Texas Thriller Gets Belated DVD Release

Here's a good example of a modest indie film slowly finding its way to the living rooms of the community where it was made.

In 2008, as actors working in LA, Christina Treviño and Justin Price met on the set of low-budget boxing drama Cinco de Mayo: The Battle. The following year, she wrote-starred and he directed the $4,000 thriller Daddy's Home, shot in and around Texas' Rio Grande Valley. The movie was released locally in a few theaters in the summer of 2010 and on Tuesday, June 26th, it finally arrives on DVD courtesy of LA specialty distributor Vanguard Cinema. Treviño stars as a school teacher whose babysitting assignment turns into a confrontation with a demented, escaped-from-jail dad.



Along with the Hispanic cast, there is also Charlie Clark as Sheriff Travis. The owner of a Nissan car dealership in Harlingen is a longstanding local celebrity, having done various TV commercials and programs with an even unlikelier co star. Per a May 2005 Wall Street Journal profile:

In a popular television commercial here, a brawny, blond Texan named Charlie Clark pitches Nissan cars in perfect español. His sidekick, a slight 82-year-old Mexican woman, assures buyers they'll get a fair deal, or else: "Charlie will get a pau-pau," a spanking. This odd-couple routine might seem contrived to a mainstream American audience. But Clark and his childhood nanny, Aurora Aguirre, have struck a cultural chord among local Latinos, for whom nana -- Spanish for nanny -- represents a cherished matriarchal figure.

They appear jointly not just in commercials, but also in a local sitcom airing on Spanish-language television. In it, Clark plays the Green Ghost (a play on the word gringo), a masked superhero with a weakness for bella Latinas. Aguirre has the role of his guardian angel.

There has also been a Christian music show and a variety program, Orale, Charlie! If I were Vanguard, I'd be making sure Clark is clearly mentioned in all local TX advertising materials.