Saturday, October 21, 2017

The Sheriff's Strange Son (1982)

Original title: El Extrano Hijo del Sheriff

Director: Fernando Duran Rojas

Writers: Eric del Castillo, Barbara Gil

Composer: Rafael Carrion

Starring: Mario Almada, Eric del Castillo, Rosa Gloria Chagoyan, Alfredo Gutierrez, Luis Mario Quiroz, Roberto Carfiedo, Alicia Encinas

More info: IMDb
 
Plot: Set in the old west, the sheriff's wife gives birth to conjoined twins, she dies during labor and the ashamed sheriff decides to hide his children, years later he force the town doctor to surgically separate the kids but during the intervention one of them dies and his evil spirit possess his brother to take revenge.



My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

SPOILERS ON THE DUSTY TRAIL!!!  YARRRRR!!!

Westerns and horror are two of my favorite genres and I'll watch just about anything when they mix the two.  This Mexican oddity is a must-see for that reason alone.  It's a revenge flick for the dead conjoined twin who didn't survive the separation and he's pissed!  The movie's less than an hour and a half and it takes most of that time to get to the good stuff like the dead kid using his supernatural powers to kill everyone that has any responsibility in his death including his father hanging by his neck!  He's just the first casualty.


As others die, it feels like it's going to continue until the doctor who performed the operation gets some extensive notes in the mail on how to perform an exorcism!  I know, right?  Sweet!  Now the movie is almost over.  He performs the exorcism attended by the surviving kid and the beautiful young woman who ran the orphanage.  The chanting is over and everything goes quiet.  Success!  Nope.  The kid is dead.  Shit!  Then the woman drops dead.  More silence.  The fuck?  Then she gets up and she's possessed by the first dead kid and she cycles through his voice, the other kid's voice and her own.  The end.  What the hell?  Keep going, damn it!  You can see this isn't any normal Western.  The first half (and more) suffers from the usual drama that's dragged out a little more than necessary but it's what you get in the last half hour once the dead kid shows up that gets thing rolling and moving fast. 

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