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In a nutshell
“Wrestlemaniac” hurts so good. It’s a stupid, moronic, and outright
cheesy slasher flick and yet… I liked it. Believe it or not,
“Wrestlemaniac” has every opportunity to fall on its face. It’s a little
over an hour in length, it has this obnoxious yellow tint, and has some
terrible acting, but the first ten minutes really do sell us on the
intentions of it being nothing more than a tongue in cheek horror farce.
I mean, when the primary monster is a psychotic luchador, you have to
make the compromise and loosen your strings a bit, folks.
“Wrestlemaniac” is a lot like the drunken uncle of yours during parties.
While it’s ultimately a fun display, you really don’t take it too
seriously and even occasionally spit on it. A bunch of college kids on
the way to Cabo San Lucas accidentally arrive in a ghost town to be told
the legend of El Mascarado by a demented old man running a gas station.
You have to love how Baget squeezes in so many clichés all in a fifteen
minute interval. This allows
our characters a reason to discuss El Mascarado and limply
extrapolate the character of El Mascarado, an insane
luchador who is now on the hunt for the inept gringos.
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Played by the famous (?) Rey Mysterio Sr., his name credit
is just there for the street cred for Wrestling fans; in all
actuality, Mysterio has only a small cameo here. The rest is
done by a body double and tricky camera work based around
first person perspective, and a stunt man performing the
wrestling moves on the victims. Yes, El Mascarado
performs wrestling moves on his victims, did you expect a knife or
machete at his disposal? |
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Mysterio only has about ten minutes of camera
time combined to provide a sense of validity toward this monster’s
threat. This all leads into a typical hunt and chase where El Mascarado
takes out these morons one by one. This all comes full circle when, yes,
Baget chooses his only survivor to discover the source of El Mascarado’s
power (uh… his mask) which must then be taken off in… a wrestling match
to the death! And in the category of "Horror
defying logic": The Final Girl proclaims she fixed the bus, the
only route of escape from El Mascarado, but proceeds to hide in the
bus without driving off, and stabs the monster with the keys to the
bus preventing her from leaving. Gots ta love bad writing.
“Wrestlemaniac” is just unreal from start to finish. I
couldn’t believe that Baget committed to such hokey outrageous plot
devices presuming it to be actual horror fodder. I highly doubt this
will appeal to even the most understanding horror audiences. So you’re
probably asking questions while looking at this review and I’ll just
respond with: Yes, it’s every bit as bad as you assume. Yes, it is an
awful concept. Yes, it is brainless as all hell from start to finish. No, it’s nothing like
“Hatchet.” And yes, I actually had some fun. Whether you choose to take
it as a good hour helped with many beers, or as reasonably one of the
worst movies of all time is up to you.
Director Baget
goes for a goofy tongue in cheek “Hatchet” atmosphere and fails on every
conceivable level providing a movie filled with awful acting, terrible
dialogue, and an end product so unequivocally awful that… yes, it’s
quite good. Fans of the horror-wrestler subgenre need apply.
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