massacre turned out much, much better than I had anticipated, it still ain't no masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but it passes the time harmlessly enough & at least it's short. Silly but fun teen slasher flick with better productions values than usual.