PERDITA DURANGO is one of those issue-with-warning shots of scalding tabasco that can have reviewers (about the only non-incarcerated people that have seen it) stuck staring at the blank white space on their computer screen, fingers frozen above the keyboard while they wonder, presuming they have a diverse circle of friends, how many they’ll lose if they recommend the damn thing. Chicken perusal of braver fool’s comments may draw a titter off one morality juggler who ventured that if you watch this with a girlfriend and she likes it, you should ditch waiting and propose to her. Drastic measure, but when soul bliss turns out to be  life without parole you can at least console yourself that the consummation part was hotter than hell.

Fear-averse Álex de la Iglesia directed the 1997 action/horror/pitch-black satire/road trip from the dark side. He and screenwriters David Trueba and Jorge Guerricaechevarría joined author Barry Gifford in adapting Gifford’s novel “59° and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango”. Gifford had taken a minor sick-chick character from his previous pulper (filmed as Wild At Heart) and gone full frontal with her dive into a lava pool of ferocity. The Spanish-US-Mexican production was frenzy-whipped for an estimated €4,200,000 (roughly $7,600,000 in 2023), but censors razed edits of its more extreme content, and a US release was wimped out in favor of dumping it onto video as Dance With The Devil. Don’t dick with dilution, go for the raw octane blend that batters discretion for 130 minutes.

Every writeup on this litmus tester feels exorcise-compelled to spoiler it to pieces. F—that s—. All we’ll allow is that down in the less-festive reaches of Tijuana, two really bad free-lancer fiends hook up and leave a natural born woepath in their wake on a cross-border spree involving sacrificial captives, obscene cargo, irked gangsters and dogged lawmen. In his first English-speaking role, Javier Bardem is a force to reckon with (and run from) as ‘Romeo Dolorosa’ and the title hellion is Rosie Perez, leaving her goofball comic cutes writhing in the dust. Their hapless human amusements are skillfully done by Harley Cross and Aimee Graham (Heather’s sister), the main cop on the rampage is up & comer James Gandolfini. Among the memorably wacked-out secondary’s count Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (as someone only he could inhabit), and Harry Porter, doing deadpan to a diamond point as ‘Rip Ford’.

Among the “excess” (cough…) there is some material that is padded (the Beirut segment) and one bit with a child that goes too far past the bar, but otherwise it’s a twisted feast of performance brio (Bardem and Perez are outstanding), directorial flair, truly gnarly action, and plentiful left-field laughs. Ya just gotta be ready to roll with it. Don’t blame me if you’re a wuss; I’m just a navigator on a one-way kamikaze mission.

With Demián Bichir, Roger Cudney, Don Stroud (extra disturbing), Santiago Segura, Josefina Echánove, David Villalpando and Carlos Bardem (Javier’s older brother).