Hell's Trap (1990)

It’s hard to understand that Hell’s Trap (or the way cooler original title, Trampa Infernal!) was released in 1990, because the fantastic mullets and outdated clothes make it seem more like 1987. Produced by the Galindo Group, and that means – as usual – that this is more or less a family affair. Pedro Galindo III handles the direction duties this time and does it very well. But over to the story:

A couple of youths (I’m not sure they are suppose to be teenagers) goes out on the wilderness to… hunt bear! Dressed in the “latest” fashion and with no obvious skill in hunting bear (but with fixing their hair). After almost killing a rabbit they settle for the night, just to await their horrible destiny: a killer with a pale, anonymous mask on his face, a female wig and Freddy Krueger’s saw-glove on! Yes, saw-glove, no knifes here. This killer is no damn pussy!

To be honest, Hell’s Trap is an effective backwoods-slasher with quite a good amount of blood (but no gore) and well-directed by Pedro Galindo III. Even if the story is extremely unoriginal, the killer is creepy and the kids (at least) funny to look at. The action, chases and so on is shot better than usual in this kind of low-budget flick and delivers a few surprising deaths.

This is one of the first Mexican commercial horror movies from the eighties I’ve seen who was shot in Spanish and not dub seem to have been made. Which is a bit weird, because this form of horror movie must have been easy to sell to other markets. This was a time when such an “odd” language like Spanish in a non-art movie surely would have been overdubbed with the more accessible English.

But sure, this is no masterpiece and those who expect something expensive and very graphic will be disappointed. I wasn’t, because it managed to entertain me, which haven’t been possible with a slasher for a long time now.