La Guerrera Vengadora 2 (Mexico, 1991)

It was inevitable that there would be a sequel to La Guerrera Vengadora, given the first film left so many questions unanswered. Questions like, "Why simply walk down a flight of stairs when you can instead take a crotch-punishing motorcycle ride down them?" Or "How can a single woman best put to use that rocket-firing stunt cycle that she has stashed away in her spare bedroom?" You feel me, ladies.

La Guerrera Vengadora 2 basically reunites everyone who was not blown up in the first film. This of course includes its bodacious star, Rosa Gloria Chagoyan, who plays Ana Rosa, a mild mannered high school chemistry teacher by day who leads a double life as a leather-clad, motorcycle riding vigilante by night. Also returning are Ana Rosa’s constant dwarf companion, Reintegro (Rene “Tun Tun” Ruiz) and Chagoyan’s IRL husband, Rolando Fernandez, as Ana Rosa’s hotheaded police detective boyfriend, who again spends as much time vociferously blowing his top as he does blowing helicopters out of the sky with a grenade launcher. I am henceforth going to refer to this character as “Inspector Hothead”, since I have still not been able to figure out what his goddamn name is.

Closing this circle of nepotism is Rolando’s father, Raul Fernandez, in the director’s chair, here benefitting from both a surer hand and a higher budget than he had with the first film. Fernandez Sr. also co-wrote and co-produced the film with his son, which makes Rolando’s casting of himself as such a churl seem all the more self effacing. The family enterprise here, after all, is that of bolstering the image of Rosa Gloria Chagoyan as an iconic cinematic badass, which I imagine is vastly preferable to running an insurance office or a bodega.

La Guerrera Vengadora 2 notifies us by way of an opening vignette that the Ana Rosa of Vengadora 1 has since moved on from personal vendetta to being an all-around crime fighter. A masked gang stages an insanely violent bank robbery that quickly devolves into an insanely violent hostage standoff. This can only be broken by La Vengadora crashing her bike through a plate glass window and mowing down all offenders present with her cycle-mounted machine guns. Meanwhile, a wheelchair-bound mafia kingpin decides to send a message to Inspector Hothead by dispatching a knife wielding psycho to Ana Rosa’s home. Ana Rosa, however, has received warning and flees, leaving behind Sonia, a student whom she has taken in, to fall victim to the psycho’s blade.

As Sonia dies in Ana Rosa’s arms amid much throaty lamentation, the kingpin’s goons take advantage of a Benny Hill-like interlude between a busty housemaid and a horny comic relief milkman and kidnap the little daughter of the police chief (who is played by Carlos East, looking well past his suave leading man roles in Mexispy films like Cazadores de Espias and Blue Demon Destructor de Espias). Ana Rosa is soon on their trail, having found that trustiest of movie clues; a matchbox bearing the name of a nightclub. And, really, who among us does not commit a nefarious act without leaving behind a matchbox bearing the name of an establishment that is literally the hub of all of our activities? (If you were to rifle through my pockets at this very moment, you’d find one imprinted with the name “My Place”, meaning my actual place, because I never leave the house.)

This turn of events leads to a callback to one of Vengadora 1’s most memorable “branding” moments, in which Ana Rosa throws a huge fur worthy of Isabel Sarli on over a form-flaunting dress and hits da club looking like a fanfic version of Jessica Rabbit. Naturally, all of the men in attendance react as if she is the first woman they have ever laid eyes on and, before too long, a pair of the kingpin’s butch female operatives saunter up to feel her out, so to speak. This leads to Ana Rosa, in the guise of an underworld floozy, being granted access to the kingpin’s mansion, where she makes off with a file disclosing the location where the chief’s daughter is being held. The first of many motorcycle chases follows, and you can lay money on there being many sick jumps, sweet asplosions, and rad wheelies involved.

Now all that remains is for Ana Rosa to don a form-fitting black leather outfit, arm herself with a formidable looking crossbow, and, with Reintegro in tow, stage a nocturnal raid upon the mansion. (And, seriously, what is the deal with crossbows? Can somebody tell me at what pop cultural moment such an unwieldy and impractical weapon became the ultimate symbol of bad assery?) It goes without saying that the mansion comes complete with huge air ducts that make for easy egress once La Vengadora has rescued the little girl from the hands of the knife wielding maniac. That said, the perilous chase that follows makes good use of this stock setting, providing the film with what turns out to be a standout action set piece. Equally deft is the following sequence, in which Ana Rosa and the girl dodge competing bands of well-armed pursuers throughout the dank and labyrinthine interior of a ruined 19th century fortress.

I am happy to say that the makers of La Guerrera Vengadora 2 for the most part avoid the icky sexual violence that marred the first film, although they can’t resist the opportunity presented by the presence of an imperiled child to plague our minds with the thought of no small number of narrowly avoided atrocities: toddler vs. flamethrower, toddler vs. axe-wielding psychopath, toddler vs. giant rotary fan, to name a few. A moment of silence should also be taken for the dignity of wee Rene Ruiz, who is made the butt of just about every cartoonish sight gag that has ever been perpetrated in the name of lowbrow comedy, from running around with his ass on fire, to falling in a hillock of flour and having people think he’s a ghost, to engaging in a mock bullfight with a fat biker sporting horns on his head. One hopes that there is a special place in heaven for such performers.

Despite those potential hurdles (pardon the pun) to sensitive viewers, it has to be said that La Guerrera Vengadora 2 betters its predecessor in almost every conceivable way. Its action is expertly staged and virtually nonstop, benefiting from some truly outstanding stunt and pyrotechnic work. Its climax, in particular, had me surprised to find myself hooting and hollering like a good ol’ boy. In that scene, la Vengadora flees from her attackers—who are first on motorcycles, then in a helicopter—the little girl clinging to her back as she roars around on her motorcycle, raining fiery death on her pursuers with the various ordnance at her disposal. This bit ends with her making a preposterous, wire-assisted motorcycle jump across a wide ravine, her little charge holding on for dear life the whole way.

Good stuff. And recommended. Keep in mind, however, that I was very drunk while I watched this movie. You should be, too.

La Guerrera Vengadora (Mexico, 1988)

On a recent visit to downtown Los Angeles, I made a disturbing discovery. The Grand Central Market, which once offered the opportunity to clog your arteries with the borderline disgusting street food of many nations, now had a kombucha bar, an upscale juicery, and a hipster-y breakfast spot called Egg Slut--and was furthermore crowded with affluent looking white families and their clamoring, overly-validated hellspawn. The Arcade, a swap-meet style street mall that was once a bountiful source of bootleg toys and cds, seemed to be going in a similar direction. I feared that someday soon, the tiny, overcrowded video store on Broadway where I bought the DVD of La Guerrera Vengadora for four dollars would be a thing of the past. This would truly be a shame, because La Guerrera Vengadora --a sterling example of 1980s Mexican action cinema, replete with exploding pickup trucks, icky sexual violence, flatulent synthesizer music and mustaches--should only be acquired in such a store. Ordering it from Barnes & Noble just wouldn’t feel right.

La Guerrera Vengadora stars Mexican radio personality turned actress/pin-up girl/singer (she sings the theme song), Rosa Gloria Chagoyan, who, thanks to roles in such films as Lola, the Truck Driving Woman and its sequels, became one of Mexican exploitation cinema’s rare female action heroines. Here she plays Rosita, a pneumatic high school teacher who is especially loved by her male students, who compose mash notes to her on her chalk board. When her younger brother is murdered and his girlfriend brutally raped by a gang of drug dealin’, car thievin’ bikers, she is prostrate with grief and rage. Equally disconsolate is her roommate and constant companion, a dwarf named Reintegro, who is played by Rene Ruiz, aka “Tun Tun” (meaning that the 4DK “quotation marks rule” of Mexican comic relief is in full effect).

The makers of La Guerrera Vengadora attempt to counterbalance the rape of the brother’s girlfriend, which is about as vile and protracted as they come, with a later scene in which Rosita blows away a would-be rapist in mid rape attempt. This only makes the film an even more crystalline exemplar of how, in female-driven revenge films, the act of violence that sends the heroine on her path to vengeance always has to have some kind of sexual component to it. After all, we don’t need to see Charles Bronson’s dick attacked in order for his righteous rampage to be justified. This, of course, may be due to the idea that all masculine perception is channeled through the penis, giving any real or perceived affront the force of an emotional crotch blast.

Anyway, in the wake of her brother’s murder, Rosita turns to the authorities, who—given the fact that all of the police in this movie’s universe are either bumbling or corrupt—are no help whatsoever. Perhaps the most corrupt of all of these is Comandante Trevino, who is played by Mexican B movie stalwart David Reynoso with unctuous relish. Perhaps the least corrupt is Rosita’s detective boyfriend, played by Chagoyan’s frequent co-star Rolando Fernandez, who is so overwhelmed by righteous fury that he spends much of his screen time yelling at people indignantly.

Trevino, we soon learn, is in partnership with the sharp-suited Mr. Big who gives the biker gang their marching orders. This gentleman is an effete product of the dissolute upper class who tinkles away on a grand piano while enjoying the adoring gaze of his musclebound strongman Noel in a scene evocative of that Liberace movie with Michael Douglas. La Guerrera Vengadora, in fact, has a number of gay references, among them a member of the biker gang named El Gato (Alfonso Zayas Jr.) who likes to nuzzle up to his male victims, paralyzing them with homophobia, before he plunges his knife into their throats (watch out, men, the gays can smell your fear!)

There are a lot of things about La Guerrera Vengadora that I might’ve understood better had it featured English subtitles. For instance, I might be able to tell you why Rosita, a school teacher, has a flashy, rocket-firing stunt cycle stowed away inside her apartment, along with a bitchin’ Evel Kneival style jumpsuit and a sawed-off shotgun. These things all seem to have a lot of sentimental value for her, as she caresses each lovingly as she carefully unpacks them. This might lead me to conclude that La Guerrera Vengadora was a sequel of sorts, but no; that would be La Guerrera Vengadora 2, which came out three years later, in 1991.

Rosita’s strategy for revenge involves her using her own hot bod as bait. Dolling herself up in her most boob-accentuating outfit, she hits the streets and discos of whatever town this movie takes place in, where every single man reacts to her as if he has never seen a woman before. Soon she is luring the members of the gang one-by-one to their doom; a doom that involves lots of motorcycle stunts and cars that explode as if they were made entirely out of dynamite.

Though mostly a delivery system for automotive hijinks and boobs, La Guerrera Vengadora is not without its artistic aspirations. It in fact includes its own version of the Odessa Steps Sequence, in which a wheelchair-bound disable girl is plunged down a steep stairway during a key battle between Rosita and the gang. Rosita, of course, manages to rescue the girl, though the rules of La Guerrera Vengadora necessitate that she do so without leaving her motorcycle.

Rosita’s ravages soon come to the attention of Mr. Big, who instructs his men to stage a violent, slow motion siege upon her isolated country home. This leads to her tearing around on her supercycle, executing sweet jumps and wheelies with dwarf sidekick in tow, as countless stunt men and dummies go through the elaborate death throes that only bullets and RPGs coated with pure Mexican vengeance can provoke. And it is with this scene that I forgave all of La Guerrera Vengadora's many, many flaws, because I am truly an awful person.

Because human beings are complex, Rosita has a mixed reaction as she watches Mr. Big plummet to his death from the top of a parking structure at La Guerrera Vengadora’s conclusion (SPOILER). She laughs, she cries, and then stares pensively into the middle distance. There are just so many things you can feel while someone is falling in slow motion from a building several stories high. Then, both it and her having given us everything they have, La Guerrera Vengadora goes to freeze frame.

And I quite honestly find myself wishing that I had picked up the DVD of the sequel.

Ayna Tukhabi’un Al-Shams, aka Where Do You Hide the Sun? (Libya, 1977)

For a not at all religious person, I end up seeing a lot of movies about spiritual reawakening. Perhaps this is somebody’s way of telling me something. Of course, what draws me to these movies is not the “after” they show –- the formerly lost lamb’s pious return to the flock -- but their depiction of the depravity and vice that came before that, something that, in most cases, these films tend to portray with a lot of enthusiasm.

In Ayna Tukhabi’un Al-Shams, this detour from the righteous path is shown in the form of a hippie commune presided over by an older couple by the names of Abrahim and Sophia. Sophia appears to have been an army nurse who is traumatized by her experiences in the war and is now wrestling with an addiction to morphine. (Images of war, in fact, permeate Ayna Tukhabi’un Al-Shams, with a jarring montage of actual news footage and photos turning up in its early minutes.) Abrahim, for his part, is a bald headed and boisterous papa bear.

As for the commune overall, a rainbow coalition of young people from apparently all ethnicities and backgrounds, its activities seem to be pretty benign, mostly restricted to lots of singing and dancing to some pretty righteous sounding Arabic psych-funk music. True, there are some foreboding looking pagan idols standing about, but if it’s Satan these kids are worshipping, their practice of it could easily be mistaken for a musical number from Godspell. The most decadent behavior we see is an instance of motorcycle jousting occasioned by a visit to the camp by some scruffy biker types, some doobie smoking, and a scene where Abrahim and Sophia jubilantly pour champagne over each other’s heads. All in all, it’s fairly north of the Manson family in terms of countercultural provocation. In any case, whatever philosophy guides the group, it proves to provide little spiritual cushioning for Abrahim once his son is killed in a mild looking motorcycle spill (there was apparently no money in the budget for actually wrecking a motorcycle).

Most information I can find about Ayna Tukhabi’un Al-Shams, also known as Where Do you Hide the Sun?, lists it as being an exclusively Libyan production, though it nonetheless benefits from a lot of international cooperation. Not only does it boast a Moroccan director in Abdallah al-Mubahi, but also two genuine Egyptian movie stars in the persons of Nadia Lufti, who plays Sophia, and Adel Adham, who plays Abrahim. Adham, true to his stature, really turns his acting up to “11” during the film’s second half, stumbling about in a loudly demonstrative state of desolation marked by constant sobbing and crying to the heavens. And, true, it looks kind of ridiculous, but at the same time feels more like real grief than what movies typically show us in this regard.

Because Ayna Tukhabi’un Al-Shams had the unmitigated gall to be in a language that I don’t understand, I can’t really shed any definitive light on its message. But I can say that it is quite obviously a film that is earnest in its didacticism. After a credit sequence depicting conflict through the ages in stylized drawings, we have a healthy swatch of sober narration, followed by a long sequence in which a panel that appears to be made up of clerics and professorial types debate the moral crisis at hand. The solution that the film depicts in terms of action is for Sophia to kick the drugs and return to the Christian church. Abrahim, in turn, makes the pilgrimage to Mecca, crying and lamenting all the while, and, once there, has a vision of being viciously stoned by his fellow followers to the accompaniment of the disco version of the Star Wars theme. I think it’s safe to say that, in the eyes of Ayna Tukhabi’un Al-Shams, whatever spirituality the hippies practiced may have had a good beat and been fun to dance to, but nonetheless couldn’t match the Big Four when it comes to putting a Band-Aid on our fear of death and loss.

Los Demonias del Desierto (Mexico, 1990)

Okay, show of hands: Who else felt a little empty inside after reading my review of La Venganza de los Punks, knowing that that would likely be the last they heard of the cartoonish anti-protagonists of that film and its predecessor, Intrepidos Punks? Well, it turns out that the threat posed to Mexico by roving bands of punk rock bikers who worship Satan and The Road Warrior in equal measure was greater than we thought. Because, while not employing the same personnel, 1990’s Los Demonias del Desierto (Demons of the Desert) follows the template set by the Punks films so closely that we can safely consider it a sequel in spirit, if not in fact.

Yes, it’s true; gone is the gang’s luchadore-masked leader, Tarzan. But in his place we now have the wild-eyed cultist played by Sergio Bustamante, Father Damien, in a performance that seems like a desperate warning to the future concerning Brando’s Dr. Moreau. And to be honest, Father Damien seems like just the guiding hand that the formerly somewhat scattershot punks needed, channeling their putatively youthful energies toward a clearly defined goal. That goal, in this case, is the overthrow of our corrupt, consumerist society, the method, apparently, being the occupation of people’s hearts and minds. By bullets.

Just how bad is this band of satanipunks, you ask? Oh, I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of one of its members SHOOTING HIS OWN MOTHER at Damien’s urging -- an opening scene that, if unsubtle, at least does an economical job of orienting us within the film’s moral universe. Later the gang will ambush a nice nuclear family on their road trip, then shoot dad and grandpa before dragging mother and son back to their camp. Oh, but first our lead punkette -- whose blue fright wig makes her look like she has a tribble on her head -- has to get sexy with the dad’s corpse, because Los Demonias del Desierto is just classy like that.

Fortunately for the punks -- or so it would seem -- the police officers assigned to their case are surely the two most elderly on the force. These are brothers Carlos and Tony, played by brothers Fernando and Mario Almada. Both Amadas are perennial stars of Mexican action cinema, with Mario especially appearing in a whole mess of narcotraficante movies. Clearly their reputations are meant to precede them here, because when we look at Carlos and Tony, we are meant to see, not two men who have clearly chosen on-the-job coronaries over retirement, but 100% stud material. To this end, we see these codgers effortlessly putting the beat down on hoodlums young enough to be their grandchildren and romancing a pair of beauties easily 40 years their junior. In what I’m guessing is a further attempt to bolster their manliness, we are also this time given a designated gay punk biker for Carlos and Tony to call “faggot” and “queer” all over the place; meaning that, like the Punks movies before it, Los Demonias achieves the staggering feat of making its heroes even more repellent than its villains.

Carlos and Tony’s ladies are named Linda and Julia, and given the time-saving requirements of Los Demonias’ skeletal narrative, we can be assured that, once we have met them, it is not long before their peace and safety will be compromised. And, sure enough, it is only in the next scene that they are accosted by the punks at a lonely roadside spot. Julia is killed, and Linda is taken back to the camp for later sacrifice. Once there, we see that it may be Father Damien’s in-house medium, Samantha, who is really calling the shots, seeing as she determines each of his moves via the draw of the tarot -- and is also responsible for dishing out the brainwashing potion that turns their young captives into mother-killing degenerates. No woman, however, is any match for the double fisted, geriatric power slam that is the team of officers Carlos and Tony, especially now that the gang has messed with their love supply.

Los Demonias del Desierto will not disappoint fans of the Intrepidos Punks films who come to it expecting a sleazy, ridiculous piece of crap. It’s just that good. My only complaint is that the musical score doesn’t reach for the same level of authenticity as that of Intrepidos Punks, which featured an at-least-trying-to-be-punk theme by the Mexican group Three Souls In My Mind. Instead what we get is a hideous marriage of synth and sax that could have graced any of Kenny Loggins’ shitty movie songs from the 80s -- all the more reason to hate these Demons, seeing as having horrible taste in music is the worst sin that a punk could commit. Other than that, the outfits didn’t reach the level of outlandishness of the previous films, but I’m not going to split hairs. I mean, why be a punk about it, right?

La Venganza de los Punks (Mexico, 1987)

It's those goddamn punks again.

One of my favorite things about Intrepidos Punks -- for the obvious reason and others -- was the end. In that final scene, the cops are celebrating their victory over the punks when the elder police captain's face clouds over. When asked by the film's putative hero what the problem is, the superior officer replies that he fears this just concluded battle may be "only the tip of the iceberg". This ominous note suddenly lends Intrepidos Punks the air of a cautionary tale, the message being that The Road Warrior was real, and that there are actual post-apocalyptic glam-punk motorcycle gangs roaming our present day streets and highways, a threat for which we must remain ever vigilant.

And I'm certainly not one to argue that such threats shouldn't be dealt with. Because if they aren't, they're sure to come back again, just as they do in the belated sequel to Interpidos Punks, La Venganza de los Punks. In Venganza, this return is effected when gang leader Tarzan (El Fantasma) is freed from prison by a couple of his conspicuously middle-aged punkette minions. No time is wasted then before the punks' venganza is put into action. The home of Marco, the prolifically mustached cop who arrested Tarzan (played by Juan Valentin, a man who did double duty as both a popular ranchera singer and Mexico's answer to Charles Bronson) is invaded during his daughter's quinceanera celebration. As Marco, overpowered by the gang, watches helplessly, the punks rape his wife and daughter before savagely murdering them along with all of the assembled guests. Tarzan then decrees that Marco should be left alive to be tormented by his loss, and presumably also so that he can seethe with an overpowering lust for vengeance, thus guaranteeing that the remaining hour or so of the movie can be bestowed with something that has some vestigial resemblance to a plot. So, yes, anyway, "this time it's personal", bla bla bla.

I wanted to mention that, immediately after the sequence described above, La Venganza de los Punks signals its serious intentions by having a scene in which one of Marco's partners, surveying the aftermath of the quinceanera massacre, makes an emotion strangled speech in which he declares, "We are all guilty. We are all accomplices. All of us!" I wanted to pass that bit on so that you people out there who are merely reading about this movie on the internet rather than actually watching it cannot escape the blame. THIS IS YOUR FAULT. Personally, I have to admit that I lack the elevated moral sense that would enable me to understand what the hell Marco's partner -- and, through him, the makers of La Venganza de los Punks -- are talking about, if anyone even knows. Man, I wasn't even in Mexico at the time. Still, the rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Seriously, gaze upon the carnage and rend your garments in shame.

 I mean, seriously, fuck you guys

Anyway, Venganza then goes on to tick off a nice little catalog of "rogue cop" movie cliches in short order. Marco insists upon being put on the case, but is sternly rebuffed by his superior, who feels that he is "too close" and will turn it into a personal vendetta. Instead, the superior orders him to take some time off, to which Marco responds by angrily tossing his badge down on the desk and quitting the force. Marco then takes to the road in his deluxe pick-up truck with camper shell, and, in literally no time at all, comes upon the gang completely by coincidence, after which he surreptitiously follows them to their combination camp ground and satanic shrine.

And it is at this point that La Venganza de los Punks can really get down to the business of being what La Venganza de los Punks is all about, and that is a long series of sequences in which Marco exacts revenge against the members of the gang one by one -- male and female alike -- in a variety of gruesome ways. These include immolation, head spiking, beheading (not the same thing), poisonous animal friending, and that method so curiously beloved by homophobic movie he-men worldwide, rectal impalement. Note that, throughout this, Marco is presented as being completely in control, and never in danger of being imperiled, so that there is no element of even attempted suspense or drama to cloud our understanding of these scenes' pleasures as being anything but for their own sake. Furthermore, the punks are shown to be going through some internal power struggles of their own, which makes them even less equipped to defend themselves.

This, combined with the fact that Marco increasingly takes to his sadistic acts with a cackling, wild eyed glee, marks the second half of Venganza as being clearly an old school slasher film in the Friday the 13th mold, with the formerly intimidating punks reduced to being the hapless, bubble headed campers who continually wander directly into the unstoppable killer's trap. It's as if Venganza is, quite understandably, so in love with its own cheesy, exploitative elements that it doesn't even really care what kind of cheesily exploitative movie it is from one moment to the next, even while going from being a moralizing cop vs. the system revenge film to being a nakedly prurient, vicarious stalk-and-slasher.

As you might have already guessed, La Venganza de los Punks -- which was directed by Damian Acosta Esparsa, taking over the series from Intrepidos Punks director Francisco Guerrero -- is a noticeably more mean spirited film than its predecessor, with an even more blatant level of misogyny thrown in just to make the aftertaste that much more bitter. Still, like its predecessor, the nastiness of its ideas more often than not meets up with a harebrained level of execution. In one scene, Marco slowly pours acid over the body of a bound and helplessly pleading female member of the gang. It's an unquestionably vile scenario, but leavened somewhat once you note that the effect of the acid on her body manifests itself in the form of fizzing green foam that makes it look like she's been blanketed with Airborne tablets and doused in water -- not to mention the stratospheric yet somehow still mismatched pitch of the acting that's going on. Elsewhere, the mayhem is realized by exactly the kind of cheap, rubbery prosthetic effects that are most guaranteed to bring a smile to the heart of any debased genre fan, regardless of context.

Ultimately, La Venganza de los Punks fulfills the chief mandate of any sequel by giving us more than what had preceded it: more gore, more punks, more sex and nudity, and, most importantly -- if you can believe it --, an even more insane level of absurd costumery. Tin foil hair extensions, fin shouldered plastic ponchos, and a bearded punk dressed as a Roman centurion are among the calamities on display. El Fantasma, in particular, shows a lot of flourish in the variety of headgear he models; in addition to the mask he sported in Intrepidos, there's a bell-shaped chain mail number and, during a Satanic ritual, something that looks like a full head dunce cap rendered in multi-colored pastels.

If there was anything that impressed me about La Venganza de los Punks while watching it, it was its makers' willingness to push their formerly righteous protagonist to such grotesque extremes. That is, until they offered themselves a cheap "out" with a final twist that will quite literally make you want to kick your screen into little pieces, eat it, and then projectile vomit it out the window. I'm not gonna spoil if for you, though. After all, Venganza is a dish best served cold.