I am by nature a lover of many things that are
traditionally considered to be in poor taste: bad movies, terrible puns, pro
wrestling—you get the gist. It was my very lucky day when I found a film that
combined all of these things (with some other…well, less enjoyable tasteless
qualities like misogyny and racism) into one film not even long enough to be
considered feature-length: Wrestlemaniac!
Clocking in at 75 minutes (that’s 1.25 episodes of ‘Law
& Order’ on cable for those of you who, like me, use episodes of ‘Law &
Order’ as a timekeeping mechanism) and also known as El Mascarado Massacre,
this film is blissfully free in its entirety on Youtube (link). At the time of
my viewing, it had a mere 298,220 views and one lone comment reading, “stupid
movie~beside the chicks” so I knew I was in for a treat, particularly
considering that in this world, a video of a baby panda sneezing can rack up
more than 209 MILLION views.
I chose Wrestlemaniac solely based on its name
and its free-ness on YouTube, and was really pleasantly surprised when the final
actor credited during the opening sequence was Rey Misterio. If you’ve seen any
WWE in the last 10-15 years, you may be familiar with Rey Mysterio Jr., who is
inexplicably the nephew, not son, of Rey Misterio. I do not understand this
naming convention. I cannot claim to know why there is a variation in spelling,
either. Wrestling moves in mysterious ways, you know? It’s best not to
question. Anyway, Rey Misterio the elder was very much a legend in Mexico in
the 70s and 80s and trained his nephew, who is a pretty big talent within WWE,
so I was excited.
Let me give you the premise of this film: six people set out
in a van to Mexico to film a very low-budget porno. All of these people are big
dumb dummies and I’m not sure who we’re supposed to like. There is, of course,
the trope of 20 minutes with jerks but since this movie is shorter than a weekly episode of 'The Biggest Loser,' we are mercifully given a reprieve to make it about a solid ten minutes of character
development. This is more than enough to decide that these people are big dumb
dummies and I really don’t care about them. There is the Alpha Male, the Fat Guy, the
Stoner Guy and three blonde porno actresses. I was not planning to refer to any
of them by name to show how little I care about their impending doom, but I
realized that two of them were named Debbie and Dallas. Nothing like a shout
out to classic porn, right? The third is named Daisy and you need not remember
that because she doesn’t have a single line of dialogue. She begins the movie
passed out in the van.
She wakes up, stumbles into the porno shoot, pulls out a boob, barfs, is murdered. Just like that. That's Daisy's character arc.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. The dumdums naturally get lost and really fantastic,
thoughtful dialogue ensues. Regarding finding their way to Cabo:
Alpha Male: Aren’t you Mexican?
Fat Guy: Yeah but I was born in Seattle, dude.
Alpha Male: (pause) Whatever, still Mexican. I know you could find your way to a taco stand.
That’s pretty much Alpha Male’s ‘tude for the duration of
his onscreen time. He stops the van at a rickety old gas station and they speak
with the proprietor, who tells them of a nearby ghost town called La Sangre de
Dios—which our Mexican character referenced above translates as “The Blood of
Christ.” No sir, I took Spanish 4 in high school and I am fairly certain that
would be La Sangre de Cristo and that dios means god... but whatever. This town
has been abandoned because of a maniacal pro wrestler who, from what I could
gather from the disjointed plot of this film, has gone bonkers and killed
everyone in sight. Now he lives there alone—the luchador Mascarado (the masked
man, I think? I don’t quite recall from the aforementioned Spanish 4
experience, lo siento Señora Glaser!)
As you may have guessed, Rey Misterio is Mascarado. His
first two kills are of our most expendable characters (Stoner Guy and Barfing
Daisy, who dashes off the porno set to barf and for reasons I cannot understand, runs about 350 yards
before she slams her bare feet into a bunch of broken glass and then is
murdered.) When the body of Stoner Guy is found, we see that his face has been
peeled off his skull, which is actually a pretty excellent touch.
Mascarado comes for the rest of our intrepid porn crew less
Dallas, who has set to repair the van that Alpha Male has wrecked—her dad’s a
mechanic, see?—so she is basically oblivious to all of this. Alpha Male dies a decent gory death, his ugly mug smashed into brick by the back of his
hair like a face to a turnbuckle. It is also in this scene that I first noticed
the imaginative camera work to distract from the fact that Rey Misterio is only
5’9”. He’s pretty jacked in this movie, but it’s a little bit hard to be
afraid of a villain who is significantly shorter than some of his victims. This
is accomplished through a lot of killer-POV shots and also some creative
backlighting.
Anyway, Fat Guy and Debbie discover Mascarado’s killing room
in which he has crudely fashioned a wrestling ring out of rope and rusty
barrels and the walls are covered with stretched, grotesque faces that have
been removed from Mascarado’s victims.
Fat Guy realizes that Mascarado is playing by the rules of
wrestling: in Mexican wrestling, unmasking a rival luchador is the ultimate
humiliation that only occurs after a major loss. He puts on the luchador mask
that he has been carrying around for reasons that are not explained to the audience and prepares for his own squared
circle bout with the killer Mascarado.
Eventually Dallas fixes the van and then has a protracted
chase scene with Mascarado. I would not normally do this, but I am going to
describe for you, shot-for-shot, the end of the movie (I get it, this is a
major spoiler, but were you really going to watch Wrestlemaniac? Be honest with
yourselves. If so, skip the next two paragraphs.)
Daisy is told that she needs to remove Mascarado’s luchador
mask and that will be the end of him forever because of the humiliation, presumably? This of course makes no sense
because we have previously been told that he had been given “50 lobotomies and
they didn’t work for shit” and I would imagine that the medical professionals
involved took his mask off for these procedures. It’s unclear. Anyway, Daisy
smacks him in the back with a board full of nails and then brutally impales him
with a 5-foot long, 2-inch wide length of metal pipe that really ought to kill
him. She reaches over to remove his mask but he grabs her arm, Carrie-style,
and she runs out of the room, leaving him impaled and alone.
She makes it to the exit of the building and collapses on
the floor in tears because she is a whiner. An unseen force blows the doors open and we
can see that the van is parked just outside, headlights on. A renewed Daisy
stands up. As mysteriously (misteriously? I’m sorry, I can’t help myself) as
they opened, the doors swing closed. Daisy bursts through them, rushing towards
the van and screaming. Suddenly she slows, stops, and looks down. Now she is
impaled by the pipe and she slumps to the ground. WHAT. The next and final shot of
the movie is Rey Misterio driving away in the van, listening to some country
song. WHAT. I have no explanation for this-- I guess it's just another "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY!" moment in horror.
I am also 1300 words into a review of a movie that probably
had fewer than 1300 words of dialogue so I really need to wrap it up. In
summation, this movie was most definitely so bad it was good. So much of the
budget must have been spent on fake blood. One of the deaths is by a
backbreaker, a classic wrestling move. Much like Barfing Daisy, Rey Misterio also
has no lines and it truly doesn't matter at all. It’s great. Do yourself a favor and
spend 1.25 ‘Law & Order’ episodes on Wrestlemaniac. One of these days I'll review something for you that's actually good--until then, WRESTLEMANIAAAAAC!!!
