The Curse of el Charro DVD Review - MovieWeb

Putting camp aside, it is very rare that I assign a positive review to these films. Most of them do not come close to successfully combining a tight screenplay with skillful direction to create an effective horror masterpiece. However, some titles do strive for such perfection and fail miserably.

One recent example is The Curse of El Charro.
Originally aired on Showtime, El Charro is the story of Maria (Mia Hoyos). Still traumatized after the suicide of her sister, Maria sets out on a road trip into the desert with three girlfriends.

While her companions desire nothing more than to get wasted and have promiscuous sex with any guy they can find, Maria cannot get her sister's fate out of her head.
Once arriving at their destination, the stage it set for weirdness. Characters that appear David Lynchian in nature crawl out of the woodwork.

As if these creeps are not enough to scare these girls into running for the hills, a mysterious, dark figure is spotted wandering around the outskirts of the resort. Before long, the girls and their boy toys are plucked off one by one by this man who calls himself El Charro. Who is El Charro?

Perhaps the film reveals this with a clever twist. Then again, perhaps it reveals nothing and instead compensates for this gap with scene-upon-scene of gratuitous blood and gore.
El Charro is a film that actually attempts to be something different.

Various techniques are used by director Rich Ragsdale to evoke old school conventions of the horror genre. This includes the occasional 1970's graininess and sequences complete with intertitles that pay homage to silent horror. Generally I would consider such techniques to be smashingly brilliant.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers somehow manage to concoct a poor mixture of high style and low-grade content. Following a silent film reenactment that takes El Charro into art house territory, numerous hormonally charged young people are still picked off without a drop of creativity.
As for the cast, the main characters are played by unknowns.

This does not include adult film star Tabitha Stevens. However, many may recognize Andrew Bryniarski as El Charro. After breaking through as Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw remake, Bryniarski refuses to remove the prosthetics, and refuses to state cohesive dialogue as the menacing El Charro.

In fact, his dialogue is done by thuggish character actor Danny Trejo. Either El Charro is so complex that he requires two actors, or Mr. Bryniarski does not have the best line delivery.