The Films of Enrique Gómez Vadillo

This special limited edition spot gloss slipcover (designed by Haunt Love) is limited to 3,000 units and is only available on our website and at select indie retailers. Absolutely no major retailers will be stocking them.

Welcome Vinegar Syndrome Labs (VSL) to the VS Sub-Label family! As with each of our sub-labels we are hoping to expand and defy expectations with the diversity of films we restore and release. As the name implies, VSL will serve as a kind of testing area for releasing genres and eras of film that one might not immediately expect to come from VS. The ultimate objective of VSL will be to see if these types of films will find an audience, and if so, pursue and release more of them…and even if not, still serve as a means of restoring more of the weird, rare, and unusual movies you might not expect from Vinegar Syndrome.

Mexican director Enrique Gómez Vadillo is one of the country’s forgotten cult cinema notables. Responsible for a series of genre films, gritty melodramas, and erotic works throughout the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early ‘00s, Vadillo’s films have been largely unavailable for English language audiences until now. Notable as much for their beautiful landscapes as for their perverse subversion of Telenovela storytelling by wildly upping the volume of sexual debauchery, homoeroticism, and general sleaze, Vadillo’s films represent a rare transgressive subset of Mexican genre cinema. Vinegar Syndrome Labs is proud to present this collection of his key features.

VERANO SALVAGE aka Savage Summer (1980) is an erotic exploration of an illicit threesome at the beach besieged by violence, and is a notable representation of Vadillo’s typical blend of sexually confrontational storytelling and traditional melodrama. Ostensibly following a woman (Ana Martín) on her journey of sexual discovery, but rife with homoerotic imagery, VERANO SALVAGE is an outlier in hypersexualized Mexican genre filmmaking where men’s bodies are the focus of objectification. JOHNNY CHICANO (1981) updates the tropes of classical Hollywood melodrama to sweaty, working class, early ‘80s Mexico. Poor young land worker Johnny (Fernando Allende) falls in love with the daughter of his wealthy American employer (Verónica Castro), setting into play chaos in his family and community, which ultimately leads to violence. MUERTA EN EL PLAYA aka Death on the Beach (1991) returns to a sunny beach setting with this homoerotic tale of a serial killer. David, a disturbed young man who has been molested by his teacher, begins murdering all those around him who he sees as responsible for his trauma, while trying to overcome his own homosexual desires.

directed by: Enrique Gómez Vadillo
starring: Sonia Infante, Andrés Bonfiglio, Fernando Allende, Verónica Castro, Silvia Pasquel, Ana Martín, Jorge Rivero, Orlando Urdaneta
1980-1991 / 257 min (combined) / 1.85:1 / Spanish 1.0 Mono
Program Content © 1981,1989,1991 Producciones Acuario

Additional info:

• 2-disc Region Free Blu-ray Set
• Newly scanned & restored in 2K from their 35mm original camera negatives
• Presented in their original Spanish language soundtracks with newly translated English subtitles
• "Wearing David’s Skin" (10 min) - an interview with “Death on the Beach” actor Andrés Bonfiglio
• "A Beautiful Chapter" (15 min) - an interview with “Savage Summer” actor Orlando Urdaneta
• 8-page booklet with an essay by writer, programmer and filmmaker Juan Barquin
• Reversible sleeve artwork
• Newly translated English subtitles