Perdita Durango

Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia tackles the further adventures of the Tex-Mex femme fatale, Perdita Durango, who was first incarnated by Isabella Rossellini in Wild at Heart. The David Lynch film effectively played on hallucinatory weirdness, but de la Iglesia's English-language debut (shot in the US) is so hesitant that, despite lashings of sexual abandon, violence and sleazeball local colour, it barely quickens the pulse. Perez flashes her don't-mess-with-me look as Perdita, but meets her match in Bardem's butch Romeo Dolorosa, dangerous exponent of the voodoo-like cult santero. The plot kicks in when Bardem has to transport a lorryload of live foetuses across the border. He and Perez nevertheless find time along the way to take a couple of teens for a forced march on the wild side. The fantasy-fuelled intercutting of footage from Aldrich's wonderful Mexican Western Vera Cruz is little short of unforgivable.