They Call Him Marcado

In spite of looking a mess (as though it had been subjected to some sort of butchery), this remains a weirdie of the first order: a perverse religious allegory in the form of a Western. The Kid (Ruan) is a vicious psychopath given to laughing a lot, an actor manqué (anyone who doesn't like his 'performance' is shot) who leads a gang of looters and rapists, and is incestuous with his father (Del Castillo) to boot. The town's resident Mater Dolorosa (Silvestre), madam of the brothel, hires her lover Marcado (meaning scarred: 'We all have scars, and the ones inside never heal'), a tight-lipped killer in the Eastwood mould (Aguilar), to kill the Kid, who is of course her son. The characters are all Western stereotypes, but given a strained and exaggerated twist - as, for example, when the Kid is given a snake tattoo, while the tattooist ridicules him for the softness of his skin and the design begins to run with blood. Unsurprisingly, the shadow of Nicholas Ray never seems all that far away.