Mexican luchadores travel back in time and find themselves in colonial Mexico, where they try to get back to the present battling witches, Spanish conquistadores and Aztec warriors. Simply by reading the plot of this surreal film you have one certainty, there is absolutely no way this can be a good movie. Now, there are two kinds of bad films; those that are simply badly done and offer no reason to watch them, and those that are bad but turn out to be a lot of fun due to their inconsistencies and absurd. When you start watching Leyendas Macabras de la Colonia you are hoping to get this second kind of bad, but due to terrible acting, a plot full of holes and the attempt to make fun of itself it turns out to be a film of the first kind.
After opening with the obligatory wrestling scene, which is unnecessary, with ten minutes in which no story or character is developed, the luchadores Tinieblas, Mil Máscaras and El Fantasma Blanco join two ladies in the house of Tinieblas to celebrate their victory. There a cursed painting takes them back in time. That should be the cue for the mindless fun to start, but after some promising minutes in which the three masked men quickly dispatch a whole group of Spanish soldiers, and after we find Lorena Velázquez is an evil witch, the movie is incapable of keeping any interest.
Even for an absurd film like this the plot has too many wholes, we never know why the hell the painting was cursed, there is never a moment in which either the time travelers or the people from the past get some surprise about their situation, we spend a lot of time with the luchadores just walking around a house looking for a way in, we have to wonder why the hell Mil Máscaras and El Fantasma Blanco stand as simple watchers while his partner is about to be sacrificed, and after they manage to return to their time we miss any resolution to the story as they leave a wounded hero in the clutches of the witch which apparently can't be stopped, what happens to that? No one will know.
The acting is of course to bad, the main characters at least learned their lines, but there are a bunch of extras with nothing to do, the Aztec warriors are a bunch of fat people walking around in loincloths which makes a humiliating clothing for them. A group of Spanish conquistadores captured by the witch just walk to their cell with absolutely no expression in their faces, as if getting captured by supernatural forces was a daily event for them. And the two ladies that join the luchadores in their surreal trip (while given the chance to break the painting and taking them back to their time) serve no other purpose than showing up their bodies. Evidently they did not care to find real actresses for the roles and they just signed the first big breasted women that agreed to wear mini skirts and tight clothes.
All of this would be forgettable and funny if the film took itself seriously, but Leyendas Macabras de la Colonia commits the biggest sin a B movie can make, it tries to make fun of itself, therefore killing the chance of being actually amusing. For example the constant jokes about Tinieblas being a womanizer and a final wrestling match between Tinieblas and three over weighted Aztec warriors. A great B movie like Plan 9 From Outer Space are classics because they are in fact trying to make a great film, and all their mistakes are unintended, when a bad film is done with full conscience that it is bad and when it tries to exploit that to get laughs it usually fails as in this case.
This film could have been an absolutely classic for bad film lovers, but unfortunately the only thing that's good about it, is what we imagine we are going to see before we actually sit to watch the film. That's really a shame.
After opening with the obligatory wrestling scene, which is unnecessary, with ten minutes in which no story or character is developed, the luchadores Tinieblas, Mil Máscaras and El Fantasma Blanco join two ladies in the house of Tinieblas to celebrate their victory. There a cursed painting takes them back in time. That should be the cue for the mindless fun to start, but after some promising minutes in which the three masked men quickly dispatch a whole group of Spanish soldiers, and after we find Lorena Velázquez is an evil witch, the movie is incapable of keeping any interest.
Even for an absurd film like this the plot has too many wholes, we never know why the hell the painting was cursed, there is never a moment in which either the time travelers or the people from the past get some surprise about their situation, we spend a lot of time with the luchadores just walking around a house looking for a way in, we have to wonder why the hell Mil Máscaras and El Fantasma Blanco stand as simple watchers while his partner is about to be sacrificed, and after they manage to return to their time we miss any resolution to the story as they leave a wounded hero in the clutches of the witch which apparently can't be stopped, what happens to that? No one will know.
The acting is of course to bad, the main characters at least learned their lines, but there are a bunch of extras with nothing to do, the Aztec warriors are a bunch of fat people walking around in loincloths which makes a humiliating clothing for them. A group of Spanish conquistadores captured by the witch just walk to their cell with absolutely no expression in their faces, as if getting captured by supernatural forces was a daily event for them. And the two ladies that join the luchadores in their surreal trip (while given the chance to break the painting and taking them back to their time) serve no other purpose than showing up their bodies. Evidently they did not care to find real actresses for the roles and they just signed the first big breasted women that agreed to wear mini skirts and tight clothes.
All of this would be forgettable and funny if the film took itself seriously, but Leyendas Macabras de la Colonia commits the biggest sin a B movie can make, it tries to make fun of itself, therefore killing the chance of being actually amusing. For example the constant jokes about Tinieblas being a womanizer and a final wrestling match between Tinieblas and three over weighted Aztec warriors. A great B movie like Plan 9 From Outer Space are classics because they are in fact trying to make a great film, and all their mistakes are unintended, when a bad film is done with full conscience that it is bad and when it tries to exploit that to get laughs it usually fails as in this case.
This film could have been an absolutely classic for bad film lovers, but unfortunately the only thing that's good about it, is what we imagine we are going to see before we actually sit to watch the film. That's really a shame.