User Reviews

In Furlough, Texas, the "goat capital of the world", in a "place where nothing ever happens", a Mexican werewolf is on the rampage and everyone, including dogs, goats, and humans, is on the menu. Narrated by Anna(Erika Fay), looking forward to graduating and getting out of her Podunk town, she informs us of the various characters who occupy Furlough, friends, locals of importance, and family and tells us of the werewolf and the mayhem that results from its appetite. Mexican WEREWOLF IN Texas shows the animosity and racial tension between Mexican-Americans and White-Caucasians in Furlough—Anna is dating a Mexican which is a no-no because her pops (who runs the local morgue and has hick relatives he is ashamed of) is against "mixed relations". The legend of the Chupicabra starts spreading throughout the community and before you know it civil unrest leads to the citizenry packing heat and assembling a search party intended on finding the beast slaughtering the goats. The humor actually, I felt, rescues this movie from utter catastrophe because when the werewolf is introduced, I cringed at its laughable look expecting yet another microbudget trashheap. I think if you are entertained by "redneck" Texans (communicating via hick-speak) in cowboy hats, mouthing off about "wetbacks" they consider the threat of the local community, this might have an appeal. Actually the Mexicans are presented in a more favorable light than the white Texan racists who seem uneducated and naïve. It might seem like this movie is a social commentary on race relations in Texas, but it is all presented in a jokey manner, tongue wagging, not serious in the least. The local law enforcement is inept as you'd expect ("It must be a kiiiiyote or something.") so the beast's onslaught can continue until someone else does something about it. Gabriel Gutierrez is Anna's boyfriend, Miguel, Michael Carreo is wise-ass Tommy, Martine Hughes (as Rosie hoping to receive a scholarship from the University of Texas)and Sara Erikson(as ditsy Jill, prone to sleep around, speaking in Valley girl, always chewing a wad of bubblegum)are Anna's gal-pals. With a cheap movie such as this, the director tries to move the camera around and edit it to hell and back when the goofy werewolf costume is present so that the monster won't be as rib-tickling as it can be when fully on screen.

which to me was kind of a disappointment when I was in my local (crappy) videostore. I had honestly thought it was a unique werewolf design but what got me to purchase it was the title of the movie like American werewolf? So then after seeing the movie, I caught the humor of the title. This movie sux! But I gave it a 5 because it wasn't a bad suck. There was a certain attitude about the movie that was likable even the racist persona's of the white Texans against the Mexican Texans although vulgar, was what I would call accurate of a typical racist.

I don't know, if they had a modern day version of USA Up all night, I can see this being on the play list.

OK, it's not a great movie - probably not even a good one, but it did have some scenes and dialog that actually made me laugh pretty hard, and I'm sure it was intentional. For example, in one scene, a girl's boyfriend had just been killed, and she and some friends were sitting around the table at a diner discussing it. The girlfriend said to her friends, "I wonder if he was thinking about me while he was dying" (or something to that affect), and one of the friends replied, "he was probably thinking about the animal attacking him." OK, perhaps you had to be there, but it struck me as funny at the time, as did several other scenes. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this film, but if you already got it then came out here to see if you'd made a mistake, well, you probably did, but you might also be mildly entertained as well.

Mexican Werewolf in Texas is set in the small border town of Furlough where Anna (Erika Fay) lives, her best friend is Rosie (Martine Hughes) & she has a Mexican boyfriend named Miguel (Gabriel Gutierrez) who are determined to track a beast down that has been terrorising the town, killing livestock & several residents including some of their friends. Local Mexican legends speak of the Chupacabra, an evil creature from myth & legend. Erm, I'm struggling now because not that much else actually happens...

Written & directed by Scott Maginnis I won't beat about the bush here & simply say that Mexican Werewolf in Texas is awful, period. The script only ever mentions the word Werewolf once & the rest of the time it's referred to a Chupacabra, in fact I suspect this wasn't really conceived as a Werewolf flick at all. The 'Werewolf' creature looks mostly hairless & more like some vicious dog, there is no reference to anybody changing during the full moon & it actually attacks during the day on a couple of occasions, there is no transformation scene & at the end when it is killed it doesn't change back into anyone either. To be honest apart from the title there's nothing here to indicate a Werewolf film at all & even then the title is just a rip-off of the highly popular An American Werewolf in London (1981). This is the type of home made crap that I personally think is killing the horror genre, how long has it been since there was a true low budget horror classic like Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Evil Dead (1981), Halloween (1978) or Friday the 13th (1980) which were all made on shoe string budgets, maybe The Blair Witch Project (1999) but that's it in recent years & crap like Mexican Werewolf in Texas has absolutely no chance of ever being considered a classic. The character's are awful & things just happen around them, the dialogue is rubbish, the pacing is terrible, the story sucks & virtually sent me to sleep & as a whole this film is just crap, I'm sorry but I don't know how else to describe it.

Director Maginnis does nothing to make this watchable, there's the annoying hand held camera type cinematography which could easily give someone a headache & quick 'blink & you'll miss something' editing which just annoys & irritates in equal measure. It's not scary, there's no nudity, there's no tension or atmosphere & the special effects are awful. The monster really does look poor & it's no wonder Maginnis keeps it in the shadows or cuts his scenes so quickly you never get a good look at it. There's virtually no colour to the picture either, it's either almost pitch black or over saturated desert sand oranges which makes the thing an eye sore as well. The gore consists of some fake guts (blink & you'll miss them!), a few bloody wounds & a severed arm, big deal.

With a supposed budget of about $300,000 I admit the budget was low but I simply refuse to accept that for making such a rubbish film, there are plenty of low budget horror flicks that make their meagre budgets go far. The whole thing has the look of a home movie, it has no style & is throughly bland & dull to look at. The acting sucks too although you probably already knew that.

Mexican Werewolf in Texas will probably con a few people into renting/buying/watching it because they might mistakenly think it's a sequel to John Landis' classic which it most certainly isn't & it isn't even a proper Werewolf flick either. Don't be fooled this is awful & I'm fed up of having to waste time/money on home made amateur crap like this.

What could ever happen in a dull Texan town in summer? Well, a bunch of teenagers find out a few things can and do happen.

It turns out the Mexican werewolf of this story is nothing less than el chupacabra, and the movie, unlike the name would suggest, is not a remake or lookalike of the American Werewolf movies, but something completely different.

Overall, for an obviously low-budget movie, it's not bad! Some clever camera work, quite decent looking traditional creature and gore effects, and for once not all-knowing people that can and do make mistakes, like shooting a colleague thinking it's the big bad beast, and are baffled by things they could not possibly know.

Sit down at this expecting a blockbuster million-dollar production, and you will turn it off in disgust after a short while. Sit down at this expecting a bit of entertainment and a relatively simple story, and it's quite good! Overall it gets an 8/10 from me for being creative, having OK acting, and pulling off some good work for the budget this movie had.

"Mexican Werewolf in Texas" isn't all that bad, but not that great either.

**SPOILERS**

Contemplating graduating from High School, Anna Furlough, (Erika Fay) Miguel Gonzalez, (Gabriel Gutierrez) Rosie, (Martine Hughes) and Jill Gillespie, (Sara Erikson) try to find something meaningful with their lives stuck in a small Texas town. When the town is suddenly undertaken by a series of strange animal deaths, the residents blame a legendary animal called a chupacabra, only for the town to believe that their Mexican heritage is causing them to confuse the creature when it's been a series of coyote attacks, and when the attacks turns to human residents, it makes them believe even more that the attacks are wild animals and not the chupacabra. Knowing better than to accept their racist views, they manage to put all the pieces of the mystery together and set out to capture the creature to end it's rampage through town once and for all.

The Good News: There was some good stuff to this one when it matters. One of the best features with this one is that there's a really nice-looking creature in here that is an actual monster on the screen rather than simply atrocious-looking CGI. It would've been so easy to have used that for the creature, especially with all the attacks being edited to pieces so as to make them mostly impossible to figure out and would've hid the creature even more, yet the decision not to follow that is a great plus since it manages to feel like the creature is really there in the shot, and that almost never happens. It really lends the creature a lot of credence and acceptance, and that's not even getting into how cool it's design is. This is a really neat design in what few scenes we can get a clear shot at the creature, with a large reptilian head, huge fang-like teeth, large claws, hairy, rat-like body and ability to walk around on all fours, which gives it a unique appearance and makes for an intriguing creature that really works well in here. The attack scenes, when we get to see them, are actually a lot of fun and certainly add a lot to the film. Especially worthwhile are the scenes early on, when no one knows anything about the creature's existence and it's allowed to run wild on the citizens. The goat massacre is simply fun, with the chaos of them running around in a panic while the citizens are stuck inside unsure of what to do, and the scene itself is a real standout. Also really good is another big scene later on when it attacks a campground with a witness stuck inside a car before the creature turns it's attention to it, but the main thing here, which is where most of the film's good points are held, is inside the finale, which is just full of fun and good points. From the stand-off in the shack to the big chase out in the open to the creature's stalking and more, there's just a lot to like in the scene and it's a long, natural one that doesn't disappoint. It's also where we get the clearest look at the gore, which, while mostly limited to incredibly vicious scratch-marks along the back and stomach, leave it nice enough. Even other scenes, as the rednecks' search for the creature or the first attempt at killing it in the desert aren't bad either. These here are the film's good points.

The Bad News: There was a couple of rather big flaws to this one. One of the biggest flaws present here is the fact that this one is just incredibly racist with how the town's characters are with each other. Despite the constant racial slurs that are brandied apart with reckless abandon, the general attitude of many of the residents, simply looking down the other race enough to dismiss anything they said as part of their cultural hysteria and believing their own views to be the right one, despite the evidence pointing so far away from them it's laughable to assume the view-point could be kept. Perhaps the biggest, and easily the most illogical one, is the subplot involving the father's dislike of the boyfriend, which isn't bad but leads into what is the scene that leads to the wrong, watching him don a chupacabra costume and sneak over to the hideout intending to scare the two of them, since it makes no sense, isn't pulled off at all well and seems incredibly short-sighted and bigoted to be in the film at all. The voice-over narration setting up the scene does it little favors, and in the end, serves to up the body count anyway, leaving it's inclusion all the more confusing. That leads into the second big flaw from this one, the inability to really tell what's going on during the kill sequences. Just about every single kill or attack scene is shot so that it's impossible to determine what has happened since it's so quick-cut it's hard to tell. By editing it in such a way, you lose everything in the sense of what's going on. It leaves no idea as to what's happening, and that's not something you want in the main reason to see the film. In fact, the first few attacks are so jolting and impossible-to-see it's impossible to see anything in them. These are bad enough to hold it down considerably.

The Final Verdict: Had it eliminated one of it's problematic flaws, the film would've been a lot more interesting and entertaining than it is. Worthwhile look for those interested in the genre or can overlook the flaws, while those who can't or who aren't big fans of this style should heed caution.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language

A small Texas town is stalked by a predator which may be the legendary chubacabra. Meanwhile a frustrated teenage girl struggles to rise above her surroundings and forge a life for herself, while her father plots to murder his shrewish wife using the strange animalistic killings as a cover.

If you're wondering what any of that has to do with a werewolf, you're not alone. Despite the deceptive title, this is not a werewolf movie, though that little bit of disingenuous marketing is the least of this film's problems. Anyone who watches horror/sci-fi/fantasy movies in any quantity finds some real losers now and then, but this is one of the worst, and probably the worst so-called "werewolf" film I've ever had the misfortune of sitting through. The effects are woeful, and although the various killings are gruesome they aren't very effective in terms of generating suspense. The monster--chubacapra, werewolf, whatever--is pretty pitiful, but not as pitiful as the script, acting, and directing. The characters are all incredibly unlikeable, especially our heroine, a slutty, self-righteous brat who thinks she's too good for her parents and basically everyone else but who is at least as bad as any of them. The only interesting aspect of the whole movie is the subplot involving the guy who wants to use the chubacabra killings to cover up murdering his wife, but this humorous plot point is only a fraction of the overall script and doesn't really go anywhere. To top it all off, the ending is a typical cheat. Who knows, maybe there was a sequel planned but fortunately we've been spared that...so far. I have no problem with low-budget b-movies and I realize such films face many obstacles, all of which may not be successfully overcome, but sometimes you see a movie so bad you have to wonder if the people involved even attempted to make anything decent. Trust me, no matter how much you like b-movies in general or werewolves in particular, this is one werewolf film you don't need to watch.

The sleepy small town of Furlough, Texas is terrorized by a savage creature of local Mexican legend known as the chupacabra (Collin Pulsipher in a gnarly suit). A group of teenagers decide to track the beast down and kill it after it kills one of their friends. Writer/director Scott Maginnis relates the entertaining story at a snappy pace, builds a good deal of tension, offers a flavorsome evocation of the dusty desert town, creates and sustains a pleasingly creepy atmosphere, delivers a handy helping of graphic gore, and stages the ferocious attack set pieces with rip-roaring flair. The competent acting from the capable no-name cast rates as another definite asset: Erika Fay contributes a winningly vibrant turn as the spunky Anna, cute blonde Sara Erikson nearly steals the show with her hilarious portrayal of the ditsy Jill (the scene with Jill flashing the monster is simply sidesplitting!), plus there are solid turns by Gabriel Gutierrez as Anna's nice boyfriend Miguel, Michael Carreo as antagonistic jerk Tommy, Martine Hughes as the sweet Rosie, Mark Halvorson as Anna's freaky mortician father Brad, Leslie Marshall as Anna's bitchy busybody mother Carol, and Louie Cruz Beltran as sensible veterinarian Manny Gonzalez. Matthew J. Siegal's sharp cinematography gives the picture an impressive slick look. Matthew McGhaughey's ominous ratting score hits the shuddery spot. A fun fright flick.