Satanic Hispanics (2022)

The Traveler

Tambien Lo Vi

El Vampiro

Nahuales

The Hammer of Zanzibar

The horror anthology film has a long history that goes back to the silent era. It was popularised in the 1960s by England’s Amicus films with a series of films beginning with Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965). There have been many classic examples ranging from Dead of Night (1945) to Creepshow (1982). In the 2010s, the multi-director anthology, where assorted genre directors are brought together usually on a common theme, has taken off in a big way with the likes of The ABCs of Death (2012) and V/H/S (2012) and assorted sequels to either and a host of others including Holidays (2016) and XX (2016). The distinction in the case of Satanic Hispanics is that all of the directors are Latin American. (For a more detailed listing see Anthologies).

The opening and wraparound story called The Traveler comes from Mike Mendez, who has been rising through the genre ranks over the last few years. Mendez has directed horror films such as Killers (1996), Bimbo Movie Bash (1997), The Convent (2000), the horror documentary Masters of Horror (2002), The Gravedancers (2006), Big Ass Spider! (2013), Lavalantula (2015), Don’t Kill It (2016) and The Last Heist (2016).

Satanic Hispanics is an interesting example of the anthology film where the wraparound episodes are the strongest of all the segments. There is a captivating opening as police officers Sonya Eddy and Mendez regular Greg Grunberg question enigmatic stranger Efren Ramirez in the interrogation room. Who exactly he is never specified, just that he has lived a very long time and is hunted by the demon figure that is coming and will kill all of them. The demon known as The Odd Man turns up in the final segment and is startling – a tall figure in ankle-length trench coat and wide-brimmed hat, moving through the police station foyer with an implacability, while causing the police and bystanders alike to turn and kill themselves. This section and the design of The Odd Man as it is blown away to reveal some kind of deity is something utterly unearthly.

Demian Rugna is an Argentinean director who had previously made the SF film The Last Gateway (2007), the non-genre You Don’t Know Who You’re Talking To (2016) and the horror film Terrified (2017). Tambien Lo Vi (which translates as I Also Saw It) is an odd episode with which to start the show proper. We have a hikikimori character living in his grandmother’s house and is a champion at solving the Rubik’s Cube. He also has the belief that a wall in one room of the house is … well something. He performs a series of rituals by waving the light from his phone at it and believes that this causes something to happen. Although we never see what he does, nor does the researcher he brings in. Then there is the abrupt jolt where he sees a body under the table, although what the body is peculiarly seems to change with every person who sees it. This is an odd piece that seems to want to be a Haunted House story, but never quite goes there.

Eduardo Sanchez is a Cuban-born director raised in the USA. He is best known as the co-director of The Blair Witch Project (1999), although has a more than reasonable solo directing career outside of that with alien abduction film Altered (2006) and the horror films Seventh Moon (2008), ParaAbnormal (2009), Lovely Molly (2011), the A Ride in the Park episode of V/H/S/2 (2013), Exists (2014) and the Call Center episode of the anthology Portals (2019).

The title of Eduardo Sanchez’s segment homages The Vampire/El Vampiro (1957), the cult Mexican vampire film with German Robles, and is one episode that takes a comedy approach. There is the rather amusing idea of the aging vampire set loose on modern society where he seems at odds – his return to his coffin before dawn being thrown amok by Daylight Saving, he fussing over blood spilt on his frilly shirt and the sublimely silly image of him rushing home on a scooter. A scene with Hemky Madera trying to glamour the mind of two cops but only able to control one at a time goes on longer than it should past the point of the initial gag, but the episode is amusing.

Gigi Saul Guerrero is a Mexican-born director who has made assorted short films and episodes of other anthologies including Aztech (2020), The Source of Shadows (2020), V/H/S/85 (2023) and one feature film with Bingo Hell (2021), along with assorted appearance as an actress.

Gigi Saul Guerrero’s episode Nahuales works the least effective of the stories. We have a character on the run from cartels for selling them out to the CIA. He is then snatched and made to participate in a native ritual in the jungle and in the last few minutes what looks like a motel room. There is no real plot to the episode and I failed to understand what the rituals were in aid of, although Guerrero certainly works up a mad gory, drug-induced steam about everything.

Alejandro Brugues is another Argentinean director. He had a modest splash with the Cuban zombie film Juan of the Dead (2011) and subsequently with the US mainstream film The Inheritance (2024), while he has also contributed the E is for Equilibrium segment to the previous horror anthology ABCs of Death 2 (2014) and the The Thing in the Woods episode of Nightmare Cinema (2018).

Next to The Traveler, Brugues’ The Hammer of Zanzibar is another fun episode. There is a shifting pull-the-carpet out sense to the piece, first with Jonah Ray Rodrigues going on a date with his ex that turns out to be an illusion created by the demon. This flashes back to the hilarious scene where Jonah and friend go to see Jacob Vargas and he tells the story of receiving the titular hammer and his deal, which rather hilariously keeps coming out as a gay self-discovery piece.

Trailer here