-Celluloid Dimension’s most unapologetic section, where we share the best of the worst. Bringing bad movies the love they deserve.
Directed by Emilio Vieyra
Written by Antonio Rosso and Emilio Vieyra
Starring:
- Alberto Candeau as Dr. Bermudez
- Eduardo Muñoz
- Ricardo Bauleo as Silvio Valverde
- Mauricio De Ferraris as Inspector Ernesto Lauria
- Susana Beltrán
- Gloria Prat as Laura “Beba” Villegas
Rating: 
Argentine horror flirting with roughie territory? Sort of—but it’s closer to creaky Gothic pulp spliced with the voyeuristic kick of ’60s nudie cuties, pumped full of psychotronic weirdness. B-movie specialist Emilio Vieyra imports the lurid pleasures of American drive-in trash and drops them into the strange textures of Latin America. The result is a seaside nightmare in Punta Ballena, where a sadistic maniac wearing a creepy mask that looks like an old man terrorizes a gang of bikini-clad beachgoers. The sleazy ritual is simple enough: shoot them up with heroin, violate them, then drive a syringe straight into the chest. But for all its lurid setup, the film delivers more odd detours than perverse gimmicks, more padding than actual thrills in the departments of boobs and blood. Still, this ramshackle slice of South American exploitation finds a strange redemption in its oppressive black-and-white photography, which clashes with the sun-soaked beach setting and makes the coastline look like it’s stuck under a permanent eclipse. It functions well enough as a Gothic shocker, but not much beyond that. You can almost feel Vieyra testing the waters here, as if his low-budget filmmaking is still getting acquainted with the grubby mechanics of the roughie formula—something he would handle more confidently in later outings. As a trial run, though, it’s not half bad. Besides, if your cinematic diet includes gratuitous striptease, sun-drenched bikini girls, lesbian subplots, moody piano melodies, and a killer who prefers a heroin syringe to a knife, there’s a decent chance you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
