El Chupacabra

Humans are terrorized and mutilated by the title creature. Said prey consist of, among others, an animal control officer, an author, two idiot cops, three harmless gang members, a mad scientist and his henchman, as well as a homeless person.

The monster itself is obviously a guy hopping around in a monkey-man suit. At least there are no visible zippers.

EL CHUPACABRA contains plenty of blood, intestines, and other carnage. However, it lacks thrills, suspense, or an engaging story. Much can be forgiven due to the low-low budget. In spite of this, it does tend to drag on, and could cause the viewer to check the clock to see if it has stopped...

Boyle Heights, Los Angeles: legendary South American goat-sucking vampire, El Chupacabra, is on the loose, feeding on anyone unlucky enough to cross its path. Animal control officer Navarro (Eric Alegria) and Chupacabra expert/author Starlina Divide (Elina Madison) attempt to track down the creature, but find their progress hampered by a pair of dumb cops, money hungry locals keen to capture the beast for a fat reward, and a couple of nefarious scientists who want the monster for their experiments.

Stinking higher than a two-week-old taco, El Chupacabra is an incredibly bad horror movie that even fans of incredibly bad horror movies might struggle to sit through. With its dreadful script, awful direction (by not one, but two talentless hacks—Brennon Jones and Paul Wynne), laughable dialogue, and some of the worst acting this side of a porn flick, I recommend this film about as much as I do drinking the tap water in Mexico.

As Navarro and Starlina proceed with their investigations, viewers are treated to some incredibly weak gore, the worst designed book jacket in history, the most unconvincing dead person I've seen since the blinking corpse in Dr. Butcher MD, and a high-tech computerised security system consisting of a keyboard nailed to a post.

To be fair, for a guy in a rubber suit, the monster itself is fairly creepy (hairy, with big claws, and a face like a particularly ugly bat), but its appearances are few and far between, with more screen time spent on the tedious trials and tribulations of whiney Officer Navarro than on the killer antics of the titular creature (just how many times is it necessary to see Navarro handing in paperwork to his bitchy boss?).

If, like me, you make the mistake of wasting your hard-earned cash on this dreadful latino bilge (in my case, it was a whole 50p), consider using the disc as a coaster for your tequila rather than actually watching it.

I rented this movie in hope of an at least semi interesting creature feature. What it turned out to be was a badly done joke. This movie really stank, the acting was terrible with the main actor putting obvious breaks in between all his lines because he obviously can't remember his lines. The lighting and film making

are horrible and above all the script is possibly the worst one I have ever heard. The monster though scary looking were hardly worth the watching. There were

a lot of things that could have been built on but never were. Over all this is a major zero movie and not even worth the time I spent watching it. Thankfully I didn't pay to see it!

Every so often, a movie comes along. This is one of them.

Really, what can you say about bargain-basement junk like this? El Chupacabra (or simply "Chupacabra" - the movie box, trailer, and movie itself can't seem to decide which title to use) is a really good example of what happens when you give some guys a camera and $20 and tell them to make a movie by the end of the week. It's full of no-name, no-talent people, plus a guest-villain appearance by some guy from Naughty by Nature (personally, I'd stick to music, because his acting isn't good). The whole thing has an amateurish feel. The "star" has trouble remembering his lines, let alone delivering them with any kind of feeling. Monster attacks are confused, filmed in extreme close-up and rapid cuts that defy any sense of what is happening - and, flagrantly flaunting convention, the monster is about twice as slow and three times as awkward when it attacks from a point-of-view shot. The dialog ranges from clunky to laughable, and can be unintentionally hilarious in places (in this respect, it rivals the great works of Ed Wood, Jr. and Coleman Francis).

Some time was put into the monster design, though it doesn't match the description given by the film's "expert," and it looks as if it may have been an off-the-shelf Halloween costume that the prop guys modified. Even assuming it was entirely original, it's less inspired than adequate, and given the astonishingly low quality of the rest of the film and props, it's likely that most people will be underwhelmed.

I've no doubt that El Chupacabra will make money. But it's only because they only need to sell about 5 copies to cover their costs. Even for a low-budget direct-to-video flick, this one is bare-bones. And in movies, as in just about everything else, you tend to get what you pay for. A few hundred dollars and a script rewrite (or, for that matter, an actual script) would have done wonders. It still would have sucked, but only as much as all the other low-budget direct-to-video flicks suck. As it is, it's in a class by itself.

Hail to the chupacabra, baby.

According to this masterpiece of film-making's script (pun intended), Charles Darwin was full of nonsense when he presented his evolution theory, because he made absolutely no mention of any alien intervention. For you see, aliens sent Chupacabras to the earth and they form the missing link in the evolution theory. However, the rest of the film clearly seems to emphasize that Chupacabras are a typically Puerto Rican phenomenon, so I don't really know where that fits in. Are they saying all Puerto Ricans are aliens? Whatever, it's all pretty irrelevant anyway. The only thing you need to memorize is that "El Chupacabre" is an utterly cheap and imbecilic amateur B-movie, lacking tension, character development and any form of style. Several duos of people are chasing this goat-munching monster (remotely resembling the midget version of the Pumpkinhead demon) through the streets and ghettos of an ugly city. We have an untalented dogcatcher and a nagging female novelist, a pair of obnoxious cops and the supposedly evil scientist with his dim-witted accomplice. Since they all are extremely incompetent in what they do, the monster can carelessly carry on devouring all the Latino immigrants of the neighborhood. The monster itself looks okay and the make-up effects on his victims' leftovers are acceptably gross and bloody. The acting performances are irredeemably awful and headache inducing. Particularly Eric Alegria is pitiable in his first and only lead role as the overly ambitious employee of Animal Control. Yes, it's an incredibly stupid film, but surely you have struggled yourself through worse and less amusing low-budget garbage.