Taglines: Get On The Road.
Perdita Durango movie storyline. Rough girl Perdita (Rosie Perez) and her demonic lover Romeo Dolorosa (Javier Bardem) need humans to sacrifice following Romeo’s religion before he can go on a mission ordered by mob boss Santos. They kidnap teen sweethearts Duane and Estelle and travel with them to Las-Vegas.
The title character of this Alex de la Iglesia film made her first appearance in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) and was originally played by Isabella Rossellini. Rosie Perez takes over the role in this blend of black comedy, graphic sex and violence, voodoo, and weirdness.
Perdita Durango is pure trash, a fact she establishes at the film’s beginning. Her adventures begin when she hooks up with Romeo Dolorosa (Javier Bardem), a sleek, black-clad, sexually adventurous practitioner of Santeria who routinely kills, robs banks, and steals corpses from graves for his cannibalistic blood-soaked rituals. Santos (Don Stroud) is a pedophile and a crime boss. He hires Romeo to steal a truck filled with human fetuses that are slated to be used for cosmetic experiments. Romeo accepts but feels he must make a human sacrifice before he goes.
This bothers Perdita not a bit and she even picks out a pair of blonde teens for the ritual killing. The two crooks kidnap the kids, ritually feather them, sexually abuse them, and are preparing to kill them when Romeo’s cheated partner shows up with policemen. The crooks and their prey manage to escape, but the scheme to commandeer the truck gets botched and an ensuing shootout between Santos’ men and DEA agents goes wrong. Santos loses many men and swears revenge upon Romeo and Perdita, who continue on their journey with their two doomed victims.
Perdita Durango, released as Dance with the Devil in the United States, is a 1997 Spanish action crime horror film directed by Álex de la Iglesia, based on Barry Gifford’s novel 59° and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango. It features a psychotic criminal couple who kidnaps a random teenage couple, and plans to rape and offer them in sacrifice (similarly to the 1989 real life human-sacrifice of Mark J. Kilroy by Mexican drug traffickers). It stars Javier Bardem as Romeo Dolorosa, the main character, and Rosie Perez as Perdita Durango serves as the co-star. Inspired by Magdalena Solís and The Hernandez Brothers’s sect.
Perdita Durango (1997)
Directed by: Álex de la Iglesia
Starring: Rosie Perez, Javier Bardem, Harley Cross, Aimee Graham, James Gandolfini, Demián Bichir, Santiago Segura, Regina Orozco, Miguel Galván, Carlos Arau
Screenplay by: Barry Gifford, David Trueba, Álex de la Iglesia, Jorge Guerricaechevarría
Production Design by: José Luis Arrizabalaga, Biaffra
Cinematography by: Flavio Martínez Labiano
Film Editing by: Teresa Font
Costume Design by: María Estela Fernández, Glenn Ralston
Set Decoration by: Helen Britten, Claudio Contreras
Art Direction by: Andrew Bernard, Salvador Parra, Ana Solares
Music by: Simon Boswell
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence including rape, sexuality, language and some drug content.
Distributed by: Trimark Pictures
Release Date: October 31, 1997 (Spain), December 28, 1999 (United States)
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