What the World’s Watching

On a recent weeknight, moviegoers lined up outside the Central Theater in the crumbling downtown of El Salvador’s capital to see “Bride of Chucky,” the latest violent Hollywood film to arrive in Central America.

“I like the special effects,” Pablo Baires, 37, said as he waited for the doors to open. “These movies do not have a theme like the movie ‘Papillon,’ that was based on something real. These are just to pass the time.”

But Salvadorans do love to pass their time at violent movies, said theater manager Oscar Flores, 33. All 1,400 seats at the theater were filled the entire weekend when “Payback,” a violent thriller with Mel Gibson, was showing recently, he said.

An important segment of El Salvador’s moviegoing public is made up of fans of violent films, said Enrique Urdanpilleta, the country’s top cinema owner. “Those movies are hits at all levels,” he said, “not just in the [working-class] downtown movie houses, but in other theaters as well.”

Audiences resist movies that mix in too much information with the violence or ones in which their hero steps out of character, theater manager Flores said. “That happened three months ago when we showed [Jean-Claude] Van Damme’s latest movie, ‘The Legionnaire,’ ” he said. “People did not like it because the character was less violent. They considered him a loser.”

Baires, who saw “Legionnaire,” noted: “In his other movies there is more action, more special effects, a different kind of fighting. People like action, and [this] was boring.”