Indie Horror Hall of Fame: Cold Sweat (Sudor Frios)

At the start of Cold Sweat (Sudor Fríos), we learn through a montage of disturbing images that back in the 1970s a group of Argentine rebels stole twenty-five boxes of dynamite while the country was suffering under the terrifying reign of a dictatorship regime. Nothing ever came out about where those explosives went at the time, but as you can imagine, we're soon going to find out just where they made off to some thirty years later.

Cold Sweat then transports us to the present day, where Roman (Facundo Espinosa) is looking for his ex-girlfriend Jacquie (Camila Velasco) who appears to have left him for some blonde guy she's been chatting with online behind Roman's back. Fortunately, he's got help tracking Jacquie down in the form of his longtime friend Ali (Marina Glezer), who is able to locate where this guy lives from his IP address (how handy!).

When they get there, the rundown house waiting for them isn't occupied by the towheaded hottie that stole Roman's girl; it turns out to be the residence of two old-timers named Gordon (Omar Musa) and Baxter (Omar Gioiosa), who lure women to their home so that they can torture and test their hostages' ideals while being threatened with the promise of an explosive death via the use of some rather unstable nitroglycerine the pair have tucked away in their ramshackle of a house.

Once Roman is forced to rescue his ex and his friend after they both get nabbed, the sheer lunacy of what unfolds inside Gordon and Baxter's home while the trio try to make it out and not explode while doing so makes Cold Sweat one of the more memorable indie thrillers I have ever seen.

On the surface, the concept behind co-writer and director Adrián García Bogliano’s Cold Sweat does seem kind of paper thin, as the idea of a horror movie centered around two old guys armed with a stash of stolen dynamite they use to torture horny chicks feels a bit outlandish. But to the credit of Bogliano and his cast, Cold Sweat delivers up some serious suspense and a fantastic creep-out factor from start to finish, and even when the movie gets tripped up by a few minor plot holes and logic issues, it hardly matters because the ride is so damn great.

The centerpiece of Cold Sweat is undoubtedly the chase sequence that I would suspect was Bogliano's way of paying homage to William Friedkin's 1977 "carrying unstable dynamite through a jungle" film Sorcerer, starring the always stellar Roy Scheider (even if Bogliano's efforts here have a much more of an absurdist twist to them here). But what truly makes Cold Sweat so damn entertaining is that while there's no doubt the filmmaker is paying tribute to Friedkin, I actually found Bogliano's vibe strangely reminiscent of Wes Craven’s criminally underrated The People Under the Stairs for reasons I don’t want to fully divulge as it could ruin the viewing experience for anyone heading into Cold Sweat for the first time ever.

But if you can manage to evoke both Friedkin and Craven vibes with your work, I will be an immediate fan. And Cold Sweat made me an immediate fan of Adrián García Bogliano.

The performances in Cold Sweat are pretty great all across the board. Both Musa and Gioiosa as the film's old-world villains play off each other amusingly with a natural chemistry that manages to establish their characters as real threats even as the movie slyly points out the downside of both their ages and infirmity in comparison to the vigor of those they've captured. As the film's hero, Espinosa plays Roman as the sort of passive guy who's probably not the brightest bulb in the box but can think quickly on his feet when pushed, and Glezer's performance as smitten Ali comes off a bit over-the-top in her devotedness to Roman ("Go in a strange house to look for your cheating ex? Why I'd love to, guy I have a serious crush on!"), but overall the character works within the story Bogliano is telling here, and Glezer truly gives it her all with her performance in the film.

Cold Sweat is one of those movies that will undoubtedly leave fans divided, and there are valid arguments to be made on both sides. But as someone who has an appetite for horror that skews off the beaten path, I found Bogliano's commitment to his insanity-fueled thriller absolutely refreshing and a great breakout moment in his career at a time that he was emerging as a filmmaker who consistently brought an unusual energy to the films he would make. For those who appreciate movies that march to an unusual beat, you should no doubt appreciate the utter lunacy of Cold Sweat's gritty nightmarish tale and have as much of a blast (pun intended) as I did with it.