Visual Vengeance has brought back two Blockbuster Video shelf favorites, both concerning the infernal Mexican goatsucker known as el chupacabra! In the book Latinos and Narrative Media: Participation and Portrayal, these films are credited with starting the trend in movies about the chupacabras.
Blood of the Chupacabras (2003): If you read any reviews that came out on this movie’s original release, they all decry the fact that the poster and cover art are so amazing and the actual monster is not. But you know, that’s part of the charm in director and writer Jonathan Mumm’s movie (he also edited and composed some of the music).
The town that this takes place in has near Andy Milligan level supernatural coincidences: there’s a witch. There’s an old vampire hunter. There’s a singer. There’s an old prospector! And yes, there’s a chupacabra controlling possessed townsfolk from within a cave.
There are so many people in this town and let me tell you, I kind of love that the majority of this movie is people arguing over rent and trying to figure out how to survive in their downtrodden lives and then realizing, “Oh yeah. There’s a monster that kills goats in a cave.” That’s how real life is. You know that there are so many evil creatures in the woods outside of town but you live in a capitalist society and the cogs of the military-industrial complex are greased in the blood of the working man.
In addition to all of those characters — seriously, if you missed meeting new people in the new COVID era, get ready to meet so many people and then meet some more people — this movie has a synth score that in no way tries to sound real. You may be too young to remember organ stores in the mall and the poor souls that worked there that had to non-stop play synth and organ ditties while we shopped around them. Who were these people buying these gigantic organs? Where was the budget to hire so many people to play them? Where did they all go?
I digress.
I love when people review this movie and say it has so much talking. Yes, it’s a 1950s drive-in movie with no budget shot on video (with some 16mm from the first pass at making it) with rubber suits, early CGI and untrained actors. Revel in it. Soak it up. We should all be so lucky to live in a world that this movie exists and we do.
Revenge of the Chupcacabras (2005):
Just look at that image of a humanoid chupacabra and remember 2005, a time when life was much, much simpler than today and we had no idea. We could still rent movies in stores. And yeah, things are probably more convenient today, but we also had movies with chupacabras. Two in a row, no less, from Jonathan Mumm, who directed and wrote this.
You know what’s really crazy? This movie isn’t even about a chupacabra. It’s about a kidnapping. A chupacabra shows up — and it looks better than the first movie because people whined that they got a cool looking poster and that monster wasn’t in the movie and have you people never watched an exploitation movie before?!? — but this is really about a kidnapping. I am all for the bait and switch, folks.
Also in 2005, you could kidnap an attractive college student and ask for $2 million and no one laughed at you. Today, we don’t believe in science so we would just giggle and try and negotiate the ransom.
This movie makes me want to love it and as such has a scene where a priest investigates the possessions going on in this small town and gets killed by a chupacabra and honestly, that’s all I want movies to be about.
The tagline is “It can smell your fear.” Can it also smell how happy I am to look over and see this movie on my shelf and be so happy that I own it, much less the gorgeous Visual Vengeance blu ray? You got me goat killer!
You can get this from MVD. Bonus features include:
- Both available for the first time ever available on blu ray, scanned from the archival SD masters from original Betacam tapes
- New audio commentaries on both films with director Jonathan Mumm
- Archival behind the scenes features
- Blooper reels
- Archive video from premiere and festival appearances
- Super 8 movie: Professor Bloodgood
- Limited Edition Slipcase by Earl Kessler — FIRST PRESSING ONLY
- Collectible Mini-poster
- Stick your own VHS sticker set and more
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