El Chupacabra

The back of my DVD describes the plot of "El Chucabra":after his capture in the wilderness,the legendary bloodthirsty creature Chupacabra escapes into the city creating mayhem and panic.As they pursue the deadly beast,an animal control officer and scientist Dr Starlina Davide realize that a vigilante with his own suspicious plan is also tracking the elusive killer for a mysterious research facility run by the diabolical Dr Goodspeed.This putrid horror flick is somewhat amusing,if you watch it under the influence of alcohol.The script is completely silly,the acting is wooden beyond belief and the direction is amateurish.Two rubber Chupacabra suits are easily the best thing about this movie.3 out of 10 and that's being extremely kind.

This movie is a complete and utter waste of time, one of the worst films I've ever seen. And coming from me, that is definitely saying something. In fact, I wish I could have given it negative stars instead of just rating it as a pathetic one-star awful.

When I rented this movie, I had an open mind. I find the legend of the chupacabra interesting and I have a fondness for cheesy horror flicks. But I draw the line at this one.

The acting sucked. The lead male gives one of the worst performances ever, looking and sounding unnatural as he delivers his poorly written lines. The lead female gives a slightly more palatable performance, but that really doesn't take much.

The chupacabra... well, considering how low budget this movie must have been, the creature was tolerable. It does, however, look exactly like someone in a mask and body suit. The mask is fairly detailed and might look cool in person, but not so on screen.

Speaking of on screen, you'd think they could have at least used a better camera. It looks like it was shot with a camcorder for crying out loud. Not a very good one, either.

I don't know what whoever wrote this abomination was thinking. The dialog sucks and just... I can't describe what I feel about it. At least not without getting in trouble with the site.

My advice? Avoid this at all costs. It's just not worth it. If it comes on TV and you have nothing else to do or watch, then *find* something else to do or watch. Read a book, listen to music, *anything.* Just don't subject yourself to this. If you do, you cannot say you weren't warned. And for Lord and Lady's sake, don't rent this sucker. It is not worth it, even if you get the chance to rent it for fifty cents. Trust me, I know.

My God, is this movie bad! When will the super-talented folks at York Entertainment realize that sooner or later viewers will get wise to their product and not be fooled by their better than average DVD box covers? Sure the "film" was shot in 35mm but the cinematography is average at best and the "acting" -- well, it's another non-Screen Actors Guild horrorama in the casting department. Too many of these ultra-low budget horror films are made today with non-SAG actors because the cheapo production companies don't want to pay actor residuals and the result is 70 minutes of unwatchable filler.

The screenplay seems to have been written by blind-folded, trained chimps and the resulting pages put together at random. On the only plus side, the "Chupacabra" monster suit is decent and I'm sure the makeup effects guy did the best he could do with the tiny budget he probably had. I dare you to watch this (or ANY of York's recent releases) without fast- forwarding through 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.