harsens_rob (harsens_rob) wrote,

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Movie Review, Part III of III, "Ladrones De Tumbas"


Scene 63: In the meanwhile, Satan-Monk has returned to the Tomb of Evil Magic and Dead Riches. He's beginning a blood ritual. Olivia, who has been knocked out, comes around just in time to see chains mystically wind themselves around her limbs to tie her down for the sacrifice to knock her up with Lucifer's Brat.

Scene 64: But, Father Sheriff is hot on the trail and arrives at the cemetery gate. Instead of climbing over this time, he just shoots the lock off.

Scene 65: Olivia is forced to drink blood. He uses the blade of the Symbol to cut a pattern into her abdomen.

Scene 66: Sheriff stalks toward the tomb. He's carrying his Box-O'-Bang with him. In the meantime, Father Stubborn Resolve makes it to the Church Bell and begins ringing.

Scene 67: Olivia gets carved. She screams a lot. Satan-Monk ritualizes. But history repeats itself, in that he's interrupted before the act again. Papa Sheriff tries to undo the chains, but Satan-Monk isn't about to run away over one mortal man... not this time. Satan-Monk lifts Papa Sheriff off the floor and begins to throttle him with his bare hands. Fortunately, Sheriff is then thrown across the room, rather than simply going the way of Punk-Ass Jorge.


Satan-Monk does a lot of beating and throwing around of Sheriff without just killing him so he can get back to that Satan's Child plan of his.

Scene 68: As Papa Wolf draws Satan-Monk Zombie away, candles fall and lights, um - mumble, mumble - on fire around Olivia Yellchild.

Scene 69: Meanwhile, back at the Church, the bells are summoning the townspeople. Well, the old ones who pay any attention to the church, anyway, which doesn't seem like a large crowd.

Commentary: Yep, still a relatively pointless break away from where the action is actually occurring. And since we're approaching climax, perhaps they could have condensed those scenes down to where they'll have some point in helping us beat the bad guy.

Scene 70: Sheriff stumbles out from underground into the old monastery courtyard with Satan-Monk planning a killing behind him. In a two second jump, we see Rebeca directing Manolo where to go with her psychic direction finder.

Sheriff gets tossed around some more, but he's able to also grab Satan-Monk's treasured Symbol from his chest -- which wouldn't have been an issue, if he'd just killed the guy in the first place.

Commentary: Yeah, right about now, I'm ready for this to reach the end... and stop making me list new scenes by continuing to jump around would be nice, too. And -- oh, dear, the cliches are starting to pile up now in order to stop the unstoppable bad guy.

From behind Satan-Monk, Manolo arrives in the truck. He runs over Satan-Monk.

Commentary: This, alas, is a bit too clearly a dummy. We can see a bit too easily that it has been torn to pieces by the truck running into it, which you just know won't be the case a moment from now when the Dead Guy Rises to continue the onslaught. Oopsie to the dummy-ski.

When Manolo and Rebeca get out of the truck, they find no evidence of Satan-Monk - his having discorporated (and possibly retroactively justifying the few cases of offscreen teleporting and appear out of nowhere-ness that we've seen, if we wish to be kind, and I'm willing). Rebeca runs over to check on Sheriff. He sends Manolo to get the Box-O'-Boom Boom, while he rushes back to Olivia with Rebeca. They find her semi-conscious and choking on smoke from the nearby fires.

Commentary: In a very nice touch, Rebeca immediately closes up her robe and ties it shut for her, while Sheriff is shooting through the chains.

Manolo returns with the dynamite and Sheriff orders its distribution to cave in the tomb (which everyone has been accessing now directly via the courtyard, which sort of made the whole digging and climbing under a grave to reach a tunnel thing throughout the rest of the movie pretty damned silly looking in retrospect; Oopsie to stupid Grave Robbers not just looking around a bit first-ie). He refuses, saying he's getting Rebeca out of there, but Sheriff uses the threat of 10-years prison time on the Grave Robbing charges if he doesn't help him play hero. And considering his hot little ass, Manolo decides prison isn't really for him.

Sheriff next passes the barely-able-to-stumble-out Olivia to Rebeca's care with instructions to drive straight to town.

Commentary: The soundtrack at this point does a really annoying fail with this repetitive few notes over and over. It does nothing to reinforce the tension of the scene and just starts to grate after a few repetitions.

Before Rebeca can browbeat Olivia to get her traumatized ass moving, Undead Satan-Monk has teleported in again out of nowhere. Daddy distracts him again with some useless gunfire, which leads to him getting another beatdown. He yells at Manolo to light the dynamite wicks. Manolo then gives a hearty yell-of-heroism and jumps on Satan-Monk which succeeds in saving Sheriff from another non-killing beating (because Satan-Monk seems to be suddenly reluctant to kill anybody). He gets face clawed for the trouble.



But this does allow Sheriff Dad to snatch up Satan-Monk's Prophetic Axe. In the meantime, Satan-Monk pulls another power outta his ass by making the ground swallow up Manolo alive to Rebeca's horror -- who still hasn't gotten out of there with Olivia. Which, she finally does now that she's been able to witness Manolo's apparent death.

Over with Sheriff, he's pulled the Symbol from his pocket and is staring intently at The Axe.

Scene 71: At the church, they're doing their part with chant/prayer for God's intervention. Padre is looking a bit on the cusp of a blackout. I wish I could say we'll see an Old Inhabited-by-Battle-Angels Priest give a smackdown to Zombie Satan-Monk... but, no. ALAS.

Scene 72: Back at Tombville, Sheriff starts his final showdown with Satan-Monk. Rebeca and Olivia retreat outdoors, but Olivia resists leaving Papa behind.

In the meantime, the dynamite wicks are burning away toward the big kaboom, and Old Padre and the congregation continue chanting to a rising celestial wind.

At the battlesite, Sheriff manages to sink axe into Satan-Monk's chest, causing him to foam at the mouth with white vomit. Daddio retreats just before the dynamite blows.


Scene 73: Things aren't quite over yet, as Satan-Monk comes stumbling out of the fire with the axe still in his chest. He then falls anti-climactically and burns up.

Meanwhile, Rebeca's face breaks into a large, surprised grin when Manolo somehow comes stumbling out of the darkness carrying a bag. It's full of treasure saved, which is the bag he hid at the side of the road from way back when and makes no sense as to how he retrieved it, let alone being alive and is dumb.

Embracing goes on everywhere. We get no satisfactory explanation for Manolo's unlikely survival from the opening earth of smothering. We close on Rebeca and Manolo sharing kisses... and there isn't even a twist-it's-not-over-yet ending! Yay!

Commentary: Oh, and to make it seem like the Padre had a point once his exposition is out of the way, I'm choosing to ascribe Manolo's miraculous survival to him and the parishioners, because otherwise they were a waste of film.

The Good: There are some nice gore effects on display.

I really liked Fernando Almada as our Dashing Sheriff. I also really enjoyed Edna Bolkan who really did more with her simplistic role than she had to.

The Bad: There was a lot of unnecessary cutting to scenes which served no purpose, especially involving Padre when we should have stayed in the thick of the action.

More unnecessary cutting to scenes were also involving nearly all of Jorge and Andrea, at least before they arrived at the jail cell to get killed.

One of the weaknesses is the look of Satan-Monk... his costume is really boring, and despite the monster makeup, he spends so much time concealed in a dark hood that he turns out to be a rather unmemorable and dull villain through most of the movie.

Other Thoughts: I will admit that the film, I think mostly due to the constant jumping around, drags a bit. I don't think the pacing is bad enough for The Bad, though.

Also, you'll see a lot of borrowed horror scenes and some cliches. This doesn't bother me, since you should expect these things coming into a horror film, but your mileage may vary. There are references to Friday the 13th, The Omen and ALIEN especially.

The Characters aren't actively painful throughout this one, which is a minor miracle for any slasher movie. I think that Armando was meant to be the comic relief, but his jackassness and jokey-persona was never taken to the level of "kill it now" Odious, so that was nice.

It struck me as a bit weird that Sheriff's daughter wasn't more of a focus of the film, and we spent so much screen time with Rebeca and her weak psychic senses. I kept expecting focus to switch toward Olivia at some point, but she pretty much remains strictly supporting even when she's the main target of Satan Monk.

Although there are some good special effects, Satan Monk isn't exactly one of them. His zombied hands are too obviously thick gloves and while I found the pointy teeth a nice touch, the rest of his "look" was dull, especially his cloak and hood.

The Score: There isn't really a lot to talk about with this one. It's your standard horror slasher movie that is enjoyable while your watching for the most part, but isn't brilliant. The characters aren't irritating or too dumb to live, while they also aren't exactly memorable (except for Olivia due to the actress). It has some kills that are well done, and some others that are more 'meh'. If you like these sorts of killer-zombie flicks, it's an okay movie to spend time with. I'm not sure you'll be rushing to tell all your friends to check it out, though.

3.25 out of 5 stars

Tags: review ladrones de tumbas

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