Vacation of Terror (1989)

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Moving to a new house in the country, a family finds the site was used in a witch-burning ceremony hundreds of years earlier and must stop their possessed daughter from unleashing the witch back in their time.About the top of the heap in terms of just plain cheesy Mexican horror cinema, this one is just a blast it's hard to really hold any flaws against it. Sure, the film is so clichéd it borders on a remake of numerous films, disregards plot for a never-ending series of special effect scenes and never really seems to be as exploitative as it really could've, that last one is really the only legitimate complaint that could be lobbied against this one. It's hard not to be entertained at what goes on here, from the opening witch-burning to the gradual realization of possession coupled all the way through to the film's last half hour, which just has so much fun it's almost criminal due to the fact that it comprises one sequence of the witch's powers being levied against her tormentors and seeing dishes thrown across the room, furniture toppled over, objects magically transform in front of their eyes and much more in one extended, dragged-out sequence is just wonderful cheesy good times, and the fact that the film copies a Gothic trademark with a stand-out burning-down-the-house finale leaves it in good taste afterward. About the only thing wrong with this is just how tame it was.Rated Unrated/PG-13: Violence and children-in-jeopardy.

I have to be honest with your fellow IMDb reviewers. I'm Mexican. I watched this movie when I was very young. I got really scared with the evil doll moving her eyes and the sound it made.I'm very interested in knowing why many European horror lovers think it's such a creepy film. In my opinion, trying to be objective, I believe it works more as a black comedy (almost spoof) rather than a serious Horror movie.Sure, the whole demonic entity makes presence through cheesy f/x and more. But the acting and direction is very, very bad. Honestly, Pedrito Fernández delivers a putrid performance and his raunchy dialogs made me feel uncomfortable.For nostalgia's sake, this is a memorable horror effort. For taking it seriously, I would consider it to be extremely cheesy although it put on some effort.The "Evil Dead" and "The Entity" references were cool though.

Having spent the past two years in Mexico I saw a lot of films like this on TV, and it's nice to see some of them released in America on DVD and with English subtitles (since my Spanish leaves a lot to be desired). Although these movies were mostly made in the 80's and (presumably) released theatrically, they are very low-budget and somewhat tame, and kind of have the feeling of 1970's made-for-TV American horror movies (albeit in Spanish). The name of the director of this one, Rene Cardona III, may sound familiar. That's because he is third-generation Mexican director, the grandson of Rene Cardona, who directed some of the more famous "lucha libre"/ monster movies of the 1960's like "Doctor of Doom" and "Night of the Bloody Apes", and the son of Rene Cardona Jr., who was not the best but was probably the most internationally successful Mexican horror/exploitation director of the 1970's and early 1980's with films like "Alive" and "The Bermuda Triangle" to his credit. Cardona III is not quite such a seething cauldron of talent--he is best known for his endless series of "Risa de Vacaciones" ("Funny Vacations") movies, idiotic sex comedies with precious little sex aside from a lot of overweight Mexican woman in bikinis.This movie starts out with a witch being burned at the stake (yes, twenty five years later they were still ripping off Mario Bava's "Black Sunday"). Then it cuts to a typical middle-class Mexican family going to the new "casa de campo" (vacation home) that the father has just bought, much to the wife's consternation. And once you see it, you'll probably sympathize with her since it's the rundown ruins of the witch's lair. The family has twin boys and little girl and they also bring along their teenage babysitting niece (who the father seems to have a little thing for), and her goofy boyfriend tags along as well. The trouble begins when the little girl finds a doll of the witch and is possessed by it, and said doll starts telekinetically making short work of the family. (It may seem that Cardona III borrowed the evil doll plot from his own father's "The Bermuda Triangle", but the "muneca maldita" is actually an old Mexican horror standby going all the way back to the creepy classic "Curse of the Doll People") Fortunately for all involved, however, the boyfriend has traded an Indian witch-doctor his Walkman for a protective amulet. This movie is actually REALLY tame--there is little or no violent death, and the teen-babe niece has her clothing telekinetically torn at one point, but (regettably) not stripped off.Still I kind of enjoyed this. This kind of PG horror is a nice respite from the horror/exploitation depravity I usually indulge in. And if you know enough about Mexican horror movies to have found your way to this site, I imagine you'll probably enjoy it somewhat too.

The witch of the village has been torched and the only memories to this are a medallion and an antique doll. A few years later a family goes on vacation to experience their new country home in the outside regions of a pueblo called Valle de Bravo Madero Mexico. Once there the resentful ghosts and memories of the past become apparent and refuse to stay put. The six year old girl of the family falls into a well and finds the ragged old doll which will now bring back one of the many dark entities of the witch. Through incredible telekinetic powers and magical voodoo as well as bloody hallucinations the hell from beneath has come back and will now try to posses the young girl before the night is over. The witch's vengeance is finally alive and ready to bring an end to the family...one by one.