Trampa infernal

Of course I had never heard about the 1989 Mexican horror movie "Trampa Infernal" (aka "Hell's Trap") prior to sitting down and watching it ere in 2024. I stumbled upon the movie by sheer luck, and seeing it was a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I found the time to sit down and watch it.

Writers Pedro Galindo III and Santiago Galindo, with the former also directing the movie, actually put together a fair enough script and storyline. It was a pretty straightforward story, although it was somewhat generic, but still proved to be a watchable and fairly entertaining movie to watch.

Given my extremely limited exposure to the Mexican cinema, much less late 1980s Mexican cinema, then of course I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. The acting performances in "Trampa Infernal" were fair.

Visually then the movie was actually okay. It wasn't a movie that had an abundance of special effects on the screen in every single scene, but whatever effects were being used proved to be passable and fair, even by today's standards.

"Trampa Infernal" might worth sitting down to watch if you enjoy slasher horror movies, though you're not in for anything grand here.

My rating of director Pedro Galindo III's 1989 movie "Trampa Infernal" lands on a four out of ten stars.

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.

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.

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.

'Hell's Trap' or as it's known in its original language 'Trampa Infernal' is a decent and somewhat effective 80's Mexican slasher flick that starts off with a strong opening that does a great job of setting the tone for what's to come with all the usual fun genre tropes thrown in for good measure. But things take a turn for the worse during the second act when the filmmakers decide to go for a more action-oriented direction which comes across as an odd choice and doesn't entirely work in the film's favour resulting in something very uneven.

The Plot = Two rivals Nacho (Pedro Fernandez) and Mauricio (Tono Mauri), along with a group of friends intend to hunt down a bear in a forest that has been killing people but find themselves stalked by a deranged masked killer.

There are some decent elements to this flick such as a cool looking killer with an impressive amount of weapons at his arsenal and a few effective kills, and while there are plenty of fun moments, the film unfortunately falls flat in quite a few areas such as the pacing feels a lot longer than the scant 77 minutes as there's too much padding and the acting isn't all that great and it doesn't help that the film doesn't do a great job of setting any of the characters up. The off mixture of horror and action elements doesn't work as both genre aspects feel a little short changed and left me wondering why they didn't just go with one or the other.

Overall 'Hell's Trap' is a very average slasher flick that does have some entertaining qualities to it and does manage to maintain some interest due to it being so strange, but it's not something that comes highly recommended.