"Mas alla del Terror" has a typical, 80s video store cover that just screams at you "borrow me!".
I am always happy to look for films from the blessed 70s and 80s, of which I have previously heard little or nothing, and which, often just because of their lurid title and / or cover, immediately catch my eye and make me curious. Sometimes you find a real trash pearl, sometimes it's the well known grab in the toilet, and often it's just a film that is neither particularly good, nor particularly outstanding, and in the last category falls in my opinion the reviewed here "Mas alla del Terror".
Made in Spain in 1980, the flick is a mix, consisting in the first half of the film of the typical "terror movie" of the 70s and then about halfway through the film veers towards horror/scary shocker. This works surprisingly quite well, which is rare in such films. Unfortunately, however, the film has some sags, there is practically nothing happening on screen, apart from rolled out dialogues, which may have caused a small outcry 40 years ago due to their blasphemy and vulgar nature, but today merely bore the viewer due to their length. The beginning is similarly long, it takes about 8 minutes until Lola and her horny - and of course happily married - stud of higher age finally arrive at the place of their planned coitus. Before that, you watch Lola sitting in some cafe, smoking, looking at her watch and drinking her coke. Very exciting.
After that, however, things pick up, Lola stabs the guy pretty cold-bloodedly, meets up with her other cronies, buys hash/coke, and raid in a pub, which quickly ends in a bloodbath after the arrival of two patrol/motorcycle cops. This is followed by a short ride with two kidnapped scourges, only to leave two dead again at the grandmother, who at first glance seems lovable. But then the foot is clearly taken off the gas pedal, both in the film itself by Nico, as well as by the director. There is a lot of talking, you explore a little the church and the surrounding homestead, but apart from a lot of dialogue, it's all quite dull.
Only in the last 20 minutes or so does the movie pick up speed again, but even then I was somewhat disappointed by what was shown. The biggest drawback is that almost all of the murders happen off-screen. Chema, for example, is standing on top of the church tower looking for the ominous dog seen by several of the protagonists. When he turns to go down the stairs, said dog is standing in front of him, growling at him. Cut to Linda and Lola in the church. Linda then goes in search of Chema - whom she has more or less voluntarily thrown herself at in the course of the plot - and discovers him dangling upside down in the stairwell of the tower, with a bloody wound on his neck. Pretty disappointing. Only Lola, the last of the nasty gang, who gets it in the neck, is shot until finally, watch out, her skull explodes! But don't expect any fireworks like in "Scanners", just not that, not even close. But it is at least positive that you witness her death live, so to speak, and the whole thing is then also the bloodiest or goriest effect of the strip.
A few scenes invite a smile, for example during Linda's demise: The good one, after she has found the dead Chema, sets off as if bitten by a monkey into the catacombs, and is then surrounded by some kind of mummified corpses, which first grope her as if they want to celebrate an orgy with her and later she stands, apparently dead, between the mummies, wrapped in centimeter-thick cobwebs. The funny thing is that during the groping orgy, the extras under the quite acceptable mummy masks are fiddling with Linda with their stinky normal styluses, it just looks ridiculous.
Similarly, the fellow Andras, who always appears shortly before one of the gang members and their 2 scourges/escapees bites the dust, signals the approaching death: This Andras is namely the ghost of the boy who burned in the house, and at least Chema would have to know exactly what he looks like, but he doesn't make the slightest impression in the film, as if that were the case, very strange from the viewer's point of view....
Pretty good is the title track of the film, is played at the beginning and especially towards the end, in the last 20 minutes again and again, I like it. Of the actors I do not know a single nose, neither from the face, nor from the name, but for a film of this caliber, they are all through the bank away okay, the actresses of the two women Lola and Linda sometimes scratch the overacting, but otherwise it keeps within limits.
Also the nihilistic atmosphere, which is clarified by a little background to Lola and Niko, does the film good, as does the location of the dilapidated church and catacombs below.
Small info on the side: Under the name of the screenwriter hides the old Iberian swashbuckler Juan Piquer Simon, so I'm not surprised that you can marvel at the burning house of the grandmother a model cottage, which was torched.
Conclusion: I found the film okay, quite okay, friends of the European trash cinema of the late 70s and 80s can risk a look, but in the end it's nothing more.
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