Your mother would hate this film. At first glance, Perdita Durango is one of those films that are proof of the impending doom of civilisation as we know it. This film is violence for violence's sake, blood for blood's, and even if it's meant to be a comment on it, it's part of it all the same.Perez (Fearless) plays Perdita, a hellishly attractive half-Mexican, half-Texan vagabond who meets up with Romeo (Bardem from Live Flesh), a psycho high priest voodoo channeller.
For the hell of it, they decide to go on a thrill-seeking holiday in the States which involves kidnapping a teenage couple, subjecting them to psycho-sexual cruelty which culminates in a voodoo ceremony where one of them is the sacrifice, and then hoofing it to Las Vegas where they steal a truckload of frozen foetuses for Romeo's mafia boss, thus shooting lots of people.
Sound like your cup of tea?At second glance, and this only slowly dawns on you halfway through the movie (so don't walk out on it just yet), Perdita Durango is a film-noir, a send up of our own concept of controlled and civilised behaviour. In effect, it's a modern myth and will undoubtedly gain cult status for the door it leaves open for pontificating movie critics with more than 200 words to say about it. ---Lachlan Gilbert