Vacation of Terror (1989) User Reviews

Vacation of Mild Peril

[BA_Harrison · 4/10 · 15 July 2011]

I always find it amusing when a DVD displays the warning 'contains scenes of mild peril'—it's such a weak description; on the other hand, it's a phrase that perfectly suits Vacation of Terror, which spends an hour and a half delivering such tepid thrills as—those of a nervous disposition, steel your nerves—electric lights mysteriously going on and off (shiver!), remote controlled cars driving themselves (eeeek!), a creepy doll moving its eyes (yikes!), snakes appearing from nowhere (arrrrgghhhh!), slime covered mice in a fridge (swoon) and—prepare yourself—blood running down a wall (OMFG!!!!).

These far from bowel-loosening sights occur when a middle-class Mexican family decide to spend some time at the creepy country house inherited by the father and fall foul of the spirit of a vengeful witch burned at the stake 100 years earlier. Trapped inside the doll discovered at the bottom of property's well by daughter Gabby, the witch channels her malevolent powers through the little girl, but proves to be no Hermione Granger when it comes magic: she fails to do away with even one of the characters before being destroyed by flames once again when the doll ends up in the fireplace.

Directed by René Cardona III (a third generation movie director, who clearly hasn't learnt much from his elders), Vacation of Terror is not in the slightest bit scary, boasts terrible performances and risible special effects (wires clearly visible in some shots), and fails to even get hot niece Paulina (Gabriela Hassle) topless. In other words, as a horror film, it's a massive fail, and is only just watchable for a few laughs.

Longest 80 Minutes of My Life

[emilywallace-49758 · 4/10 · 30 September 2019]

Vacaciones de terror believes it's the Mexican answer to Amityville Horror and Poltergeist, but it ends up feeling more like a mash up of Superstition and Cathy's Curse. Occasionally, the film musters up a tiny bit of atmosphere and there are a few images that conjure up more dread than they should, but for an 80 minute film, it feels endless.

It all deals with a family (husband, wife, two boys, one little girl, and the husband's teenage niece who lives with them for some unknown reason) inheriting a vacation home from his dead aunt. Little do they know this was the sight of a witch execution years ago and her spirit still lingers and has possessed a creepy doll their youngest daughter takes to and, pretty soon, eggs are smashing, the walls are dripping with blood, and knives start flying out of the drawers and attacking people.

It all seems like a solid recipe for fun (albeit a bit "been there, done that" fun), but nothing really happens until the last 20 minutes so we're stuck listening to the shrill shrieks of the two little boys in the film who feel like they must scream every line to hit the back of a theater somewhere. The thrills are strictly of the PG rated variety besides one attack via flying knives that recalls Piper Laurie's death in Carrie. It's too light weight to ever really scare or thrill and it's not quite cheesy or poorly made enough to be taken as a piece of camp.

Seriously, the scariest thing is that damn evil doll!

[insomniac_rod · 5/10 · 8 May 2010]

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.

Cheesy and tame but fun Mexican horror flick

[lazarillo · 19 January 2008]

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.

As Bad as Annabelle

[fatcat-73450 · 3/10 · 25 December 2021]

... Just in a different way.

Some guy inherits a broken down cabin in the woods and decides to take his family to spend a weekend there sight unseen. His daughter finds a pretty fugly Victorian-looking doll in a suspicious cave. Just so happens the doll is possessed by a Satanic witch.

The doll has more powers than superman and uses those powers to........... harass this family for no reason at all.

The whole movie is basically the doll moving its eyes to the sound of a Pavlovian ringtone followed by some lame effect such as the stage crews making the set shake so that dust falls on the cast or filling a refrigerator with mice and snakes.

These effects are usually plagiarized right out of better Horror movies from the US. For example, a knife flies through the air (complete with cartoon sound effect), to stab the lead actor as in Carrey and the house starts to bleed as in Burnt Offerings. In fact, the very character of Pedro Fernandez is lifted straight from 80s horror comedies such as The Evil Dead II.

The doll's powers are limitless. It can control cars, make people see things, cause things to spontaneously combust, and make people fly.

The acting can't be worse for a serious professional production. The kids sound like someone is telling them what to say through an earpiece. The other actors are marginally better. The little girl was pretty good, truth be told, but it was the simplest acting gig of all time for her - just be as emotionless as possible.

As a child, I thought this movie was scary. But now I see it for the sad, silly, sloppy-gut production it is. I thought it was better than Annabelle (2014), but it's really not. The only good thing I can say is that the doll does actually look like a realistic but creepy doll and the cast acknowledges it (the mom even says at one point "and stop carrying around that hideous doll!"), whereas no normie woman in her right mind would be happily collecting dolls that look like Annabelle.

Terrible.

Honourable Mentions: The Evil Dead (1981). A cheap independent film but genuinely scary. Don't miss it!

Totally fun!

[BandSAboutMovies · 7/10 · 21 June 2020]

Let's talk about family tradition. The Cardona family has it. Starting with the senior Rene Cardona, we got films like the brain-melting Santa Claus, Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy and Night of the Bloody Apes. His son would continue the journey with Night of 1000 Cats, Guyana: Crime of the Century and Tintorera.

Starting with this film, Rene Cardona III would put his own spin on horror films. This movie feels like someone stayed up all night mainlining every single Amityville unconnected sequel - trust me, as I have done this - and then decided to make their own cover version before the booze wore off.

Way back in 1889, a witch had taken over a small Mexican town, but an inquisitor was able to use a sacred amulet to force her into the flames and save his village. When he tosses all of her belongings - including a cursed doll - into a well, he never dreamed that a little girl would find it a hundred years later and put her family through hell.

This movie has it all. Bleeding walls, refrigerators teeming with rats and no small amount of snakes and spiders. It also has Julio, the affable teen who hopes to save the family and the babysitter that he is in love with. He's played by Pedro Fernandez, who is more than an actor, as he's a TV show host and singer.

This movie has a great scene where the kids play with a toy car - which has possessed their father's car - and try to push it into the fireplace. These are the reasons why I love movies like this, the small moments that make me realize just how little reality can intrude within.

If this ever came out on blu ray - and it totally should, because the DVD versions are out of print and are prohibitively expensive - I will add my critic byline to it: "If you thought Ghosthouse was completely inane and ridiculous, have I got an awesome movie for you!"

PS: This pairs nicely with Cathy's Curse so you get a real North/South exploitation exorcism adventure.

Fantastic effort all around

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 9/10 · 11 March 2013]

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.

This is a classic horror movie and very enjoyable

[durante7 · 13 March 2003]

This genre was very poor in the 80's in Mexico, in those years productions were bad and full of sluts, vicious, old ,morbid men, so this movie was a refreshing pause between all that kind of trash.

This movie is about a family going on vacation to their new bought country house, they don't suspect what horrible things are going to happen.

In this trip go mother, father, daughter , brothers (twins), a nephew (she is elder than children, she's about 19) and nephew's boyfriend.

When they arrive to the house, children went gone to explore, the little girl falls into a hole and then she found a DOLL!

If you saw the movie, you could see it hasn't spectacular fx, but only seeing that horrible doll you'll feel goosebumps, it is suposse that a witch spirit lives inside it.

Devil doll take control of a little girl mind, and it would try to kill all family members......Could it kill of them?????????????

The script is very predictable but this movie is very entertaining.

Vacasions of Terror

[jessecrts · 10/10 · 1 April 2006]

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.

A pleasingly creepy Mexican supernatural shocker

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 4 March 2008]

An evil witch gets burned at the stake, but vows to return and get her revenge prior to being torched. A hundred years later a family -- architect father Fernando (Julio Aleman), naggy pregnant wife Lorena (attractive Nuria Bages), daughter Gaby (Gianella Hassle Kus), twin sons Pedrito (Ernesto East) and Jaimito (Carlos East, Jr.), sweet niece Paulina (the fetching Gabriela Hassle), and Paulina's affable occult enthusiast boyfriend Julio (an engaging performance by Pedro Fernandez) -- decide to vacation at a summer home located in the same immediate countryside area where the witch was killed. Trouble ensues when Gaby finds a doll possessed by the lethal spirit of the malevolent witch. Director Rene Cardona III eschews graphic gore in favor of creating and sustaining a creepy ooga-booga atmosphere that becomes more progressively eerie and frightening as the story unfolds. Said uncanny mood culminates in an especially intense and harrowing last third. Moreover, the capable acting from a uniformly solid cast, Luis Medina's polished cinematography, the likable characters, the exciting fiery conclusion, Eugenio Castillo's shivery, ominous score, plenty of unsettling visuals (the bleeding tree and walls are truly scary and unnerving while the shots of vile rotting food covered with bugs, rats and snakes are just plain gross), the constant pace, and the crude, yet effective special effects further enhance the overall sound quality of this nifty little horror picture.

A Real Fixer-Upper...

[azathothpwiggins · 28 November 2023]

VACATION OF TERROR opens with the burning of a witch many years ago. Fast forward to the present (1989), and a family takes a trip to see the dilapidated old house they've recently inherited. Unbeknownst to them, there's a curse on the place, and strange things begin happening almost immediately. Soon, after a near-tragic accident, we're treated to a creepy kid / devil doll movie.

Director Rene Cardona III keeps it spooky with some nice touches including:

#1- A bleeding tree / walls / pictures!

#2- A refrigerator full of rats, snakes, and green slime!

#3- A closet full of rats, snakes, and tarantulas!

#4- A possessed truck!

#5- Self-throwing knives!

#6- A self-immolating portrait!

#7- The apocalyptic, everything-hits-the-fan finale, complete with explosions, flying dishware, and an inferno of doom!

A fantastic contribution from a true master of Mexican horror cinema...