THE MAN IN WHITE

Mexico. Near the Day of the Dead, Erika and her daughter Christy can finally reunite with Manuel, her husband and father, who is returning from a business trip. While Erika and her daughter are in the car, they witness the murder of a woman who is killed by a mysterious man dressed in white and armed with a rifle. From that moment, the killer also targets Erika, and a very long chase begins between the two. Although the original title reads "El hombre de blanco", meaning the man in white, in Italy this 1992 Mexican film was titled by the distributor of the time "Terminator from Hell", obviously to ride the success of "Terminator 2" by James Cameron, which was released in theaters at that time, even though the two films have nothing in common. The original title, however, is particularly fitting because, in addition to designating, or rather emphasizing, the clothing of the threatening killer, it alludes to the figure of Death as depicted in Mexican tradition, a key element of the entire story. "Terminator from Hell" stages a very long chase, the classic cat-and-mouse game, in which the cat is a mysterious individual who roams around in his expensive sports car armed with a rifle to massacre anyone who gets in his way. What could elementally seem like an elegant Latin American Terminator is instead an allegory of Death, who goes to settle accounts and take with him those who are destined to succumb. At the beginning of the film, in fact, the young Christy buys two sugar skulls at the market on which she has her name and that of her mother engraved, which, according to Mexican tradition, as explained by the babysitter José, serve to ward off Death and, if soaked in blessed water, become a good omen. Erika's lack of faith, however, who does not believe in the old superstitions of the place, becomes hypothetically the reason to attract the attention of Death itself, which in the first encounter with the woman seems to chase and kill the woman herself (whom we, however, do not clearly see in the face). From this moment on, which provides the theoretical minimum required for a moderately complex story, everything is thrown into "chaos", with chases, explosions, shootouts, and hand-to-hand combat, where, when we talk about body, we mean above all the statuesque body constrained in revealing clothes of the actress Christian Bach, today known mainly for telenovelas. The film quickly loses itself in a jumble of action situations, with a few splashes of splatter, which at first seem to mainly replicate those already seen in the film "The Hitcher". If at the beginning the mechanism works and there are even some moments of tension, soon the repetitiveness takes over and the exhaustion of the narrative material available is intuited, perhaps more suitable for making a short film rather than a feature film. The ending also disappoints because it betrays the logic behind the work, namely the plan of Death, completely sabotaged by a forced and almost illogical happy ending. Curiously, although the film was shot in 1992 and released two years later, it seems produced in the 1970s, given the photography and the wear of the film, if it were not that clothing and vehicles scream late 1980s/early 1990s in every frame. To write and direct "Terminator from Hell" we find René Cardona Jr., infamous son of art and director of horrors ("The Night of a Thousand Cats") but also interesting works ("The Bermuda Triangle"), here at his last genre film to reach Italy. In the cast, in addition to the already mentioned and appreciated Christian Bach, there is the inexpressive Daniel Stephen who plays the killer dressed in white, an actor seen in many Italian films including the comedies "The Ras of the Neighborhood" and "He is Worse than Me" and the fantasy-adventures "The Predators of the Omega Year" and "Year 2020 The Gladiators of the Future". Ugly but sufficiently bizarre to be able to please. It deserves half a skull more. Available on Italian DVD from Mosaico Media. Watch a clip of TERMINATOR FROM HELL