This movie is probably as layered and intricate as Mexican horror from the 80s gets, but that’s a good thing. Odds are that you’ve never heard of this gory little oddity so let me enlighten you.

This blood-soaked, black magic and zombies movie begins innocently enough. A group of teens (pushing fifty), decide to water ski and then spend that night, Halloween night no less, having a drunken party at the old abandoned house by the cemetery. At the same time, Doctor Cardan (played by Hugo Stiglitz from my least-favorite Jaws rip-off Tintorera) is trying to convince a stubborn detective (ala Dr. Loomis) that the body of the recently-executed madman Devlon must be cremated to kill the evil inside him once and forever. Why stop there? The Screenwriter says and adds a group of kids headed to the cemetery to test their bravery on this dark and desolate Halloween night. One kid even wears his lucky Michael Jackson jacket for protection...okay, the motive was mine, but there really is a kid wearing that jacket.

The senior citizen teens head to the abandoned house and start partying until they find an old black book with spells to raise the dead and crap. They decide to kick the party up a notch and steal a body to raise it from the dead; the groups sneaks into a morgue and unwittingly steal Devlon’s body just seconds before Dr. Cardan and the detective show up to burn the body. Where has it gone? The AARP members, I mean the teens, go to the cemetery and read a spell, bringing Devlon back to life, who slaughters each and every one of them in gratuitously gory ways.

The crazy Halloween-loving kids from before show up finally as they arrive in the cemetery and traipse into the heart of what can only be described as a massive burial ground. They reach the center only to have a tombstone burst in flames in front of them inexplicably, sending them tearing ass out of the cemetery. They stumble onto the abandoned house and run into Devlon, who conjures up an army of zombies to chase the kids through the rest of the cemetery. Finally Dr. Cardan shows up and instructs the kids to race back to the house and burn the black book to end it all, but they’ll have to battle their way past the army of the dead and Devlon himself to do it.

Despite a ridiculous plot full of too many coincidences and a lazy opening, I thoroughly enjoyed this film. When it came to killing, the film did not disappoint with maximum damage inflicted with a surprising helping of gore. Devlon even scoops out a girl’s guts in one scene! The finale was the best part, though, and the zombies were some of the best since Return of the Living Dead. If you decide to show this for a party or something, then just fast forward to the last ten minutes, which were a blast. The rest of it was good too, don’t get me wrong, but without that exciting zombie-filled climax it would have been a standard slasher movie.

- Jose Prendes