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DVD REVIEW: WRESTLEMANIAC

Over the years there have been a few examples of wrestling themed movies. These include Nacho Libre, Ready to Rumble and Grunt to name a few. However, none of them have ever crossed over into a horror theme and featured a wrestling character as a mass murdering lead villain.

This is where WRESTLEMANIAC comes in, and shows us what happens when the wrestling world and horror film world collide.
Starring Rey Misterio Sr and former WWE diva search girl Leyla Milani,
Wrestlemaniac tells the story of El Mascarado, a deranged, former Mexican wrestling star, who has been exiled to a deserted ghost town named “La Songre De Dios” (or the blood of god).

The film opens as a amateur porn group travels through Mexico in hopes of arriving at a popular beach to shoot what they hope to be the next great porn film. This is where we meet most of the cast. There is Alphonse, the dirty porn director. Steve, his camera man and a American born Mexican, who is also a wrestling aficionado. Debbie and Dallas (Leyla Milani), the lead female porn stars, who are also joined by Daisy, who happens to be passed out in the car from partying a bit too hard. Finally there is Jimbo, brother of Debbie, and a guy who enjoys his weed, so much so that he agreed to let his van be used and tag along without realizing it.

Having been traveling for many hours already, Debbie asks to pull off for a rest stop. The crew stops in at a seemingly abandoned gas station and encounter “The Stranger” who is also a wrestling fan and dons a mask when he exits the shack and scares the crew. The Stranger informs them that the next town is about a hundred miles away but Alphonse realizes he only has about 50 miles worth of gas in the tank, and with no gas available at this broken down station, The Stranger tells them they will have to go south for gas, but by dong so would have to pass through “La Songre De Dios” which immediately gets a rise out of Steve who realizes what that city is all about. 

Legend has it that many years prior, Mexican wrestling star El Mascarado was put there after he went crazy and began tearing people’s skin off their faces. Alphonse laughs it off as nothing but a legend, and as the crew begins down the road, determines that the ghost town would be the perfect location for their porn film. The girls are scared and don’t want to stop there, but as you would expect that doesn’t matter, so Alphonse ends up driving the truck over a major boulder in the road which causes the truck to break down right on the border of “La Songre De Dios”. The crew decides to enter the deserted town and proceed to begin filming their initial scenes in a broken down bar. 

Just as they start to get into it, Daisy awakes from her deep sleep and joins in on the fun, but only seconds later becomes sick and runs off to vomit, while doing so she gets lost in the fields and accidentally cuts her foot on some glass, and while she tries to pull the shards out is attacked by someone. As the crew waits for her to return, Steve reviews the footage he had shot and noticed that there was a separate shadow
outside the building when Daisy had run out, the crew decides that it would be best to leave, but first Jimbo would venture out to try and find Daisy, he is eventually attacked by someone as well. 

Meanwhile the group tries to start the van which is still broken down, Leyla Milani’s character knows how to repair cars because her father owns a show, so while she stays behind, the rest of the crew head out to find Jimbo and Daisy. While searching inside a abandoned building, Debbie finds Jim dead with his face skin ripped off, Steve realizes this is exactly how El Mascarado would kill people and thus he must be here. Alphonse, now high on coke, begins to freak out, and tries to run out of the building, this is when he sees the figure of El Mascarado at the end of the hall, and its time for the faceoff to begin! 

WRESTLEMANIAC certainly scores points with me for its originality, being both a horror film and wrestling fan, it was really cool to see both worlds come together. That being said It is a low-budget production, and follows a lot of your typical horror film storylines. This fact is not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on your personal taste. 

isually I think the film comes together very well, however some of the blood effects were noticeably cheap. The film is also fairly short at an hour and fifteen minutes, but more time probably would of slowed it down too much. 

In closing, WRESTLEMANIAC is something you can enjoy if your both a wrestling and horror film fan, mainly because its like nothing we have seen before. I'd like to note that before I'm told that See No Evil was basically Kane on film, the actual storyline of that film had nothing to do with Kane or a wrestler so I consider it something different, WRESTLEMANIAC has an actual wrestling character as the
killer, which is pretty cool to me, but I will say that despite its unique premise, if you have grown tired of the very “cookie cutter” horror film playouts then you may have some trouble getting through it.

WRESTLEMANIAC is now available on DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment. You can pick it up at your favorite online DVD retailers like Amazon or check out your local video outlet who may have it as well. You can check out the film’s trailer at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KldPXfcoWQg or For more information you can check out www.anchorbayent.com