"Paradise Lost" ("Turistas") http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvparadise.php
Well have lots of scenes of good looking women in teeny bikinis (and the odd guy, though not in bikinis, teeny or otherwise) playing on golden sands and splashing around deep blue seas.
So lets say right now, this is a film that looks good.
But thankfully it’s not all beauty though as some welcome ugliness appears in the form of much nasty violence, surgical gore, sweaty guys with big guns and a nutzoid Doctor.
It may not be as in your face and extreme as some other films of this period but the film pretty much delivers what the plot and the set-up promised and luckily we also have some actually interesting (and amazingly not that annoying) lead characters.
Psycho surgeon 'Zamora' has a painful ‘explanation’ sequence though (saved by the macabre activities he’s doing -
scalpel city baby- while pontificating) as the writer decides to take a few swipes at Americans and tourists in general.
Hey, Zamora mate, we give you our tourist cash and we buy your crappy nuts to eat at Christmas…give it a rest!
Action is nothing special in general with pretty much your standard cat and mouse stuff but such scenes are often lifted above the norm by the use of the stunning locations.
A genuinely panic-filled chase from one of the killers is made extremely memorable due to the fact the chase happens entirely underwater with everyone having to swim just as desperately to grab air as they have to swim to avoid being caught!
The bus crash at the start of the film is also well done and you have to laugh at the matter of fact way the locals take such an event.
But when you live in a country where even the caterpillars can kill you, who cares when your bus goes rolling down a mountain.
Violence is occasional but very effective with some good old wince-inducing moments (best use of a staple gun since I found those discarded pages from a porn mag in the woods when I was 14 and best use of a skewer since the invention of chicken satay) and the pretty infamous operating sequence is delightfully graphic if not actually violent.
The ending is perhaps a bit low key and perhaps a bit less time could have been spent frolicking in the water and more time spilling vital organs, but overall “Paradise Lost” is a well made, enjoyable, satisfying little excursion to nastyville.