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Intrépidos Punks/Vengeance of the Punks
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Vinegar Syndrome Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (14th August 2024). |
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The Film
 "From the weirdest depths of Mexico’s genre cinema scene come two of the most infamous punksploitation classics of the 80’s: INTRÉPIDOS PUNKS and VENGEANCE OF THE PUNKS. Serving up a non-stop feast of brutality topped off with an all-out assault of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Vinegar Syndrome proudly presents the Blu-ray debut of these long-sought-after cult rarities, both newly restored in 4K and presented in their completely uncensored versions." Intrépidos Punks: After robbing a bank dressed as a quartet of nuns, Beast (The House That Burns at Night's Princesa Lea) and her cohorts buy up a cache of weapons to initiate their master plan: busting out gang leader Tarzan (requisite masked wrestler El Fantasma) and his buddies from prison by taking the wives of the prison warden and his staff hostage, raping the women and sending in a severed hand when they the warden not take her threat seriously. Cops Marco (singer Juan Valentín) and Javier (Juan Gallardo) are busy tackling smuggling operations across the border until they hear about Tarzan's escape and ask their chief to put them on the case by way of Federale buddy Jorge who has traced the punks reign of terror to Morelia where they have hooked up with a local weapons dealer and smuggler (who they turn on when he attempts to double cross them for double crossing him). Marco and Javier hope to get the drop on the gang, but they spot him first, leading to a showdown between the feds and the gang in the desert that promises to be a massacre. "On the roads and highways, That is pretty much all there is to Intrépidos Punks, a rather middling effort in the context of punk and gang cinema at large but a landmark film for the movement in Mexico and ultimately a cult film even among Mexican critics who consider it to be the worst film ever made. The combination of exploitation filmmakers in a conservative Catholic country – before this, director Francisco Guerrero had primarily helmed westerns but you may recognize Princesa Lea (or parts of her) from The Infernal Rapist by the same producer Ernesto Fuentes – simultaneously playing up to the prurient expectations of working class audiences and exhilarating young middle class would-be rebels with a catalog of sex, rape, shootouts, car chases, Russian Roulette for fun, and explosions while the middle-aged maverick heroes are working against a corrupt system (the warden, his deputy, and the prison doctor are busy having an orgy with their female staff to take Beast's threat seriously leading to her decision not only to turn the men in her gang loose on the women they only planned to hold hostage but also to mutilate one as well to the beat of the band "Three Souls in My Mind" who brought their instrument setup with them to the house of the warden's wife). Interspersed with a few action sequences as the cops busting small-time crooks and spinning their wheels for two-thirds of the films are lengthy scenes of the punks carousing in cave hideouts looking less like the Sex Pistols and more like Mad Max (perhaps more Beyond Thunderdome than the OG) rejects – although not identified as a wrestler, Tarzan never removes his mask, and their vehicles include bikes and kitted-out dune buggies – and one wonders whether the ending of "this might be just the beginning" was intended to leave the door open for a sequel or a warning to the audience. A sequel did come three years later with Vengeance of the Punks directed by action filmmaker Damián Acosta Esparza in which the surviving members of the gang blast out Tarzan and his buddies who quickly precede to the quinceañera of Marco's daughter to rape and massacre the entire family before heading south to their new hideout in the ruins of a hilltop hacienda. Unbeknownst to the gang, however, Marco survives and quits his job when the chief will not allow him to go after them. Like a South of the Border Paul Kersey, Marco tracks the gang to their hideout and sets himself and his arsenal up in a nearby cabin. He then proceeds to stalk and abduct gang members one-by-one, torturing and executing them and leaving their bodies on display around the hideout. Paranoia sets in as Tarzan suspects regular whipping boy Ojai who is plotting with a subset of the gang to overthrow him; and at this point, Tarzan really should not be dismissing the disappearance of his girlfriend Pantera as her just being a whore and probably screwing around the village. When Marco eventually gets tired of the one-by-one approach, he breaks out the automatic weapons but saves the unkindest cut of all for Tarzan. Vengeance of the Punks keeps the theme song but ups the sex and violence considerably from the first films' stripteases and squibs to extended Satanic orgies, severed heads, charred corpses, and spikes through mouths. Valentín definitely has more to do here – it really is his vengeance more so than the punks who manage theirs in the first five minutes – and the film does make the barest of efforts to not condone vigilantism, first by depicting Marco's mental deterioration as his kills get more violent, and then with an inserted fake-out ending that itself may just be a delusion at the height of his sadism. By design or not, the film does subvert expectations with Marco already having left town and cut off contact before Javier is killed in a shootout with video store robbers – which would give him another reason to feel like the system will not work for him – and his tough female partner Diana who hangs around the early scenes does not team up with Marco to take on the punks (or even appear after the first act). While both films had a cultural impact in Mexico, and the Mexican cinema industry rarely catered to North of the Border because they had a large South American Spanish-speaking market, one could easily see both of these films as Troma pickups had they been dubbed into English, although language really is not that much of a barrier given the content (and they probably were available stateside from some of the labels that supplied the Spanish-language sections of American video stores in the eighties and nineties). 
Video
We do not have any specifics for the VHS editions of Intrépidos Punks and Vengeance of the Punks north or south of the border, but both films were available on DVD from the Southern California-based Spanish-language label Imperial Films & Music who provided a range of Mexican cinema from classic comedies to nineties action at the dawn of the format (and whose product can still be found in flea market stalls. Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer of Intrépidos Punks comes from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative; however, it was missing approximately ten minutes of footage due to a combination of damage and trimming the material to conform to the TV broadcast version of the film (which may be an issue with some of the other as-yet-unreleased Mexican genre product which was not future-proofed beyond videotape). The missing material was patched in from a 35mm print and a videotape source. The film was shot in a rough-and-ready manner largely on location, so it is sometime difficult to tell the negative from the print footage whereas the video inserts are quite obvious. While there is plenty of nudity on the film material, it looks like some of the more graphic bits of rape and some snippets of violence were trimmed along with some of the bits depicting corrupt authority like the bribery of prison guard during Beast's conjugal visit with Tarzan. We have not seen the DVD edition but VHS rips online have been the uncut version since that was at least struck for a video master before the trims. Colors pop in the make-up and costumes of the punk characters against rustic locations of green and browns as well as urban grays while blood spatter is variable in saturation, undercutting the impact of some violent bits like one head shot that should be jolting during the climax. Vengeance of the Punks' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen presentation does not have any of the archival issues and looks more consistent although a bit softer overall with a lot of smoke and backlighting as well as some shots where it seems like the focus is fixed and the actors miss their mark. Some of the night-for-night exteriors look flatter and noisier but this is not always the case for some of the better-lit shots including the hacienda sequences. 
Audio
Both films feature Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono tracks that sound relatively clean due to the post-dubbing. The songs have some presence but the music and effects tracks are not particularly dynamic even when it comes to gunfire, although the sequel does offer a few grisly foley effects. Presumably part of the first film's soundtrack came from videotape since some sequences had to be patched from that source while the broadcast version recut the sound to cover the snipped footage. Optional English subtitles – with options for just the dialogue or dialogue and music – are largely free of errors apart from a rare typo. 
Extras
The first film's extras include the theatrical trailer (1:40) and "Intrépidos Punks: A Surrealistic Mexican Scene" (30:17) hosted in English by artist and curator Ortiz Torres and featuring cast members Tito Guillen, Socorro Albarran, Carlos Hauptvgel, Fidel Abrego, Olga Rios (), Rosita Bouchot, and Arturo Masson which is actually less-focused on production anecdotes than on the phenomenon of punk as it appeared to Mexicans from reports abroad by way of incendiary reports on the Sex Pistols and then found its way into the culture through the gay community at first, then rebellious middle-class youth, and finally to the working class. They discuss the Satanic connotations and observe that the punks in the film are actually more like Hell's Angels bikers than what they actually saw on the streets. What was depicted in the film with its look at wild youth and corrupt authority they observe was reflective of a broken Mexico. Torres appears intermittently to discuss the state of Mexican cinema after the Golden Age of Spanish versions of Hollywood productions, making up for the slump in American film production during World War II, and their own slump competing with television and more imported films from Hollywood and elsewhere, and the low budget exploitation responses (although this discussion does not go into as much detail about the Mexican filmmaking legacy families like the Gallardos and the Cardonas as explored in Vinegar Syndrome releases of other Mexican films). Throughout, we also get the cast's recollections of the critical reception and Torres discusses the retrospective critical perspectives on both films.  Vengeance of the Punks is accompanied by "La Venganza de los Punks: Punk is Dead" (20:59), once again hosted by Torres and featuring Guillen, Albarran, Hauptvgel, Abrego, Rios, Masson, as well as Anais De Melo and Juan Moro in which Torres notes the mixture of mythologies in this film's gang costumes including a Viking and a Roman as well as an emphasis on the Satanic element with a sacrifice and orgy. There is more production anecdote here about both films, mainly focusing on the sex and violence with Masson recalling that he wanted his sex scene to be different from the other two which had already been shot and that he was supposed to be gunned down but improvised his death while the camera was running waiting for him to die. 
Packaging
The disc is housed with a reversible cover and a booklet with an essay by Mexican art historian Claudia Pretelin which provides more background on both directors as well as Mexico's punk scene.
Overall
One could easily see both Intrépidos Punks and Vengeance of the Punks as Troma pickups had they been dubbed into English, although language really would not really be that much of a barrier to enjoy these films.
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