An evil Satanist gets put to death by a group of monks for worshiping the Devil. One hundred years later a bunch of brash teenagers break into his crypt to plunder it for valuable gold and jewelry. One of the kids foolishly removes the axe in the Satanist's chest which killed him. The Satanist comes back to life as a vicious unstoppable zombie and embarks on a ferocious murderous spree. Director/co-writer Ruben Galindo Jr. does an expert job of creating both a truly nerve-wracking sense of absolute unsparing dread and an equally tasty creepy flesh-crawling midnight-in-the-graveyard gloom-doom atmosphere. Better still, Galindo Jr. really pours on the unflinchingly harsh and graphic violence with lip-smacking aplomb; gory splatter highlights include a bloody throat slicing, an axe to the forehead, a drowning, a neck snapping, a juicy decapitation, a fist punched through a man's stomach, and a head smashed through an iron gate. The ceaseless brisk pace never lets up for a minute, reaching an exciting fever pitch at the picture's rousing conclusion. Antonio de Anda's vivid, polished cinematography, the spooky, rattling, rocking score by Jon Michael Bischof, Rene Castillo and Ricardo Galindo, the enthusiastic acting from an engagingly eager cast, and the flavorsome south-of-the-border setting further enhance the overall solid quality of this strong and satisfying Mexican supernatural slasher winner.

I am a complete fanboy for Ruben Galindo Jr. who made Don't Panic and Cemetery of Terror. I've never been let down by any of his films so far and I am getting the idea that I may never be disappointed by them after reading the description of this film on IMDB - "Teenagers accidentally resurrect a Satanic killer who targets the local police captain's daughter to birth the Antichrist."

It's like people are making the exact movies I want right now, except they made them in Mexico 31 years ago.

Like all great Satanic movies - I'm looking at you Black Sunday and Evilspeak - this movie starts in the past, as the executioner of the Mexican town of San Ramon throws in with the devil instead of God, assaults a virgin and battles the other monks of his order before he's stopped with an axe right to the chest. He then says, "Some day someone will come and wrench the ax out. Then I'll return with more power to father Satan's son in one of your descendants."

If you're not all in, get out.

That descendent is Olivia, the lovely young daughter of Captain Lopez and she is the lone virgin amongst her slasher victim friends. Woe be to them, as they're camping next to a cemetery that's beset by - get this - grave robbers. That foursome includes Manolo, his psychic girlfriend Rebeca (trust me, Mexican films are not content to stay within one genre, they're going to toss in every ingredient) Armando and Diana.

You may wonder if they're about to find an abandoned church and tear the axe out of the body of the villain, setting this all in motion. Wonder no more. And when the first villagers die, of course the grave robbers are blamed by Olivia's dad. So he does what any real cop would: he tells them to go find the axe killer themselves. Yes, two people are dead, they've been blamed and he asks them to be junior detectives.

I love this movie.

Nearly everyone dies - by axe, by magic, by getting mashed into a pulp, bye bye and adios - until a priest explains that a Satanic idol and the axe itself, not to mention a whole bunch of TNT, are what it takes to kill off the executioner. This being Mexico, the action is intercut with Padre Jeronimo conducting a midnight mass while the cop uses a machine gun to continually blast the undead killer.

This may not be the best movie I've ever seen, but it's edging closer to that space every time I watch it, just by sheer force of will and my belief that if Fulci lived in Mexico, this is the kind of lunacy that he'd have made. As Mexican Nicholas Cage might say, " Eso es un gran elogio."

Grave Robbers is a Mexican heist turn slasher film, which could have been cool, but isn't.

The plot and setting ain't bad, needed better writing and casting though, because the characters aren't likable and 50% of the dialogue's screaming. No, no, no, no! The ratings and reviews are of absurdly high praise, but it's mostly just annoying.