Stargate Theatre

Chupacabra vs The Alamo

On the latest Stargate Theatre we take a look at the 2013 tv movie “Chupacabra vs The Alamo” aka Beast of the Alamo which stars Erik Estrada and Julia Benson with Aleks Paunovic, Zak Santiago, Nicole Muñoz and a few other faces we’ve seen in Stargate. The movie was made for the Syfy channel and is set in and around the Alamo in San Antonio as a rash of deaths beginning with the slaughter of some cartel members puts extreme pressure on DEA agent Carlos Seguin (Erik) and his new partner Tracy Taylor (Julia).

Investigating the strange deaths leads to the discovery of a strange canine like creature and while those in power (including Carlos) dismiss the idea of the mythical Chupacabra being responsible after the death of Agent Perez (Aleks), Agent Taylor along with Dr. Michael Fielding (Matthew Harrison) continue to gather evidence. The Chupacabra pack then attack a party on the high school grounds and then directly attack the home of Carlos and kill his daughters friend and leaving Sienna (Nicole) in hospital. With more reports of animal attacks coming in and the National Guard a day away from deploying Carlos goes to his estranged son Tommy (Jorge Vargas) who leads his own criminal crew to ask for help (men and guns) to protect the people of San Antonio, for family Tommy agress and the group are bolstered by off duty DEA and SWAT personnel led by Commander Wilcox (Zak).

They track the Chupacabra pack and engage them in a derelict building but the humans have walked into a trap, battered and with over 50% casualties the group evade and then barricade themselves in the Alamo where Crockett (Chad Krowchuk) allows them to use the vintage weapons to defend themselves along with one or two grenades and C4. Faced with overwhelming odds the humans fight to the last with only one chance to defeat the vicious pack with no guarantee any of them will survive.

Chupacabra vs The Alamo was an entertaining movie but not a good movie and the lack of budget ($2 Million) for certain aspects was jarring but they didn’t skimp on acting talent even for smaller roles. Erik naturally is perfect for this role, an alpha male with some charisma with the rest of the cast being big players in the Vancouver acting community and it was great to see so many faces from Stargate including David Nykl in a very small role. The green screen for showing Erik riding his motorbike was poor to say the least, I suspect insurance and production complexity limited the shots they could get with him and the bike and while a double was used we did see Erik doing his thing in a few scenes. The Chupacabra design was uninspiring and the CGI pretty poor but the animation merging with the stunt work was very good and they used some fast movement and editing to good effect. Overall this is worth a watch and spot the actor.

Thanks for visiting the site and listening to the show, if you want to join me on the podcast to talk Stargate or a movie with Stargate links then please get in touch, I normally record just audio using skype and a headset so a pretty easy process. At time of writing I have yet to decide what I will cover next but lots of DVD’s to sort through and always Prime which is packed with “b” movies.

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