Turistas (R, 2006)

In John Stockwell's torture-as-horror flick, a bus filled with American, British, and Australian tourists plunges off a mountain road in Brazil. Escaping with only some scattered luggage, they decide to hang out with youthful, energetic locals who appear eager to party, have sex, and learn English. It's not long before the tourists -- including Alex (Josh Duhamel), his sister Bea (Olivia Wilde), and his potential romantic interest Pru (Melissa George), Finn (Desmond Askew), and Liam (Max Brown) are drugged, robbed, and apparently incapable of calling home or American Express for help, and so they end up dependent on those same locals for help. Of these, Kiko (Agles Steib) appears the most sincere: He offers the group his uncle's swank house atop a jungly mountain. Little do they know, but that very uncle, psychopathic Dr. Zamora (Miguel Lunardi), intends to harvest their organs.

While it's short on clever scares and long on bloody excess (machetes and scalpels being implements of choice), Turistas also lurches between images that are breathtakingly beautiful (think Blue Lagoon) and literally hard to see, as when a tattooed thug chases victims through dark underground caverns, swimming for long minutes underwater.

The fact that the doctor's own viciously verbalized racism leads directly to his downfall doesn't exactly make up for the film's demonizing of dark-skinned characters throughout. It's also helpful and silly that he explains his thinking on the issue while digging into a pretty girl's torso for her liver and kidneys (essentially, he's angry at American imperialism and arrogance and wants to see a Yankee heart beating in the chest of an ailing Brazilian child). His villainy is underscored repeatedly: He puts a kabob stick through a follower's eye, murders his minions when they misbehave, and keeps passports of past victims, for no fathomable reason except to grant the newest ones the chance to discover them and be suddenly afraid.

Studio: Fox Atomic
Director: John Stockwell
Cast: Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Olivia Wilde
Genre: Horror
Run time: 89 minutes
Theatrical release: November 30, 2006
DVD release: March 27, 2007
MPAA Rating: R
MPAA explanation: strong graphic violence and disturbing content, sexuality, nudity, drug use and language.