Honourable Mention: Folktales Of The Cryptids – The collected edition

Writer: Joseph Oliveira

Artists: various

Release date: 2026 (collected edition)

Contains spoilers

Another comic book from indie publishers Afterlight Comics and they do tend to do quality releases. This volume is the three volumes of Folktales Of The Cryptids collected into one. There are two cryptid tales that have caused me to give this an honourable mention.

The first is a tale entitled Remember Me, which was drawn by Adrian Manuel Garcia and coloured by Bethany Varni and is a bittersweet tale of an elderly farmer who cares for his wife, who is suffering from dementia. We see him caring for her but, one night, he hears distressed sounds coming from his cows. Out to investigate he finds one down and bloodied and is attacked himself by something… which we see is a chupacabra – the honourable mention, as opposed to a review, is given because not enough is offered to the reader that distinguishes between this chupacabra being a bloodsucker or a general predatory creature (albeit a cryptid one).

The second story to mention is Hide and Seek, which employed the talents of artist Francesco Iaquinta. The start of the story sees a family picnic with Adrian playing ball with his dad, as his pregnant mom looks on. His dad is attacked by a popobawa, a one-eyed manbat (popobawa literally means Bat Wing) that hails from Zanzibar, Adrian is the only survivor and, some twenty years on, returns to avenge his family. Again, this is a creature that will feed on people (the comic suggests a once a year harvest), and the vampiric aspect isn’t really explored but being a man-shaped bat, albeit a cyclops, there feels like at least a genre crossover.

Honourable Mentions: Cryptids

A portmanteau film from 2023, with the segment we are interested in directed by Billy 'Bloody Bill' Pon (whose feature Circus of the Dead I have a real soft spot for), the segment is too short and could have done with expansion. That it is called Chupacabra Death Machines will give you an idea why I’m looking at it. In truth though, this could have ended up as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ and the honourable mention is simply because the use of the term chupacabra is, at least, of genre interest.

The conceit of the film is that all the stories are phoned in to a radio talk show hosted by Harlan Dean (John Bloom) and for this story he is called by the Barber (Esau Ramirez), an alias of the barber for a group of the Cartel operating out of Texas.

chupacabra

He has seen them take proxies, men who have offended them, who are placed in a building and two chupacabra are let loose. The cartel member wins if his proxy stays alive long enough and the chupacabra wear cameras to capture the action as well as there being CCTV. Unfortunately, the chupacabra as we see them look a bit like bad CGI dogs and there isn’t much else to the story. One would have thought the filming style might have hidden the bad CGI, unfortunately not. Now this could still have worked but it is over and done with pdq, leaving it no time to find its feet. So it's not on long and more genre interest than actual blood sucking chupacabra.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Greywood’s Plot

Directed by Josh Stifter and released in 2019, this indie flick surprised me by completely turning on its axis mid-way through. As it started, following seeing a shack in the wood in which sits the titular Doug Greywood (Daniel Degnan) and Home, Home on the Range is playing, we see a table with medical instruments and something covered…

Dom (Josh Stifter) is making a retrospective video to leave as a suicide note. He lives in his mom’s (Kim Fagan) basement and has a cryptozoology video channel, which he makes videos for with Miles (Keith Radichel) but, as we get to know them, it becomes apparent that Miles has lost interest in the channel and they are getting less than complimentary comments on their videos (and a lot of down votes). Dom also has a brother (Aaron McKenna), we hear later, and although they still speak by vid call there is an estrangement because brother and mother are at odds with each other.

Dom's website

This all speaks to Dom’s depression and thoughts of self-harm – he has a gun and we see him early on trying to muster himself to pulling the trigger but not getting there. However, when an unsolicited video comes through the post, he sees a last chance to make the channel work. The footage, grainy and dark, shows what he thinks is a chupacabra. His brother, who he sends the footage to, and Miles are less convinced.

Miles and Dom

For us as a viewer it is more difficult to tell as the very dark footage looks very much stop motion but it isn’t narratively clear whether this is a suspension of disbelief thing or whether it is coding to us that this is a faked video in the film’s reality. Nevertheless, Dom contacts the man on whose land it was shot – Doug Greywood – and gets permission to camp, though Doug is purported to be bemused as he was unaware of the video. Dom convinces Miles to come with him.

chupacabra skull

What follows is a couple of guys in the woods, wandering around and drinking… to a point at least. There is a ‘found footage’ vibe up until that point, even though it isn’t that at all. They do find a couple of artifacts as they go along. A weird skull that squirts gunk (from the cavity) when Miles pokes it. We also see a skull, that they don’t, that seems to have moving fingers emerging from it and that helps add a weirdness. They then find what they assume to be a chupacabra skeleton. However, following this…

Daniel Degnan as Doug

As I say, the film turns on its axis becoming something very different – without spoiling too much let me just suggest that there is some body horror element to this and it is surprisingly well done given the budget. However, the hunt for a chupacabra has now vanished below that axis and so, from a TMtV point of view, we have a belief in chupacabra and possibly a fleeting visitation of the skeleton and footage (which is likely not real, given the film's change in direction), and also a moment with Miles where he is confronted by strangeness before we are fully aware of what is happening.

The imdb page is here.

Chupa – review

Director: Tom Hoover

Release date: 2000

Contains spoilers

This really is a low budget flick, the Tubi version being of a really low resolution – which I doubt impacted the experience too much. Yet it has a certain something about it and it is great when a low budget flick does that, when a film reaches beyond the sum of its parts. Does it mean it is good… not necessarily so but, in this case at least, it provides a solid entertainment if you know going in what you are going to get.

Of course, by the title you’d guess it was about El Chupacabra and you’d be right, sort of. However, we start with a car. It pulls up near woods and a man Dr Simon Westlake (Jim Lee Johnson) gets out…

Jim Lee Johnson as Westlake

In a house, a dog is interested in what’s occurring outside. The owner (Marci Paolucci) lets her out, the small dog runs out towards the woods and we see her through a red “chupa-vision”. The dog turns tail and runs back in. The owner asks several times what is out there (lady, the dog can’t answer) and then goes out to take a look for herself. She is attacked – though we see little of it, just a pov camera aimed towards her and the scream. Westlake drives away and, for sharp-eyed viewers, his presence does perhaps undermine the central twist later, at least a little.

lecture

We cut to conspiracy-theorist Seth Corralis (Russel Kunz) giving a lecture on El Chupacabra (one telling budget part, or perhaps a deliberate dig, was the fact that Seth’s artist impression slides are the most crudely drawn figures imaginable). After the lecture (having signed a book with the cover ripped off) he is talking about Men In Black to a couple of audience members when he is approached by a man in black and told there is someone wishing to speak to him. Oblivious of the irony (though the audience members are not) he meets a limo outside and is asked to join a taskforce being set up by the FBI to try and document a Chupacabra sighting.

meeting the team

The FBI person in charge, Grier (Dale Franks), has pulled in Marine Cpt. Lawrence (Pete Ferry) to be the field lead. Due to an operational faux pas his career is almost in tatters and he is forced on the mission. In the meeting is Westlake, who works with the FBI. They get to a lodge and we meet the rest of the team – rookie agents Angela (Tiffany Sandels) and Skip (Dan Sekanic), from the military Private Andy Johanson (Connor McGarvey) and not yet arrived (and forced into the team) animal behaviourist Dr Samantha Enright (Mary Mahoney). Also, along is FBI agent Frank Roundtree (Henry C Bishop). Whilst they assemble, we see a ranger (Aurelio Anastasio) killed by the Chupa in another part of the woods.

Jeffrey Lynn Hall as Gabriel

Their orders suggest they must be cut off from the world for the duration – no car keys, no cells phones and any comms/internet through a secure link via Quantico. They do find, later, the reports on the two victims that the coroner (Jack Bennett) has tried to bury and subsequently draft in Assistant coroner Dr Laura Coats (Jo McGarvey). She examined the bodies, which had throats ripped out, the blood gone, three distinct punctures in the torso and their innards liquidised. When Grier is told of this he drafts in a psychic, Gabriel (Jeffrey Lynn Hall), who has worked with the FBI in the past (and who Westlake actively dislikes). However, there is a suspicion that the creature might be too big to be a Chupacabra and they are not known for their attacks on humans…

finally revealed

So, the film has little in the way of budget and so sensibly keeps the creature hidden or just in indistinct flashes for the most part (it certainly does not look like the beast on the movie art). We do, at the end, see it in all its glory and it looks pretty darn naff so the choice was a good one. It also can shapeshift and take the form of humans (there is a conspiracy that it does this by drinking their DNA after liquidising the insides but then we see it in the form of someone still alive, and it can replicate wounds as well as natural features) and this also helps keep effects minimal. Actually, the practical effects for wounds is generally quite good.

chupa-vision

Acting-wise… I think it is best described as earnest. It isn’t winning awards but everyone seems to be giving their all. The story is ok but the narrative construction rambles a bit – the film is 1 hour 48 minutes and it's not that the plot is bloated so much as it takes a bit of a circuitous route and yet, again, it feels very earnest in what it is trying to do. I found myself surprised at the fact that I was not bored and wanted to stay with the film till the end, despite its limitations and that is great – there are plenty of high(er) budget films that don’t achieve that. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

The Vampire Dies in No Time: Season 1 – review

Director: Various

First Aired: 2021

Contains spoilers

The Vampire Dies in No Time is an anime based on a manga, and my thanks to Leila for pointing it out. It is a case of the (English) title being literally what happens in the show and it is a comedy, following the general anime/manga comedic strictures. If you generally find comedic anime amusing then you will genuinely find this so. I watched the dubbed version, due to the platform I caught it on, but the English voice acting is actually rather good. Due to this I will put the names of the English voice talent into the review.

Although there are frequently recurring characters (alongside the main characters) it is episodic without an overall arc, indeed each episode can be broken down into (up to) three short vignettes.

Ronaldo and Draluc

In the first episode the vampire hunter Ronaldo (Ian Sinclair) is called to a castle where the nearby townsfolk believe the vampire within, the invincible superior vampire Draluc (Frank Todaro), has kidnapped a young boy. Ronaldo takes on the job but, once he is inside and faces Draluc, the vampire almost immediately dusts. He then reconstitutes himself – this is the key to the title as Draluc will dust at the slightest thing - being hit, sunlight, a loud noise, a shock, harsh words etc. It then turns out that the boy has been sneaking in to play Draluc’s video games when he sleeps through the day and lost track of time.

John

A sequence of events in the castle leads to it being destroyed. When Ronaldo gets back to his office, he finds Draluc there, who has decided to move in as Ronaldo’s roommate. He has also brought his armadillo familiar, John (Ellie Dritch). Ronaldo quickly bonds with John – whose speech is made up of the sound “Nu” – but wants the annoying Draluc out of there. However, one person Ronaldo fears is Fukuma, the editor of his book series The Ronaldo Chronicles. When he is forced to write the second volume, it is discovered that the public love the team up and his publishers expect them to continue working together.

some inferior vampires

I mentioned that Draluc is a superior vampire and there are also inferior vampires – for instance we get a vampire cat, Bosatsu (Jeremy Inman), who has powerful hypnosis powers, a vampire mosquito, a vampiric parasite that latches onto the victim’s groin, looks like massive testes and releases powerful pheromones that makes the victim suddenly popular, and a vampire goldfish to name a few. I should note at this point that there are also vampire vegetables at a couple of points and Ronaldo has a terrible fear of celery. There are a weird and wonderful rollcall of other vampires too, as well as unusually attired hunters – to stand out most hunters wear outfits ranging from a baseball outfit, through lingerie to dressing as a duck. The hunters are freelance and there is an official governmental Vampire Control Division also.

The Vampire Nudenium

A couple of the notable (and recurring) vampires are The Vampire Nudenium (John Stimac) who is a mostly nude vampire whose groin is covered in geraniums, he can control plants and if he feeds a seed to a human he can control them. Another is The Vampire Micro Bikini (Christopher Guerrero), whose bite forces the victim to wear a micro bikini and puts them under his power. Tsujigiri Nagiri (Christopher R. Sabat) is a former serial killer who makes weapons out of his own hardened blood and put his essence int a doll, which made him invulnerable to attacks but it also became a weakness (voodoo style).

a chupacabra

The humour is often derived from Ronaldo’s antagonistic nature, especially with Draluc, but it is also frequently resulting from a particularly anime-specific sexual place. However this is neatly written and whilst the sexual humour can be surreal at times, it manages to walk the line rather than cross it – however it certainly isn’t for kids. The animation itself looks nice but isn’t necessarily anything special. However, if you like the comedic end of anime this one is definitely worth checking out 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Buck Wild

This 2013 film directed by Tyler Glodt is a buddy/zombie comedy flick that sees four city slickers, as it were (although they are perhaps not too slick), heading into the Texas countryside on a deer hunting expedition at Buck Wild ranch.

Humour is sought from the character interaction, a hillbilly exploitation vibe and zombies – as an outbreak occurs roughly when they arrive. However, it is the source of the zombie outbreak that is the reason for this honourable mention.

Buck Wild ranch is owned by Clyde (Joe Stevens) who is fixing a truck when he hears movement outside. At first thinking racoons, he goes out and interrupts daughter Candy (Meg Cionni) having sex. Whether the subsequent killing of the fleeing paramour, by thrown monkey wrench, is due to their pre-marital activity or the fact that they have wrecked Clyde’s tulips is left to the viewer’s imagination. Clyde heads back to his garage but something is in there. A mangy creature comes out of the shadows.

chupacabra

The creature attacks and (as well as looking – I hope deliberately – unrealistic) it looks perhaps like a mange/rabies-ridden coyote but the word out of Clyde’s mouth is chupacabra – hence the mention. The looking a bit like a deformed coyote fits in brilliantly with the state of allegedly found chupacabra carcass in real life. Clyde is up and about the next day but soon he (and Candy) become zombies – notable for red and haemorrhaging eyes. The Chupacabra is mentioned again in terms of locals laughing about Clyde’s claim to have seen one but doesn’t actually come into the movie, so just a fleeting visitation.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Murphy’s Chupacabra Hole

A short film directed by Nathan Tarantla and released in 2018, this goes to show that sometimes simple works really rather well.

I rather like a bit of old-time radio and this, despite a modicum of animation, relies on a narrated story-telling that is reminiscent of such radio shows. We see from a point of view perspective the opening of a hole (Murphy’s Chupacabra Hole, indeed) and we see Chupacabra in silhouette and their glowing eyes… the rest is carried by the narration delivered by Nathan Tarantla (I assume).

down in a hole

It starts in the hole, looking at the stars; the narrator had been chasing one of those things across Murphy’s field when he had fallen into the hole. The hole has been dug by Murphy and baited, and the narrator has injured his knee. He tries to stand, to get back to his home as he fears for those there. He blacks out and, when he comes around he sees something, surely stars glowing…

The eyes have it

Of course, it is not. It is a chupacabra. His gun is covered in mud – he’s not sure whether there is mud in the barrel and there seems to be more and more of the things. Their eyes glow when together and they seem to have some sort of group power. Perhaps his gun will work but better to try and keep them there than let them get to his loved ones…

This is an effective little story. At the time of writing I cannot find an imdb page.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation – review

Director: Genndy Tartakovsky

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

I don’t know what it is about this franchise but, despite rather enjoying it, I am always late to the party. The third instalment of the franchise, if you read my reviews for the first and second outings then you’ll see that, whilst I was enthusiastic about the first film, I was perhaps less so about the second. This isn’t to say that the second film was rubbish, just not as good as the first.

Perhaps this is natural and there are many, many examples of franchises weakening as they go along. Therefore, I was happy to see that this film actually picked up again and that whilst the story was pretty simple it managed to grab the quick-fire one liners and run with it. Some of the characters were sadly side-lined compared to earlier vehicles but Dracula (Adam Sandler) was front and centre throughout.

Van Helsing

It starts in 1897 on-board a train where Dracula and several of his monster friends are disguised whilst travelling amongst humans (by wearing head scarves). They are just having their tickets checked when in bursts Abraham Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan), monster hunter. He reveals the monsters by lighting a match (and triggering Frankenstein (Kevin James) who has a fire phobia) and sets after the fleeing fiends with an electro-gun. We then get a montage of his tussles with Dracula.

Dracula and Mavis

Cutting to the present and Dracula and Mavis (Selena Gomez) are coordinating a wedding at the hotel but, at the reception, Mavis notices that something is off with Dracula. Essentially, he is lonely (it’s been over a century since his wife died) and the male monsters encourage him to use a dating app. Not realising this Mavis assumes that he is stressed with work and so books a holiday for them all – which most of the monsters from the hotel also go to.

Dracula and Ericka

After a flight on Gremlin Air, they arrive at the Bermuda Triangle to meet their ship for a cruise, the ultimate destination being Atlantis. The ship is captained by Ericka (Kathryn Hahn) and despite believing that a monster only zings once, Dracula zings when he sees her. In this outing we are told that a zing is specifically a monster thing and the equivalent of a human’s love at first sight. There is a problem, however. In the bowls of the ship is Van Helsing, now little more than a head on a steampunk contraption and Ericka is his great-granddaughter, raised from birth to be a monster hunter. Van Helsing has a plan to destroy the monsters and Ericka sees an opportunity (despite the zing) to kill Dracula herself…

shark riding

Some of the characters are, as I mentioned, fairly side-lined. Dennis (Asher Blinkoff) is in film (having smuggled his giant monster dog on-board) but is used sparsely so doesn’t outstay his welcome and Wayne (Steve Buscemi, Paris Je T’aime) and Wanda (Molly Shannon, The Amazing Screw-On Head), the over-wrought werewolf parents, are used but then slipped off story deliberately, which allows for the parenting gags to be heard but not over-used.

a chupacabra walks into a bar...

This was beautifully animated, as always, and its simple storyline (as mentioned) allowed the gags freedom to flourish (and we finally get Dracula genuinely saying “bleh, bleh, bleh”). One particular favourite involved a chupacabra ordering a drink. As I mentioned I think it worked better than the second film, which was mostly down to concentrating on Dracula as primary character. A delight for kids, I’m sure, and good fun for adults too, I’ll give this outing 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Darkness by Day – review

Director: Martín De Salvo

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

Well, this one snuck up – some 7 years after release. Hailing from Argentina the first thing I’d like to address is the quote on the UK DVD cover that suggests “Feels like Under the Skin and Let the Right One In”. Err. No.

Ok, this has an art-house sensibility but that is about the only thing it has in common with the former – and that simply puts them on a similar artistic continent. The only similarity with the latter… well they both have a vampire. Actually, though it isn’t credited as such, this is actually a reimagining of Carmilla.

ocean scene

The film starts with a view of the ocean and cliffs, this moves to trees and a woman, Virginia (Mora Recalde) runs through the trees. Suddenly she awakens and looks to the door to see her father, Emilio (Pablo Caramelo) sat in his chair. In the morning, despite not having slept, he leaves the family home to visit his brother Ostrosky (Luciano Suardi) as his niece, Julia, is ill and Emilio is a doctor. Later in the day a car arrives. The driver carries Julia’s sister Annabel (Romina Paula) towards the house, she is unconscious. The driver says that he has been paid for bringing her but when asked about Emilio he claims to know nothing and leaves.

Mora Recalde as Virginia

Virginia visits a store in town and hears a radio broadcast about a rabies breakout. This is almost background noise and the fact that rabies has been chosen by the writer is almost irrelevant, it could be a reference to any plague/outbreak. Lidia, who runs the shop, tries to engage Virginia in conversation about her daughter – a ballet dancer on tour overseas – but Virginia escapes the store and gets back home. Back home Annabel is up and about. Virginia tries to call her father but there is no answer, later the phones go down in the house and in town.

the bird

She makes some soup but Annabel isn’t hungry. She does report Julia’s symptoms as being weak and sleeping all day. That night Virginia checks on Annabel but she isn’t in her room and so she goes out looking for her and finds her, in the morning, sleeping on the forest floor. Nearby, unseen by Virginia, is the bloody carcass of a bird. What we then get, going forward, is a slow burn of a movie more intent on building the relationship of the cousins than showing us anything horrific. Annabel, however, is drawn as the delinquent – whilst Virginia stayed at home and Julia is said to have been studious, she went to Buenos Aires for college and then dropped out – by dint of this she is the outsider in the superstitious small town.

vamp face

Eventually, having met Annabel, Lidia sneaks a wrapped severed rabbit (I’d guess) foot into the bole of a tree and later gives Virginia a blessed charm to keep the chupacabra away. The offer of the charm is from the Carmilla story. There is talk of local girls becoming sick and there is a growing attraction between Virginia and Annabel, which also resonates to Carmilla. Even her mysterious delivery to the house seems resonant with the original story. But we see little vampiric, most is off-screen, but we do see Annabel displaying weird eyes and prominent veins as she lays in the dark and at another point we see her outside someones home just before an off-screen moment of violence, with us seeing only blood spattering a window.

stake

Even when the patriarchs return home, whilst they want to keep the two apart (Annabel is displaying symptoms similar to Julia they say) and carve stakes, the pace of the film never really goes past a deliberate slow burn. Really the most accurate thing one can say about this, is it is a mood piece, it generates atmosphere and that is the aim, I think. The ambience ignores anything like a sense of urgency, not that outstays its welcome at 72 minutes, and rather is a masterclass at generating a sense of the uncanny. However, if that mood is not what you are looking for then it might not be your cup of tea. It was mine, 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On demand @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Legend of the Chupacabra

Not to be confused with the later, similarly titled (but pluralised) Legend of Chupacabras, this is a low budget mockumentary from 2000, directed by Joe Castro and distributed on the Troma label.

We are in rubber suit territory with a strong hint for the source of the chupacabra menace – but is it vampiric?

Set in 1997, the film starts by exploring the appearance of the chupacabras through Puerto Rico, Mexico and into Texas. After survelance footage (too grainy to show much) seems to capture a chupacabras a group of university students, specialising in cryptozoology go to the town of Santa Maria to track down the beast. The students are led by Maria Esperanza (Katsy Joiner) whose uncle had lost goats (and from whose farm the chupacabra footage came from) and has been killed – later we discover the chupacabra got him and the police have that footage and are supressing it.

The Curandera and Maria

The others are Pete Cortez (J.T. Trevino) and Daniel Webster (Chris Doughton) on cameras along with George Armistad (Stan McKinney) running security. They have gone to the ranch owned by Lloyd Jackson (Paul Podraza), who has had livestock attacked the night before – however the farm hands won’t allow the carcass to be touched until purified by The Curandera (Sandy Schwartz). She tells the crew they’ll get their answers in the cantina.

barn attack

The sheriff (Lewis Sarkozi) and his deputy (Frank Thomas, A Schizophrenic Love Story) arrive and the Curandera has wandered into a barn. A scream and they run in and are face to face with the chupacabra (Kevin Sloan) replete in rubbery suit splendour. Later it is described as the biggest, baddest chupacabra in the land… so what are they? And are they vampiric?

this tongue is made for sucking

Well they certainly suck – later we discover their teeth are for latching and holding and their tongue has an orifice that can suck the innards of their prey. This seems to include viscera and is not restricted to blood. There are theories that they are supernatural, that they are from space and that they were made in a lab. The barcode spotted on the arm of the creature suggests the latter. DNA testing reveals a mix of primate and lizard. They are said to be cold blooded and lay eggs.

sucked goat

The supernatural side is perhaps bolstered by the pair of witches at the cantina who can show them where the creature’s lair is. A bite from the creature is said to rot the victim from the inside out (and yes one of the students gets bitten) and this, of course, could be natural. However the witches suggest that killing the chupacabra will cure the infection.

chupacabra

There is little other lore, to be honest, and I am tempted to suggest that this creature feature has too little to call it Vamp. It also has too little to call it a good film, with terrible overacting and not much in the way of logical story. The sfx move between silly (the creature), not bad (some of the gore), really poor (other bits of the gore) and somewhat misplaced (the corpses adorning the route to the lair, which seem way too mummified). Not a great film, not really vamp but – being chupacabra – of genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

Goatsucker – review

Director: Steve Hudgins

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Whilst there are certainly quite a few films about el chupacabra – the goatsucker – I think this is the first that uses the English version of the name as its title. Now, regular readers will know that I will sometimes move into ‘Vamp or Not?’ territory as the chupacabra can fall out of Latin vampire-creature and into simple creature feature.

In this case there will have to be a massive spoiler but I think we are about right to review with the caveat that there is a were-creature aspect as well that (maybe unknowingly) almost swings back into the traditional crossover between were and vamp. It is also incredibly low budgeted.

poor hide and seek skills

So, starting in a forest and we get movement and then a woman (Megan Jones) running through the woods, pursued by an unseen something. She gets to what looks like a shed (but is named as a shack later) and has the keys to open a padlock but just can’t do it as the POV something corners the shed. Ignoring the box of firewood (or handy weapons to you and I) she hides around the back of the shed with Olympic standard “hide and Seek” prowess (not). Unsurprisingly the POV creature (ok, we all know it’s the goatsucker) finds her… claw… blood…

must be a scientist?

A guy, Huck (Steve Hudgins, The Caretakers), is in his truck. He sees something in the woods and tries to film it. Driving on he hits something… CUT... A woman in a lab coat (so she must be a scientist, right?) tells us about the goatsucker. Later we discover that she is not a scientist but an actress and the piece is an advert for Hidden Valley Hiking Tours. The idea communicated by the 'expert' that the chupacabra had its origins in medieval Europe was fascinatingly weird and not expanded on.

Jack Jones as Brad

The Hiking company has a goatsucker tour and driver Brad (Jack Jones) has come to take the latest group up to the trail. The mixed bunch are Eugene (Neil Vowels, also the Caretakers), Wayne (Randy Hardesty, also the Caretakers), Pam (Marsha Cash), Alan (Brandon Schaefer) and Rhonda (Emily Fitzmaurice). The group of strangers have more interconnections than they might think – obvious and early reveal is that ditsy Rhonda (she who believes they are on a goat-muncher tour) is obsessed with Alan, who was there to get away with her after getting bored of her. The little interpersonal subplots was one of the things that kept the film interesting.

Eugene and Rhonda

Brad drives them to meet the tour guide – Margaret (who was the girl at the head of the film, so she ain’t showing). Luckily fellow guide Heidi (Kim Welsh) happens along (it’s her day off) and is told (by radio) to take the tour or lose her job. Of course, something is out there and the scam tour is actually going to stumble over the real goatsucker. Also in the mix is Cassy (Amanda Stone) whose boyfriend was dragged off by the goatsucker and who has sworn revenge.

a flash of face

The film is low budget and so pretty much keeps the goatsucker out of view. We do see the odd claw, a flash of teeth and a figure behind a tree that is clearly someone in a silver suit. At one point we get a flash of silvered face that brings an alien to mind. Yet despite the low budget and being pretty much full of holes and deus ex moments, it is in fact quite entertaining. This probably comes down to the fact that Hudgins keeps the subplots coming fast and thick. The cast help also. Whilst none of the performances are stellar, they are all pretty darn enthusiastic and having good fun - Marsha Cash particularly seems to be having a blast.

teeth close-up

Now I said there was going to be a massive spoiler and there is – though I won’t reveal who is the goatsucker, one of our cast is. In this the goatsucker is a creature (other species, possibly) who takes on a human form. They become their monstrous self with a kiss and must drink human female blood to take on human form again. It is a riff on the idea of a were-creature but with a blood aspect. The goatsucker’s actions are remembered (and relished it appears) when back in human form and the creature chooses to turn back (by using the correct catalyst deliberately).

victim

So, unusual lore and cast having a blast but low budget issues all the way through. However this wasn’t the worst way I have spent 85 minutes. 4 out of 10 – one recommended for those who like their movies very much B.

The imdb page is here.