Cover Art

Credits

Director: David Michael Quiroz Jr. Starring: David Michael Quiroz, Jr., Jennifer Jane, Ron Berg, Christina Michelle, Jose Rosete Screenplay: David Michael Quiroz Jr. Tagline: God Made Them Small. Man Made Them Deadly. Country: USA

A transferring cop (writer/director/co-producer/co-editor David M. Quiroz, Jr.) stops for petrol while on his way to his new job. The station is oddly deserted, and he wanders around before stumbling onto a body that's face has either been torn to shreds or covered in toilet paper and sprayed with fake blood. He meets up with another cop on patrol, and they end up fleeing from something that nearly runs his truck off the road, but that neither of them can see. Unfortunately for our "hero," the unseen monster is his greatest fear…Chihuahuas. Yes, Chihuahuas have turned deadly, finally having the strength to match their ferocious attitude. Our two leads hook up with your usual group of would-be survivors, and from there try their best to not lose their rank in the food chain.

While I cringed a bit when I saw Night of the Chihuahuas was shot on video, and heard an early line of dialogue that echoed Miracle on 34th Street of all things, I was pleasantly surprised to find Night of the Chihuahuas was far superior to most home grown efforts. The budget had to have been absolutely minuscule, but thankfully Night of the Chihuahuas had a script worth shooting, unlike most SOV productions. The film has genuinely amusing dialogue, and effectively satirises the action and horror genres, with a few political moments sneaking in as well. There're even some laugh-out-loud moments, and the cast mostly does a fine job of delivering the gags. Lampooning of the standard horror or action hero provides much of the entertainment, with Quiroz's character spouting hilarious one-liners whilst pumping his shot gun for emphasis, but also running away more than the knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The expected Chihuahua point-of-view shots do elicit laughs, but the funniest (pseudo) POV is a cameo from the Taco Bell dog, who I fully expected to make an appearance at some point in the proceedings.

Unfortunately, the budget does hurt the film in many places. The gore is at about Redneck Zombies level, but the main problem the film has is a very simple one: lack of coverage. Money was too tight to get proper establishing shots in a lot of cases, most of the time Chihuahua inserts, and action and gore scenes also suffer. A lot of time the viewer just has to assume there're Chihuahuas there, as there're not even inserts of Chihuahuas put on the screen. That being said, aside from these issues, the film is surprisingly well edited, and the story remains easy to follow. The film does slow a bit in the middle, but in the commentary track, Quiroz mentions scenes that would've helped continuity, and I'm guessing the pacing, that were never shot due to budget issues.

The soundtrack heavily features Detox, an Arizona Nu-Metal band. While I'm not as up on the Arizona metal scene as I once was, there used to be several great bands in the area, so it would be nice if more than one band had been included. However, I didn't find Detox's music grating, and it was varied enough that I wasn't distracted by it like I was by the mono-band soundtrack to Dead Life.