Here's a fun/interesting recently rediscovered review of Guns of El Chupacabra
By Steve Latshaw
The
"B" or independent movie world is a pretty dull place these days.
Discounting the pseudo-amateur soft-core epics flooding the back bins at Best
Buy, most of today's "B" efforts are carbon copies of bigger budget
action movies saddled with whoever the latest, bankable "name" star
and filled with stock shots from those same bigger offerings. I should know;
I've written a pile of 'em.
But
GUNS OF EL CHUPACABRA is good, old-fashioned, honest-to-godfrey independent
filmmaking with a capital "I." It's subversive while remaining true
to its genre roots - at times stupefyingly bizarre, always unsettling and
occasionally confusing - shaking your understanding of plot structure and story
development so thoroughly that you doubt your own sanity. How's that for a compound
sentence? Fine. It's a compound movie.
Directed
by one of the last of his breed, maverick filmmaker Donald G. Jackson (the man
who brought us - among other things - HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN and the classic
ROLLER BLADE WARRIORS.), GUNS OF EL CHUPACABRA is the best "B" movie
I've seen in years and full of surprises. It starts off like a standard,
cheap-ass exploitation film... with Space Queen B Julie Strain (who else)
reclining on a cheap-ass exploitation space ship set, ordering Samurai-Sword
Wielding Space Sheriff Jack B. Quick (Scott Shaw) to earth where he's set to
tangle with crazed cannibal hunters, spies, angels, demons, DogBoys, Mexican
bounty hunters, an assortment of famous B movie icons, filmmakers and El
Chupacabra his self, a rubber-suited, slobbering, carnivorous monster. And so,
director Jackson carries us along on this roller-coaster ride through lots of
fun mayhem, including lots of bullets, beautiful nude girls doing martial arts
and firing guns and always-welcome gratuitous violence cut music-video style to
one of the best rock/folk/country/spaghetti western scores I've heard in a long
time, when all of a sudden the film lurches in a completely different
direction. Before long we're watching a film within a film - and asking
ourselves whether it's a movie about El Chupacabra - or a documentary about the
making of a movie about El Chupacabra - or a movie about El Chupacabra killing
off people participating in a documentary about the making of a movie about El
Chupacabra or... my brain hurts. But it all gets resolved in the end, after
much blood-spilling and teeth-gnashing. Initially confusing; ultimately
satisfying in its creation of its own special alternate universe(s), GUNS OF EL
CHUPACABRA plays like THE MATRIX. If directed by Luis Buenel. In Mexico. On
Acid. With A Rubber Monster.
Like
most of Jackson's films, GUNS OF EL CHUPACABRA is filled with filmmic nods to
everything from modern martial arts to Republic serials. Such B movie icons as
David Heavener, Conrad "Plan 9" Brooks, and Rocket Ranger Joe Estevez
pop into view at various points; B movie heavy Robert Z'Dar turns in his best
work as a space villain with serious anger issues. We even see Don Jackson,
gamefully playing both a documentarian and himself, desperately trying to get
his star to stick around in the closing minutes for "one more take."
GUNS
OF EL CHUPACABRA works on a couple of levels. It follows the tried-and-true
Corman formula of "Beasts, Breasts and Blood" in abundance, while at
the same time savaging that formula, turning the genre upside down and inside
out.
A
wild-ass roller coaster ride, brain-draining, never a dull moment. Damned fun.
Don's movies are always fun. And smart. That's what I like best about his
latest. In GUNS OF EL CHUPACABRA, Don makes you think while he's cutting your
throat.
