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13 months ago, Olga was killed in a fire. Now Olga's mother and her
husband Don Riccardo call Olga's sister Maria and her childhood friend
(and first love) Manuel to their estate to ... not sure. Anyways, Olga's
mum and Don Riccardo have an axe at display that belonged to one of Olga's
ancestors, an executioner, and according to some family tradition they
have to have it on display for 13 months to inherit from whoever's
recently deceased. The axe however somehow takes on a life of its own to
cut someone up, like that servant who tried to blackmail whoever-it-was
because he knew something fishy was going on. Eventually, the Headless
Rider, a caballero with a bandaged head, breaks into the estate to look
for ... not sure about that one, but he's caught in a bear trap, only just
fights off the floating axe, and ultimately gets away ... but he remains
on Don Riccardo's track and finds out he has a lover in town with whom he
tries to cheat Olga's mother out of her inheritance - only that Olga's
mother isn't Olga's mother but Olga herself who just took part in this
charade because ... no idea, really. But now that Olga learns that it was
her husband himself who killed her mother and now wants to ditch her for
his girlfriend, she teams up with Maria, Manuel and the Headless Rider -
who turns out to be Maria's Mariachi-admirer - to see that justice is
done. And in the end, the baddies get their just desserts while the heroes
get their girls. Oh, and it is revealed (rather unconvincingly though)
that the axe wasn't really cursed, it was actually wielded by a masked Don
Riccardo. Basically, La Marca de Satanás is a kind of
cute genre mix, bringing together South-of-the-border Western motives,
murder mystery mainstays, horror elements, bits of soap opera, and several
musical sequences to lighten things up. Now sometimes this works, and some
sequences are really creepy - but most of the time, the blend is just too
random, the film is over-convoluted from a narrative point of view, story
elements often go unexplained, and especially the way the floating axe is
explained away at the end is very much on the disappointing side. Fans
into low budget and slightly exotic genre fare might still get a kick out
of this one, but objectively speaking, this is not a very good movie.
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