Written by: Rudy Balli, Mark Stephens
Directed by: Joe Castro
Starring:
Katsy Joiner as Maria Esperanza
Stan McKinney as George Armistad
J.T. Trevino as Pete Cortez
Chris Doughton as Daniel Webster
Paul Podraza as Jackson
I've spoken many times before about the
all-nighter movie nights my friends and I used to have back in high
school, as I'm sure many of you did or do. We'd hit the local video
store, the great Premiere Video (all hail!), and partake of the 5 for
5 for 5 (movies, dollars, nights) deal. Then it was off to the
grocery store for three-liter bottles of generic Mountain Dew,
doughnuts, pork rinds, and other things that your doctor will tell
you never to consume an entire container of in one sitting if you
want to make it past 30 without a heart attack. Ah, the days when I
could make it past midnight without an energy drink.
Anyway, one night, despite our better
judgment, we rented tonight's flick. Why against our better judgment,
you ask? Well, it's a Troma movie. More specifically, it's
distributed by Troma, which was the deciding factor in letting it
through the gate. While I love the idea behind Troma in theory, in
practice I find almost all of their studio output to be excruciating
exercises in trying too hard. Except for Tromeo and Juliet,
which is one of the greatest splatter comedies of all time, right up
there with Peter Jackson's early work, and Terror Firmer,
which isn't nearly as good as Tromeo
but has a lot going for it. However, I love those movies mostly
because of their comedic aspects (and one scene at the end of Terror
Firmer that is intensely
upsetting). Imagine my surprise when a movie featuring the Troma logo
actually freaked me out.
Now, I
know, I know. I can hear all the groans out there from those of you
who have seen this movie. That's it,
you're saying. Rags has finally flipped his shit.
But there's something about grainy, out-of-focus, artifacted video
footage that gets under my skin. The lack of fidelity allows the
viewer's brain to fill in so many more gaps than a crisp, clean
digital image does. It's the closest visual equivalent to reading a
book, really. It engages the viewer in a way that no other film style
can. The first ten or fifteen minutes of Legend of the
Chupacabra is some brilliantly
effective usage of this technique, showcasing how a talented
filmmaker can make some really effective effects-driven horror on a
budget. Indeed, the movie is like a feature-length pilot for the TV
show Lost Tapes, which
is my favorite cryptid show ever. Well, at least it's like that for
the first fifteen minutes or so. Then things kinda fall apart.
After
a really cool opening sequence shot mostly at a primate rescue
preserve, we meet the meat. Maria Esperanza is a student of
cryptozoology at the University of Rio Grande. She and her
classmates/cameramen Pete Cortez and Daniel Webster are working on a
documentary for their doctoral theses. Maria's uncle was murdered
under mysterious circumstances recently, in the same area near the
Texas/Mexico border where a rash of animal mutilations has escalated
to the point where people's pets have been disappearing from their
yards. Some of the more superstitious locals are saying it's the work
of el chupacabra, and
that's good enough for Maria and company, so off they go to the ranch
of Mr. Jackson.
They're
almost immediately confronted by the local sheriff, who wants them
gone. Everyone saw them come through town with their cameras and
their fancy city folk book learnin', and doesn't want them
encouraging people to believe a monster is responsible for the
killings. Of course, a run-in with the local curandera,
who conveniently happened to be hanging out at the ranch, changes
everyone's tune very quickly. This is a great bit of editing where we
cut back and forth between one camera catching the escalating
confrontation between Maria and the sheriff, and one camera following
the curandera around
the barn yard, muttering to herself and shaking magic charms. The
tension of the argument keeps ramping up and up and it cues the
viewer in to the fact that something bad is going to happen. You're
led to expect that it's going to be someone getting arrested or shot,
but the series of jumps back to the eerily quiet barn make it clear that
something isn't quite right.
Then
FUCKING
BLAM! Chupacabra attack! Of course, the way the thing jumps out from
behind a hay bale is more reminiscent of a local haunted house gag
than any of the great jump scares of horror cinema, but the build-up
is so effective that it made me jump out of my damn seat the first
time we saw it. Even now I sort of brace myself for it even though I
know it's coming.
Unfortunately, this is where the movie pretty much loses all that
momentum it built up.
Knowing they were walking into a potentially life-threatening
situation, Maria enlisted the aid of George “Army” Armistad, an
ex-Marine and current gun-for-hire, to come along and protect them
from any monsters they might encounter. After the chupacabra kills a
deputy and runs off into the night, the situation immediately
switches from student film to war zone and Army takes charge. Most of
the acting in the movie is pretty bad, but this guy is definitely the
worst. When he's calm and speaking in a normal voice, he's actually
not terrible, but since most of the movie requires him to be Rambo
Caricature Man turned up to 11, it's pretty hard to watch.
Switching from a spooky crypto-documentary to a straight-up monster
attack movie also has the result of losing all that great atmosphere
and ability to hide the shortcomings of your low budget effects. Now
we just get a series of set pieces where we're given way too good a
look at the well-designed but obviously rubbery chupacabra waggling
its tongue at the camera and killing people. The gore is plentiful
and well-done, and the haunting, minimalist synth score combined with
the blasted landscape of the American Southwest shot mostly at night
or at least very low daylight manage to hang on to enough of the
atmosphere built up at the beginning of the movie to generate some
tension in the moments leading up to the monster scenes. Of course,
then you see the lumpy, ill-fitting creature suit and the woeful
digital eye-glow effect and you're snapped right back to reality.
Being
a mockumentary, the action is also interrupted periodically by
talking heads ranging from Catholic officials to paleontologists,
discussing what they think the chupacabra could be. The only one of
them who has any damn sense, shockingly, is the priest. He states
that people who say it's a devil are silly, that it's just an animal
of some kind. The paleontologist is the worst. He shoots himself in
the foot right off the bat by saying that theropod dinosaurs lived in
the middle-Triassic (they first appeared in the late
Triassic period, and T-Rex most certainly was not around then, as
this buffoon states). Really, I should be saying, the script shoots
itself in the foot. I'm sure this was just one of the director's
friends who was given a bit part, and knew nothing about dinosaurs.
This painful sequence is accompanied by a really terrible drawing
that tries to make the chupacabra somewhat follow the body plan of a
theropod, even though none of the creatures we actually see look
anything like that.
Yes,
I said creatures. The main suit, which features in most of the movie
and gets hacked up in the ridiculous tacked-on autopsy at the end
(this scene makes me almost physically angry because it's so goddamn
stupid and the ad-libbed sounding dialogue makes me want to punch
everyone involved in the face, even more so than the stupid dinosaur
bullshit, because it absolutely ruins any last goodwill that great
first reel built up) is the primary beast, but we also get a look at
some weird simian thing during the pre-credits sequence, and a
strange sort of chicken-chupacabra attacks some more farmers at the
end.
Speaking of the pre-credits sequence, it decisively answers the
question of the chupacabra's origins before it's even asked. It
clearly shows the thing being created in a lab, where it kills a
guard and escapes into the wild. So why bother having all the talking
heads debating its origins if you've already shown them to the
audience? That kind of thing should be used to make your viewers use
their imagination and engage with the story instead of ask whey the
action is always being interrupted by all these people they already
know are wrong. I'd rather not know what the thing is at all,
honestly. Throw some of that debate in there to get a conversation
going with your audience and let that be the end of it. Leave it
unresolved, so everyone can come up with their own ideas. It was also
a mistake to include all that stuff about how the legend of the
chupacabra has been around for centuries, because that just makes it
seem like the government is blowing tax dollars creating actual
beings based on mythological creatures just so they can set them
loose and mess with people. Which...dammit, that's a much better
story. You read it here first, folks, that idea is mine!
Ok, I gotta go write my million dollar screenplay. In the mean time,
hit the links below and check out the research materials my fellow
seekers of the unknown have compiled.
Microbrewed Reviews:
The Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle
The Terrible Claw Reviews:
Chariots of the Gods
Chariots of the Gods
Checkpoint Telstar:
No comments:
Post a Comment