BA_Harrison The classy opening credits to Hell's Trap feature the strong use of large white typography on a jet black background, which initially made me think that this was going to be a pretentious art-house horror; it came as a bit of a (pleasant) surprise, therefore, when the film turned out to be a rather fun Mexican backwoods horror complete with mullet-haired hunks, lovely latino bimbos, and a cool killer sporting a creepy plastic mask and a mean set of Freddy Krueger-style finger blades.For much of its running time, Hell's Trap comes off a bit like a Spanish-speaking version of The Final Terror: both films use the remote natural environment to deliver plenty of atmosphere, and both film's killers use their familiarity with the surrounding area to allow them to stay hidden from view even when within spitting distance of their next victim.That said, Hell's Trap proves to be marginally more enjoyable than The Final Terror thanks to director Pedro Galindo III also finding time for some dumb trashy fun along with all the creepy stuff, including a pair of sexy señoritas in revealing swimsuits, bargain basement gore galore, and some ridiculously OTT machine gun action in the explosive finalé.

Coventry Talk about a blast opening, "Trampa Infernal" has the coolest opening credits ever! Guided by musical tones that are perhaps slightly inspired by the legendary "Friday the 13th" theme (Tsh-Tsh-Tsh-Ha-Ha-Ha), the names of the lead players appear on screen split up in giant syllables. Promising intro of a totally obscure Mexican slasher/backwoods survival thriller and it only becomes cooler with every minute that passes. Two extremely competitive and testosterone-overloaded paintball enemies challenge each other to the ultimate showdown in a sleazy bar. According to a newspaper article, there's a savage bear loose in the nearby woods and it already killed multiple of the hunters that tried to catch it. The challenge includes that whoever kills the bear will be declared the ultimate macho hero with the biggest set of balls. Upon arrival, however, it quickly becomes obvious they're not up against a bear but a bewildered and utterly maniacal war veteran with quite an arsenal of weapons in his hideout and numerous combat tricks up his sleeve. After a whole decade of tame and derivative American slashers, this early 90's Mexican effort looks and feels very refreshing and vivid. The formula is simplistic but efficient, the lead characters are plausible enough and the building up towards the confrontations with the sadist killer is reasonably suspenseful. The maniac must have been a fan of Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, as he also uses a self-made glove with sharp knives attached to it and a white mask to cover his face. The murders are pleasingly nasty and barbaric, which I was really hoping for since the awesome aforementioned opening sequences, and waste a whole lot of gratuitous blood. The forestry setting and particularly the camouflaged booby traps are joyously spectacular. "Trampa Internal" is a Mexican slasher/survival sleeper hit that comes warmly recommended to the fans of the genre.

Backlash007 ~Spoiler~ I wasn't aware that Mexico made any slashers during the "craze" period from the late 70's to the late 80's. But they did. And I'm really glad I accidentally watched it. Hell's Trap is silly fun, but fun nonetheless. I had rented a movie called Cemetery of Terror and this film was on the opposite side of the disc. As is usually the case, I enjoyed this much better than Cemetery. Hell's Trap has one of the goofiest plot devices of any slasher. Nacho and Mauricio are fierce rivals and compete over everything. During a brutal game of paintball (Yes, it starts out just like The Zero Boys) Mauricio gets beaten badly and has had enough. Mauricio must prove to everyone in town that he is the best. Does anyone in the town care? I don't think so. So he comes up with a plan to show Nacho once and for all that he can beat him. What is this plan? I'm glad you asked. He wants to go to a secluded area in the woods where a recent string of bear mutilations have made front page news. Whoever kills the bear first will be, once and for all, the best in town. Is the guy an idiot? You don't wake up one morning and decide to hunt bears. Anyway, this is just an excuse to get a bunch of teens out in the woods to be killed off by a maniac. Speaking of maniacs, our slasher is Jesse. Jesse is a homicidal Vietnam vet who thinks he's still fighting the war. I'm not really sure why a crazed Vietnam vet is residing in Mexico, but what the hell? I'll go with it. He looks like a cross between Buckethead and Freddy Krueger. He wears that same mask Buckethead wears, without the bucket of course, and he wears a glove that is in every way the same as Freddy's except for the knives. He gives Freddy the finger and puts the biggest saw blades you've ever seen on the glove. Seriously, how's he even holding that thing up? But this is all part of the fun. The kills are somewhat unconventional because Jesse does resort to a high-powered M16 assault rifle once all else fails. It's pretty hysterical, but does make sense for a vet to use. The best scene is at the end of the film when our mulleted hero rigs a trap of his own for the diabolical Jesse. Taking a page out of The Hills Have Eyes, he blows him up in an old RV/truck vehicle. The music swells and Nacho lifts his head to the sky...victorious. Nacho Supreme baby.

lazarillo After hearing that several hunters were killed by a "bear", a group of macho Mexican mullet-heads and their fashion-victim girlfriends go off in the woods to hunt for it. The "bear" though turns out to be a creepy-looking homicidal guy with self-fashioned finger claws. Due to the villain's weapons some would probably tag this movie as a rip-off of "A Nightmare on Elm Street", but it is actually more similar to rural massacre/slasher movies like "Just Before Dawn" or "Hunter's Blood", or even, given the whole homicidal "bear" thing, "Girls' Nite Out". The problem though isn't that this movie rips-off any American movie all that much, but conversely that it deviates too much from the formula of a successful slasher movie and turns into a particularly brain-dead Latino sub-Rambo action movie about halfway through.The killer is effectively scary-looking, but instead of being content to pick his victims off one-by-one in typical slasher-movie fashion, he tries to take them all on, even though there's five of them and they have rifles while he has finger-knives. But then, out of nowhere he whips out a sub-machine gun, and the movie descends rapidly into complete stupidity. It isn't just that I personally hate action movies (which I certainly do), but the filmmakers don't really have the budget to effectively make even a low-budget American-style action movie.There's also a sorry lack of gratuitous nudity. Mexico is a slightly more conservative country than the US, but if you've ever spent five minutes in a Mexican strip club, you know it's not that hard to find pretty girls to take their clothes off for a little bit of money. The two best-looking girls here though do little than model their 80's-style bikinis before they are violently dispatched, and its the other homelier, more portly girl who gets kidnapped by the killer. I wouldn't complain about this though if the movie had otherwise lived up to its initial promise. This movie isn't entirely bad, but it is pretty disappointing.