Cabal (2019)

Masked psychos, masked assassins with a guilty conscience, beautiful babes, all under a Californian woodlands setting. What else can it mean but that Rene ‘The Darkest Machines’ Perez is back in town, this time with a newbie called Cabal.

Like the other recent Perez film ‘Cry Havoc’, Cabal is another horror and action crossover, drawing equally upon the 1980s influences of slasher movies and Cannon action fare. Cabal also sees Perez revisit many of the themes of his own 2018 film The Dragon Unleashed. Like the protagonist of that film, our hero here, a man known only as ‘Dragonfly’ is a top drawer killing machine, clad in a cyber-ninja costume, whose sense of morality is increasingly beginning to put a strain on his occupation as an assassin for hire.

Salvation appears in the form of a beautiful woman, who recognises a shred of decency hidden behind Dragonfly’s self-loathing steel-cold exterior, and is determined to pull it out of him, and place him on a more righteous path. The mysterious woman in question being Elizabeth, –played by Perez regular Eva Hamilton- who works for Dragonfly’s shady employees and breaks protocol by reaching out to him. Elizabeth offers Dragonfly the lucrative but perilous task of tracking down and killing a muscular, woodlands dwelling serial killer called Sallos.



Its difficult to watch Cabal without flashing on the idea that Eva Hamilton has the makings of a terrific Bond girl, she is even shot like one in this film, what with all those stylish shots of her walking along the shoreline, and Hamilton and the character she plays in this film both have a certain Bond girl quality to them. Until that day comes though, she is definitely one of the stronger elements to Perez’s films, acting wise, and you can see why Hamilton has increasingly become the go to girl when it comes to solid female support characters in his films.

I’ve found you can tell allot about a character in a Rene Perez film by how they react to female breasts. The decent ones tend to do the gentlemanly thing and avert or shield their gaze should they inadvertently chance upon boobs, a scenario that tends to occur a great deal in Rene Perez movies. The hero of The Dragon Unleashed turned away from a woman undressing in that film, Bronzi did the same in Death Kiss, even Havoc has done this in a few of the Playing with Dolls series. So, in the film world of Rene Perez at least, the age of chivalry is not yet dead. Dragonfly does kind of pass this test too....well, he does pull Elizabeth’s bra off while she is in the hot tub at one point. Don’t worry though, as this is only so he can be sure she doesn’t have any listening devices on her...which is a very Connery era Bond thing to do...but he does then do the right thing and turns away when she gets out of the hot tub. So, with a few reservations, you’re reasonably assured that Dragonfly is the good guy in this film. Not so with Sallos, who is introduced terrorising a girl, pulling her top off and not looking away...the giveaway sign that Sallos doesn’t have a shred of goodness in him... that and the fact that he is carrying a bloody axe, wears a mask of human flesh, looks like a poster boy for roid rage and moments later is ripping the girl’s guts out.



If you are au fait with Rene Perez’s films you might recognise the Sallos mask from the 2018 fantasy movie ‘Quest for the Unicorn’ where it was worn by the head of the cannibal tribe. Quest for the Unicorn aka The Wishing Forest is one of those ‘is it or isn’t it’ a Rene Perez film. It’s very much in his style, features many of his regular actors and was filmed in his neck of the woods, so I’m inclined to think of it as one of his, despite it being officially credited to two female directors, who to further muddy these waters, are also called Perez. The fact that Quest for the Unicorn now shares a prop with one of his films, pushes me even further in the direction of thinking that Quest for the Unicorn is an unofficial Rene Perez film. It is a terrific mask though, with several faces gruesomely sown into it, and you can’t blame Perez- especially as a low-budget filmmaker- for bringing it out for another airing in this film. It’s too good to just be a one movie prop.

I have my doubts on whether it was a direct influence, since the 1980s appears to be more Perez’s jam, but Cabal does occasionally put you in mind of the 70s drive-in movie Shriek of the Mutilated. Whereas in that film, the big reveal was that its murderous yeti was a smokescreen for a bunch of cultured, wealthy cannibals to indulge in their taste for human flesh, Cabal updates this concept for an era of social media and ‘deep state’ conspiracy theories. The villains behind the villain here being the titular ‘Cabal’ a secret society of rich nihilists who allow Sallos to continue on his killing spree, since they are using the blood and the organs of his victims to replenish their health and youth. Linda Bott, who plays a similar role in Cry Havoc, is especially good at spitting out all these horrible, elitist insults in Dragonfly’s direction “how dare you ask questions, you obtuse piece of filth”.



Cabal topically taps into fears of the one per cent, and of the most privileged among us being wine drinking, emotionless, suit and tie wearing monsters, who regard the rest of the population as ‘cattle’ to be controlled and lived off. Usually when genre films pit the haves against the have nots, as in the case of John Carpenter’s They Live or Society by Brian Yuzna, they are coming at this from a leftish perspective, but Cabal turns this notion on its head and instead represents a conservative voice coming out fighting. Perez’s movies do have a habit of rattling cages politically, mainly the left, but he has gotten it from the right on occasion as well. His zombie movie ‘The Dead and the Damned 3: Ravaged’ –which pits Aryan, alt-right villains against an Asian-American hero in another cyber-ninja costume- evidently wound the right up the wrong way, judging by its IMDB reviews. One of which dams Perez as ‘someone spouting all the leftish clichés about white men being evil and everyone else is good’. Which I’m guessing was written by someone who hasn’t seen that many of Perez’s films, ‘leftish clichés’ isn’t something you tend to associate with the man. Hollywood liberalism is a big bête noire in his films, and Cabal is no exception. The right leaning social commentary in this film basically evolving around the Cabal having tentacles in Hollywood, and social media and using these tools to wage war on religion, family values and heterosexual procreation. The idea being that the cabal are trying to control the masses by emasculating and demonising male culture, and instead are throwing their weight behind feminist, gay and transgender causes. So, this is a film that uses horror and sci-fi elements as a way of espousing conservative fears about the influence of Hollywood and social media on the American psyche. At times it feels as if Cabal is Perez’s red rag retort to the current crop of horror films, emanating from Hollywood that make their woke values a major selling point. There is no two ways about it, Cabal’s politics will be a deal breaker for many. Politically there is more meat on the bone here than in your average Rene Perez horror movie, meat that might not be to everyone’s taste. If you take nothing else away from Cabal it is the knowledge that Hollywood and Rene Perez will never be good friends. Cabal is practically gleeful about burning bridges there and taking pot shots at the Hollywood film industry, with Linda Bott’s character being commended by the Cabal for mingling with “filthy celebrities” in order to further their cause. Something tells me Rene Perez won’t be on Hollywood’s Christmas card list this year...or any other year.



Declaring open season on Hollywood also seems to be on the menu of Perez’s next movie ‘The Insurrection’ which appears to be channelling similar concerns as Cabal, but drops the horror/sci-fi angle and plays them out in a more ‘real world’ context. It’s a little difficult to get a handle on The Insurrection, since all I’ve currently seen is the poster and the trailer, and the latter has taken the unusual step of muting/censoring a particular plot point, on the basis that this is too controversial and too dangerous to be included in the trailer, and you have to see the film itself to discover what it is.....the spirit of William Castle lives. A bit of digging around though would suggest the big, dark, secretive plot point that was retracted from the Insurrection trailer is that the female protagonist blows the whistle on how powerful ‘deep state’ figures are exerting their leftish influence on Hollywood and the internet, an element to the film that reportedly has made The Insurrection a hard sell, distribution wise. Vimeo being one of the few media outlets to be currently carrying the film.  So, it does feel that with Cabal, Perez was prepping for the plot of that film, and that the ‘cabal’ were meant as a proxy for the deep state figures that The Insurrection has gotten itself into hot water for depicting in a more direct fashion.

As we’ve come to expect from Perez, Cabal is exploitation filmmaking without apologies. One that manages to put its own distinct 21st century spin on the genre while respectfully paying tribute to its video era linage. Marion Cobretti looks to have been a big fashion influence on Mr Dragonfly, what with Dragonfly’s black leather jacket, 5 o’clock shadow and insistence on wearing designer sunglasses, even when in dark, indoor settings. I couldn’t help but be amused by the fact that in the final confrontation, Sallos is delivering all these punishing blows, and blood and teeth are flying about, yet Dragonfly somehow manages to keep those sunglasses on. Not even a beat down from a well pumped psycho gets to fuck with Dragonfly’s Stallone Cobra look. Cabal’s leading man, Master John Ozuna, not only looks the part, but as his name implies is a real life black belt and martial arts instructor. There are actually two masters for the price of one in this film, Ozuna’s onscreen adversary, Sallos, being played by another master....Master Tony Jackson. It is fair to say that both parties...in the words of Cannon’s The Apple ‘know how to be a master’, and the fight scenes in the film, choreographed by Ozuna, have an electrifying authenticity that puts bigger budgeted Hollywood fare to shame. If you were to categorise this film in terms of its influences, as tends to be popular with the quotes that appear on DVD boxes these days, you’d probably have to go with ‘Cobra Vs Friday the 13th, with the politics of a Chuck Norris film’. As with other recent films made by people who grew up on a diet of 1980s slasher movies, Adam Green’s Hatchet series for instance, Cabal can’t help but trump its own influences when it comes to ultra-violence. The bloody shootouts, stabbings and disembowellings here are starting to make those later Friday the 13th sequels look anaemic in comparison, and what with blood and guts here thrown around like confetti at a wedding, Cabal takes the bloodletting to a level that back in the Eighties was mainly the preserve of Euro-gore extremists. A partially underwater kill, in which Sallos stabs a girl in the back of the head with such force that the blade emerges from her mouth, suggesting that either The House by the Cemetery or J.P. Simon’s Pieces were also an influence here.



As is the norm with Perez’s films, Cabal mostly takes place in the woodlands of California, which has become such a distinct part of his films’ character. Shot around August 2019, the landscape here is a warm, lush and summery one of lakes, forests and parklands, that manages to look inviting, even when being portrayed as the stomping ground of ninjas, masked serial killers and snooty human organ traffickers. The impression you get is that the people who appear in the Rene Perez films which are shot over the summer months are the lucky ones, whereas the actors who appear in the movies of his that are made later in the year are somewhat less fortunate. Gorgeous as these locations appear in the summer, they take on the appearance of a chilly assault course during the winter months. I challenge you to watch ‘Quest for the Unicorn’ and not admire the grit and stamina of an actress/singer called Stormi Maya, who they have walking around in snowbound conditions, wearing very little other than a fur bikini and a massive pair of antlers on her head, or the actors in ‘Once Upon a Time in Deadwood’ who shoot it out in knee deep snow, or take a dive into an icy cold lake. The topless scene by the lead actress in Once Upon a Time in Deadwood may well play on the conscience of your average male viewer. On one hand the male in you finds the idea of seeing an attractive woman undressing, a very agreeable turn of events, it’s just a little difficult to ignore the voice in your head that is saying “oh, surely they’re not gonna make this poor actress take her top off in these Arctic looking conditions.” Cabal fortunately spares you such a guilt trip or male soul searching, as various female characters shed their clothes in a more humane, sun drenched context. As I’ve said in the past, if there is an attractive woman in a Rene Perez film, chances are that you’ll get to see her naked at some point, and Cabal does nothing to disprove this little theory. If anything, your sympathises tend to transfer over here to the male actors, who are slugging it out in boiling hot conditions whilst often wearing body armour and masks.



There is a far bit of mask wearing in Cabal, Dragonfly wears one, Sallos wears one, and has inherited a trait from Havoc in the Playing with Dolls movies of forcing his female victims to don these strange, raven like masks. Which under regular circumstances would be a twisted, serial killer thing to do, but given the current mess we are in, actually makes it seem like Sallos is merely helping these girls out and doing his bit to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus. Cabal inadvertently might prove to be the source of some mask wearing fashion tips over the next couple of months. Whatever you’re choosing to wear on your face at the moment though, I doubt any of us will be able to look as cool as Dragonfly does on his way to work with his cyber-ninja get-up and matching all-black ‘Bat-Quad’ bike.