So much average

Absolutely brilliant

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

"Perdito Durango" ( "Dance With the Devil") is the most surprisingly entertaining movie I have viewed in a very long time. The acting by Rosie Perez and Javier Bardem rises to the occasion, with performances that make the viewer feel like you are actually witnessing two very damaged individuals on the road to disaster. Their totally unacceptable ultra violent behavior is both repulsive and fascinating. The film is not at all predictable, has unusual and colorful locations, along with plenty of dark humor. The only drawback might be the difficulty understanding a lot of the dialog, but the pictures pretty much tell the story anyway. Special mention must be made of James Gandolfini and Don Stroud's excellent performances in supporting roles. This is a winner, worth seeking out. - MERK

Oh. My. God.Who knew they made exploitation flicks like this anymore?I'm an old enough East Coaster to hold fond memories of New York's Times Square before Rudolph "Benito" Giuliani sold it to Disney and TGI Friday.Aside from the skin flicks, movies like "Dance with the Devil" were as indicative of NYC moviehouses as its giant, family-friendly multiplexes are now.This is exactly, EXACTLY the kind of movie they'd be showing in Times Square right now if David "Wait, what? I'm the damn MAYOR???" Dinkins stayed in office.Without rehashing the plot, let's just say "Dance with the Devil" is everything right that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez get wrong when they digitally replicate film scratches and cellophane splices into their unworthy "Grindhouse" homages."Dance with the Devil" is what Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez imagine when they touch each other in the shower.The plot, not that it matters, is about two Hispanic maniacs who kidnap a white teenage couple to sacrifice in some Santeria ritual that doesn't really exist and that would probably offend just about every Hispanic person on earth, faith irregardless.Let's go over the pros:-- The only chick to get naked is the one who's supposed to be a teenager (but is obviously not). Thumbs up!-- Pre-"Sopranos" James Gandolfini (RIP) as a DEA agent is high throughout this whole movie, and repeatedly gets run over by cars for no good reason. Thumbs up!-- Rosie Perez obviously has one of those devoted, gay personal assistants whose job it is to massage her breasts until her nipples poke out of her tank top in every scene. Thumbs up!The cons:-- Humanity knows Rosie Perez is better than this, and humanity is profoundly disappointed in her. Thumbs down.-- Rosie Perez never takes her clothes off. Thumbs down-- What is this movie about? Thumbs down.So this was on a collection of four movies no one's ever heard of for a buck at the dollar store, and this one is definitely worth the two bits. And nothing more.

Finally picked DANCE WITH THE DEVIL up after having seen it once or twice on Skinemax a few years back. I remembered it to be a pretty "odd" and violent film, and I was right. There are some problems with the pacing and storyline - but overall, fans of Tarantino-esquire material will probably dig this one.Rosie Perez plays Perdita Durango, a vicious fire-cracker of a woman who seemingly gets by from one con to the next. After she meets up with an equally (if not moreso...) deranged Santeria priest named Romeo - things really go to hell. Romeo is recruited to drive a truckload of frozen fetuses from Mexico to Vegas, and Perdita is along for the ride. Before the trip, the two decide to kidnap a couple of white-bread college students to sacrifice for good-luck. The rest of the film is a cluster-f!ck of Perdita, Romeo, and the two captives - and their "adventures" on the road - all the while being tailed by the Feds...DANCE WITH THE DEVIL is not a "perfect" film - as the plot seems to get lost in itself from time to time, and some scenarios and situations seem to be shown for no apparent reason - when the film could have been focusing more on the "action". There's a good bit of violence - and for the most part the film moves pretty quickly. It's hard to put my finger on it - it just feels disjointed at times and loses some of it's momentum towards the middle. Regardless - it's a pretty decent film with good performances and a pretty "out-there" storyline. James Gandolfini as the main Fed tailing them is a pleasure as always...7.5/10

PERDITA DURANGO came late in the 1990s glut of violent, darkly comic couples-on-the-run road movies which was initiated by David Lynch's WILD AT HEART. A few minor characters from WILD AT HEART appear in PERDITA DURANGO, but director Alex de la Iglesia seems to have modeled his film not on Lynch's lyrical surrealism, but on the ham-fisted satire of Oliver Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS (or, even worse, Gregg Araki's THE DOOM GENERATION). (I also saw the Barry Gifford novella this was based on as a let-down from Gifford's original source novel for WILD AT HEART; as the novella also relied on mindless shock value, PERDITA does seem to have captured its spirit well.) Romeo (Javier Bardem) and Perdita (Rosie Perez) are the "charismatic" heroes of the film, smuggling human fetuses and kidnapping a teenage American couple for a voodoo sacrifice. Iglesia depicts the teens in broadly caricatured fashion, and the viewer apparently is supposed to find their abuse at the hands of the older couple "funny". I don't object to black comedy per se, but that subgenre usually deals with sudden death (as in the man accidentally getting his head blown off in the backseat in PULP FICTION), while here the filmmakers expect us to be "amused" at prolonged suffering. Aimee Graham, playing the female half of the teen couple, strives to make her character more human and sympathetic, but it's not something the filmmakers will let her get away with. The impression given is that we are to prefer the south-of-the-border couple's uninhibited, self-destructive lifestyle over the American couple's suburban blandness-- Romeo and Perdita are more "authentic", I guess. (Do many artists still have that old Holden Caulfield worldview?) The only bit that really amused me is that both the killers and the suburbanites are Herb Alpert fans-- if that's "satire", though, I don't see the point.The whole Starkweather/Fugate-derived violent road movie genre has been squeezed dry for at least a decade now. There have been great movies with amoral/psychopathic protagonists before (textbook example: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), but PERDITA just isn't one of them.