Director: Jonathan Munn
Year: 2003
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Bloodthirst: Legend of the Chupacabras; Rise of the Chupacabras
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Desperate to save their house, a man tries to find the money by joining a group of locals out hunting a legendary creature known as a chupacabra hunting villagers for food, but when he realizes they’ve gotten in over their heads try to find a way to escape the creatures’ wrath.
Review:
Overall, this was a watchable at best shot-on-video creature feature. Among the better features here come mainly from the highly enjoyable second half where it stops dealing with random townspeople and starts in on the search to stop the creature. They’re not grandly staged or overly impressive but it does finally get to the community out searching for the creatures and coming upon the vampire guards around the town attacking everyone. These are brief but quite fun as the actual on-screen action generated by the attacks in the countryside or the swarms of attacks in the underground caves that features a lot of impressive-by-association sequences with the vampires fighting and has a solid enough resolution on top of it all. These make this one cheesy enough to be worthwhile.
There are some issues to be had with this one. The main problem is the central storyline where it’s so chaotic and filled with so many different beats that there’s a sense of randomness to the whole thing. Focusing on the issues going on with the residents of the town, including housing issues, unrequited lust, the reporter looking for the next big break and the strange creature attacks on the outskirts of everything, getting everything unraveled here takes up quite a lot of time on these storylines so it’s somewhat disjointed. Going for the series of storylines here just leaves so little time for the creature to go out and do it’s thing that it’s almost a blessing since it doesn’t have to show off the usual low-budget features with the shoddy effects, guerilla-style presentation and general tone which can be enough to lower this one.
Overview: **.5/5
A decent if somewhat flawed shot-on-video creature feature, there’s enough going on here that this one becomes entertaining enough on its own even though the big issues present do bring this one down. Those who prefer this kind of shot-on-video feature or appreciate cheesy creature features will have the most to like here while most others who don’t enjoy the style or approach will want to heed caution.
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