A Nightmare in Las Cruces (2011)

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: June 4, 2011

A Nightmare in Las Cruces (2011)
DVD5 | ISO | NTSC 16:9 (720 x 480) | 01:42:37 | 4,20 Gb
Audio: English - AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps and Commentary AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English, Spanish
Genre: Horror, Documentary | USA

On February 10, 1990 two cowards walked into the Las Cruces Bowl and changed the lives of many people. Seven people inside the bowling alley were forced at gunpoint to the floor and told to put their heads down. After stealing thousands of dollars from the safe, the killers shot all seven multiple times at close range, execution-style. The shooters then started a fire on the desk and fled. Dead at the scene were Amy Houser, Steven Teran, his step-daughter Paula, and Valerie Teran. Incredibly, Melissia Repass, Stephanie C. Senac, and Ida Holguin survived the brutal attack. Repass, just twelve at the time, made the heroic 911 call - despite being shot in the head- which saved three lives at the time. Four out of the seven shot were children, including a two and six year old. For almost twenty years, the two remaining survivors(Senac died in 1999), family members, and friends have had to live with this unspeakable event…

IMDB

One of the worst crimes in New Mexico history — an early 1990 robbery and execution-style mass murder at a Las Cruces bowling alley — remains unsolved 20 years later. But it's the hope of filmmaker Charlie Minn that his self-distributed documentary, "A Nightmare in Las Cruces," might breathe new life into this stone-cold case. Whatever the outcome, Minn has done a creditable job recounting the details of this heinous event and probing its haunting aftermath.


Straightforward and deftly assembled, the film mixes archival news clips, actual crime-scene footage and reenactments of the crime itself with a host of candid, highly personal interviews with the massacre's survivors, the victims' families and the case's various investigators. Minn's questioning of still-traumatized survivors Melissia Repass (shot in the head, the then-12-year-old managed to call 911 from the bowling alley office the two gunmen set ablaze) and former snack bar cook Ida Holguin, now 53, provide some of the movie's most genuinely powerful moments, as do conversations with women who both lost their children (one also lost her husband) in the massacre.


"Nightmare" tries its best to illuminate the vanished murderers' possible motive, theories on which range from random robbery to drug-related hit, but that continues to be the most mysterious piece of this horrific puzzle.

Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

In spite of its unfortunate packaging, which suggests some kind of unseemly true crime horror cheapie, A Nightmare in Las Cruces is actually a well-told, straightforward documentary intended to bring the horrible incident back into people's minds and, hopefully, give these families a little closure. Through interviews, reenactments, and archival footage; director Charlie Minn lays out a compelling picture. Unflinching in his depiction of this event, Minn shows us the original crime scene video and plays for us the emergency call that saved three lives. All of that is quite chilling, but thankfully not exploitative. We do get a little bit of cheesy dramatizations, but not more so than in your average episode of Unsolved Mysteries. They don't take up much time, so are a minor distraction.


The real star of the show is Melissia Repass. At 12 years old, shot five times, and with the room on fire; she still had the composure to call 911 and save the lives of her mother and another woman, in addition to her's. Her words still exude sadness and, for good reason, she is very emotional in her interviews. As much as what happened changed her, she has still been able to make a good life for herself. Not so for everybody involved who have worked tirelessly to find a lead to the killers. We hear from the mother of the two dead children (two and six) whose husband brought them to work and died himself, as well as his brother. She has been the main advocate for these victims for the last two decades. The survivors have managed to live as best they can, but their lives have become consumed by the tragedy. Until the day they die, they'll never have it out of their heads, and that's the saddest part of the film.


A Nightmare in Las Cruces comes to us from Lionsgate in a simple but effective package. The box art is misleading, but I otherwise can't complain. For a cheap documentary, the image looks good. The footage is from mixed sources, but the new footage, which includes the interviews and dramatizations, is very strong. The old stuff doesn't look so great, but that's expected. The sound fares pretty much the same: a no-frills surround mix that gets the job done and nothing more. Our only extra is an audio commentary with the director, which is worth a listen. Minn gives a little more background on the incident but, more interestingly, also lets us in on his take on the elusive question of why these killers, seemingly there to rob the place, laid down such a brutal massacre. In his opinion, this was no accident, but he admits that he has no way to prove anything.


Maybe A Nightmare in Las Cruces will help locate the scumbags who shot seven people, including babies, on that terrible February day. The case, so long cold, is unlikely ever to result in an arrest but, at the very least, the film can serve as a memorial to the people whose lives were forever changed by their actions.

Daryl Loomis, DVD Verdict


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