Alucarda

Alucarda, a film by Mexican filmmaker Juan López Moctezuma, tells the story of young Justine and Alucarda, two young women who, after the quickest/creepiest meet-cute in the history of film, become possessed by Satan and proceed to carry out a bunch of hilarious pranks on the nuns and priests in a remote Spanish village. Hilarity abounds! Well, at least that’s what artist/critic Pedro Valez said to us when recommending that we have the nanobots crunch the numbers on this cult classic. Let’s take a look at the results:

• Any film directed by a Mexican director with a last name Moctezuma has to be bad for white people. You have been warned. = +10pts (Because white people suck.)
• Opening production montage full of luchadora masks, sharp-toothed demons, hot she-devils and random Japanese writing. Basically, Lou Dobbs’ version of your average Mexican Quinceañera. = +6pts (Because Lou Dobbs is racist.)
• Being a gypsy baby born in a mausoleum somewhere near Fraggle Rock cemetery. = +4pts
• Sending your newborn baby off to a convent before you’ve wiped it clean of bloody placenta. = -2pts
• Horses maintaining nominal speed despite horseman’s vigorous “Hi-yah! Hu-ha’s!” = +2pts (Fuck you, ape!)
• Nuns dressed as bloody mummies. Spanish Catholics are weird. = -2pts
• Remembering the ‘70s: When all the women in movies sounded like they worked for L’oreal Cover Girl. = +4pts
• Pay no attention to your creepy roommate who’s been sitting in the dark staring at the wall the entire time without comment. She’s a bitch. = -2pts
• If your roommate’s idea of getting to know you involves showing you a handful of chiggers and claiming that you (both) are two sides of the same coin, move out. = -2pts
• Remembering the ‘70s: When women used to frolic through the woods, laughingly fall into each other’s arms and roll down a grassy hill in Sapphic delight, right before running into the local dinner theater’s lead Rumpelstiltskin. = +8pts
• No, hunchbacked Rumpelstiltskin definitely has your best interests at heart. You should follow him deeper into the woods he claims are overrun with demons. = +5pts
• Oh, he’s a gypsy! We’re good. It’s just a racist director. Whew! = -7pts
• Overly complicated Rube Goldbergian steps to a process that will supposedly…um. Uh, not matter at all later. = -2pts
• Swearing a blood pact with a woman you met (maybe) one hour ago. = +3pts
• Did someone order a priest for exposition? = -8pts
• One bloody Jesus on a cross: Normal. One hundred bloody Jesuses (Jesi?) carved into the walls of an underground tomb/church: Excessive. No wonder all the ladies are crying. Nobody’s getting out of there alive. = -2pts
• We’re not sure if Alucarda is possessed by the devil or trying to get Jimmy Hendricks to notice her at Woodstock. Same thing, really. = +3pts (According to Joe’s Mom)
• We’re not sure what’s happening to the audio now, all we know is that someone is definitely making fart sounds into the boom mic. = +8pts (For perfectly introducing French New Wave cinema to Mexico.)
• Man, gypsies sure make crackerjack heist people! = +5pts
• Calling for thunder and instead getting lightening. = -5pts
• Going from unspectacular flower girl possession to full frontal nudity in less time than it takes a gypsy to call for more thunder and take your top off. = +3pts
• Clearly this gypsy does not know what to do with a naked women. To be fair, neither do we. = No score. Just observation of a fact.
• We wish we could tell you that a hunchbacked gypsy serving as the facilitator/conduit to a three-way with two naked chicks was hot. It’s not. It’s just creepy. = +5pts (Because this is a horror movie. We’re supposed to be unnerved.)
• Two naked women. One of whom is way more into licking the blood off the mouth and boob of the other one. What many people would call college. = +4pts
• Trying to make rape seem sexy. = -10pts
• Apparently, Satan is big on orgies. He must watch a lot of Tru Blood. = -3pts
• “Hey ladies, don’t mind the obvious goat mask. I’m just here for the orgy. To prove it, how about I bring in some wang. We good?” = +9pts (1 point for each wang.)
• We know who the real villain in this movie is, wet-blanket nun who cries blood. We’ve seen Casino Royale. = -2pts (For ruining our orgy buzz.)
• “Hey ladies, I know we were all a bit wigged out about all that bloody rain and orgy sex/sacrifice last night. Let’s all just pretend it never happened. Just like it says to do in the script. Now, for a passage from Matthew 3:1Exposition.” = -8pts
• Oh yeah, we’ll counter your God-Exposition with our Devil-Exposition and raise you a pair of boobs. = +4pts
• Grabbing your priest’s junk during confession. = +9pts (In any decade.)
• Remember when leeches were used to cure possession? Neither does science. = -3pts
• “Hey, guys. Look, I know the demons won that first round. Let’s all have a good scourging and strategize how we’re going to win this thing! Who’s with me! Catholicism!” = -1pts
• Spanish Catholic priests apparently have the power to read books with the palm of their hands. Baller. = +3pts
• Masking exposition by disguising it in a scene that plays like a 1st grade reading class. = -8pts (FAIL)
• We’re not sure if this priest is quoting the Bible or John Carpenter’s back catalogue. = +2pts
• “Hey, who left the door open so that the demon girl could crash the exorcism?! Goddammit, Rodrigo, when are you going to learn to do your job!” = -2pts (Fucking, Rodrigo.)
• Dr. bitching about having to do his job just because it’s early in the morning. = -2pts
• Okay, we’re not sure if the priest is beheading that burned woman because he thinks she’s possessed, or he hates women. It’s a toss-up, really. = -5pts
• “I’m a Doctor, goddamit! Nobody can exposition like I can!” = -8pts
• Taking a bath in your own blood. = +10pts
• Bitch slapping the shit out of the nun who interrupted you before you rip her throat out with your bare teeth. = -5pts (That’s just mean.)
• It’s like we always say, sometimes you fight fire with a dead nun propped up like Jesus. We hope Kirk Russell is taking notes. = +9pts
• Naming your movie after Dracula spelled backward and then having nothing to do with him or vampires. =  +5pts (For sticking it to teenage girls.)

Final Score: +32pts
Available: Netflix DVD, Guillermo del Toro's foot locker...of screams!

So, um, yeah…that was a lot of screaming. Now that our hearing has returned, it should be noted that, for a cult director, Moctezuma appears to have a hard time escaping the fundamentalism he seems intent on critiquing. While his film successfully toes the line of dogma and sacrilege, its final message of “(insert: lesbianism, sex, thinking, questioning, women) are bad because the church makes us feel bad about them” is defeated by relying on that same dogma to, in effect, save the day. Still, that the final “twist”—that Jesus could be a chick if need be—is somewhat progressive, if not ultimately shallow given the way in which woman are largely portrayed But, man oh man…there sure was a lot of screaming.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell