Shriek of Terror (1991) (Mexico)

aka Chaneque

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Treasure hunting is a dangerous job. Sometimes Alfred Molina sells ya out, sometimes ya trip a particularly nasty boobytrap that sends carved spears into your whole body and sometimes ya disturb the wrong resting place and open a big ol’ can of supernatural Mexican beans. So yeah, it’s dangerous. That’s why Hugo Stiglitz does it… because he’s the fucking man. Stiglitz has dragged his wife (he needed her truck) and his little girl (his actual daughter) out to the jungle for a nice picnic. Well, their sensitive female selves will be enjoying a picnic, he and his wife’s uncle (and a local expert named Eladio) will be exploring a 16th century monastery on the hunt for Spanish gold. They bust open a sealed tomb but find nothing inside except a skeleton. Eladio scoops up some bone fragments in secret as the trio make their exit. They’re soon chased off by a possee who have obviously failed at their mission to protect the place. Since they are terrible at their jobs and also idiots, some of them grab some bones for souvenirs as well. Pissed about the raided tomb and the missing bones, a bulky monster of the silly rubber suit variety, begins making its anger known via bloody comeuppance. There’s a mystic (who may look it but is unfortunately not Harvey Fierstein) on the monster’s trail and we eventually learn that old big ‘n’ ugly (a Chaneque) is what remains of a cursed monk or something. The daughter of Stiglitz not only has to put up with her parents who don’t seem to like each other all that much (actually, Stiglitz is just a dick) but also with some sort of convoluted connection she has with the shaggy beast because she’s an awkward weirdo. She also has a trinket with one of those damn bones because her uncle is a careless gift giver. Hey. I’m no expert on monk curses. Fuck do I know? Low-rent creature feature kind of loses itself by over complicating everything and focusing on family dramatics but it’s still the cheap South of the Border thrills I crave from the always memorable (not always for proper reasons) René Cardona III. Familiar faces pop up… at least if you watch the kind of crap I do. It somehow slips into a very cheap Poltergeist knockoff (albeit this time the lovable family pooch is torn to fucking shreds… the police have to carry it out in a plastic bag) when the monster abducts the kid into thin air, so there’s plenty of her lazily screaming for her parents in an echoing voice while her mama and papa run around frantically looking for her. Yeah. That’s the stuff. It’s the budget-strained creature feature that decides to be a Poltergeist knockoff in the last act that I never knew I needed. It also has Hugo Stiglitz covering himself in mud, looking like he’s out for a Sunday jog, dodging fireballs, struggling against vines and being chased by a giant, blood-stained bouncy ball as its climax.