#181 -- Wrestlemaniac (2006)

Rating: 4 / 5
Director: Jesse Baget

This was another one that  my boyfriend and I were really excited to watch together. My boyfriend is a huge wrestling fan, and he got me into it when we first met. He knows how much of a horror fan I am, but he doesn't share that passion. So it's cool when we find movies that combine the two things, so that we can enjoy something together. Not too long ago, we watched Monster Brawl, another horror movie based on wrestling. That one was more of a comedy-horror type of thing, but we both enjoyed it. This one was trying to be a legitimate horror movie, though, and I think it succeeded. what we were both  most interested in, though, was the fact that it starred an actual wrestler. With a movie like this, you run the risk of there being a whole lot of ass-kicking, but not a lot of gore. That's true here, and that's one of the things I didn't like. Most of the kills were off screen or obscured by something; or we couldn't see the killer, El Mascarado (Rey Misterio, Sr.), at all. There was one scene in which El Mascarado kicked some serious ass. It was just an ass-kicking, but it was a fucking brutal ass-kicking. The guy didn't have any teeth left by the time Mascarado was finished with him. Oh, and he didn't have a face either.

If you know anything about Mexican wrestling, you know that to have their mask removed is the biggest humiliation there is. There's nothing worse. So when El Mascarado wins his fights with the fine folks that had the misfortune of stumbling into his lair, naturally he wanted to humiliate them by removing their masks. The only problem was they weren't wearing any masks, so the only thing he had to rip off them was their faces.

Okay, here's the whole story. El Mascarado came onto the wrestling scene from out of nowhere. He was seriously strong and dangerous, and they were thankful for him at first. But after a while, he started killing his opponents in the ring. He was banned from wrestling, naturally, and sent for psychiatric help. We learned from an audio reel that he was given several lobotomies to try and tame whatever was making him so crazy, but that didn't quite work out for them. My question is: why isn't he dead? They even used live test subjects to see if their tests worked. They'd put the poor victims in a room or ring with El Mascarado, and he'd tear them all apart. When they couldn't think of anything else to do, they sent him to an old ghost town called La Sangre de Dios. There, he waits for anyone to stumble onto his path.

Those "stumblers" happen to be the crew of an amateur porno flick. Alfonse, the director, is a complete asshole and we can't wait to see  El Mascarado fuck him up (and fuck him up, he does). Steve is the nerdy Mexican cameraman; he's the one we like, and he's also the only one who really knows anything about what's going on. There's Jimbo, the token stoner who doesn't really have much of a point. Then there's the girls: Dallas, Daisy, and Debbie. They're hot, but not all that bright. Of course. The only one with a little sense is Dallas, which is cool 'cause she's the hottest one of them all. After a while, Steve figures out that the only way to stop El Mascarado is to take his mask off, humiliating him and forcing him to "retire." Unfortunately, he never gets the chance to test out his theory, because his little match with Mascarado does not end well for him. He does get the chance to relay the news to Dallas, though, so that she can take him out. Dallas spent the majority of the "fight" scenes outside, trying to fix the van that Alfonse had fucked up (she's a mechanic!), so she showed up a little late. Anyways, she tries to get the mask off, but she gets too scared and flees (well, tries to flee...) El Mascarado ends up with the van, making his way back to civilization to cause mayhem. So, would removing his mask stop him? No one knows, I guess.

There were a few problems with this movie. The first that comes to mind is the lack of naked bodies. They were a porn crew after all, right? I'm not saying there wasn't any boobage, but there was very little. And the hottest one didn't get naked at all. But that's not a big problem, I don't think. The big problem was the fact that most of the kills happened off screen. We didn't get to see much of them, but it seemed like they mostly consisted of people getting beat to death. There was a whole lot of blood, though, and I'm not really sure where it all came from. Maybe just from having their faces ripped off? (They supposedly had their faces ripped off, but it just looked to me like they had blood rubbed on them) So there actually was a lot of blood, we just didn't get to see where it came from. They could have used a lot more wrestling moves in creative ways. The only one I noticed was a back breaker, which was actually kind of disappointed. My boyfriend suggested a hurricanrana into some barbed wire or some other sharp object. That would have been badass. If you don't know what a hurricanrana is, look it up. They're fucking awesome in regular wrestling, so putting one into a horror movie with some weapons would have been wonderful. But alas, there were no awesome wrestling moves here. Just off screen ass-whoopins that apparently caused bloodbaths.

Even with these problems, though, I really enjoyed the movie. I expected it to be stupid and silly, like Monster Brawl was. But it was a legitimate slasher movie. It lacked the gore and creative kills the best slasher movies have, but it was a slasher movie nonetheless. There was a big masked man chasing stupid half-naked girls around. They weren't out in the woods, but they were in a town in Mexico that was apparently called The Middle of No-Fucking-Where. And the ghost town setting made it pretty spooky. It was fun.

Some more screen caps, 'cause I can