Wrestlemaniac

Well, I certainly think there’s a good idea somewhere in this film.

The premise of Wrestlemaniac seems sensible, even with its generic underlying concepts: a group of people wind up in the abandoned town of La Sangre de Dios (the Blood of Christ, they say, but actually the Blood of God) to film a porn shoot, only to be caught in the warpath of a sinister luchador with a pension for “unmasking” his opponents (read: RIPPING THEIR FACES OFF).

It keeps a lot of the classic cheap horror tropes under its belt: lots of ass, short runtime, a lack of connection between characters, the final girl, one minor name to pull at least ONE customer in, and one name that’s vaguely close to a bigger celebrity name to pull in another customer. If you like those, you’re in luck with this film! Those last two keys in particular especially, as our semi-big name to pull you in here is Irwin Keyes (of Jeffersons and House of 1000 Corpses fame; coincidentally, I thought this would have been an excellent Rob Zombie film plot before discovering Keyes was in that film). The similar sounding name but, however, is how I got into this film. Now, when I saw this film as a DVD at my local video store, I saw the name “Rey Misterio” and thought “whoa, wait, Rey Mysterio did a horror movie?” and then promptly remembered there are three Rey Misterios:

• Rey Mysterio, also known as Rey Misterio Jr.: this is the one most people will know from his runs in WWE, the little guy in a big federation.

• El Hijo de Rey Misterio: Rey’s cousin. Lesser known, but he’s been in the business for about a decade now and hates when promoters try to promote him as his far more successful cousin.

• Rey Misterio Sr.: the uncle to Rey Jr. and father to El
Hijo, Sr. is a lucha libre legend of sorts back home in Mexico. In the US, he did a few cups of coffee (four matches) in WCW.

If you guessed that Sr. was the star of this film, you’d be correct! He’s simply billed as Rey Misterio here; I wonder if this was intentional. Likewise, his apprearance as luchador El Mascarado seems reminiscent of fellow luchador Mil Máscaras, and that makes me wonder if Mascaras was offered the role first and turned it down on principle.

Let’s talk about the film real quick, though. Frankenstein meets the slasher film meets the pro wrestler sounds really cool as hell. The problem with that is that this film’s budget does not help it at all. The film’s got some good sets and okay blood design (one guy looks like he’s covered in jam), but its 75 minute runtime and budget does nothing but limit it; we don’t even get a good fight scene between Steve (the only guy I rooted for) and Mascarado. It’s all offscreen. This has such a first draft energy to it that is so painfully obvious that it sucks any level of fear out of it… and they wanted to build up to a sequel of this! Lord!

Two stars for effort, but very weak in execution. Yawn.

Well, I certainly think there’s a good idea somewhere in this film.

The premise of Wrestlemaniac seems sensible, even with its generic underlying concepts: a group of people wind up in the abandoned town of La Sangre de Dios (the Blood of Christ, they say, but actually the Blood of God) to film a porn shoot, only to be caught in the warpath of a sinister luchador with a pension for “unmasking” his opponents (read: RIPPING THEIR FACES OFF).

It keeps a lot of the classic cheap horror tropes under its belt: lots of ass, short runtime, a lack of connection between characters, the final girl, one minor name to pull at least ONE customer in, and one name that’s vaguely close to a bigger celebrity name to pull in another customer. If you like those, you’re in luck with this film! Those last two keys in particular especially, as our semi-big name to pull you in here is Irwin Keyes (of Jeffersons and House of 1000 Corpses fame; coincidentally, I thought this would have been an excellent Rob Zombie film plot before discovering Keyes was in that film). The similar sounding name but, however, is how I got into this film. Now, when I saw this film as a DVD at my local video store, I saw the name “Rey Misterio” and thought “whoa, wait, Rey Mysterio did a horror movie?” and then promptly remembered there are three Rey Misterios:

• Rey Mysterio, also known as Rey Misterio Jr.: this is the one most people will know from his runs in WWE, the little guy in a big federation.

• El Hijo de Rey Misterio: Rey’s cousin. Lesser known, but he’s been in the business for about a decade now and hates when promoters try to promote him as his far more successful cousin.

• Rey Misterio Sr.: the uncle to Rey Jr. and father to El
Hijo, Sr. is a lucha libre legend of sorts back home in Mexico. In the US, he did a few cups of coffee (four matches) in WCW.

If you guessed that Sr. was the star of this film, you’d be correct! He’s simply billed as Rey Misterio here; I wonder if this was intentional. Likewise, his apprearance as luchador El Mascarado seems reminiscent of fellow luchador Mil Máscaras, and that makes me wonder if Mascaras was offered the role first and turned it down on principle.

Let’s talk about the film real quick, though. Frankenstein meets the slasher film meets the pro wrestler sounds really cool as hell. The problem with that is that this film’s budget does not help it at all. The film’s got some good sets and okay blood design (one guy looks like he’s covered in jam), but its 75 minute runtime and budget does nothing but limit it; we don’t even get a good fight scene between Steve (the only guy I rooted for) and Mascarado. It’s all offscreen. This has such a first draft energy to it that is so painfully obvious that it sucks any level of fear out of it… and they wanted to build up to a sequel of this! Lord!

Two stars for effort, but very weak in execution. Yawn.