By Jenny Patiño –

Recently on “Lopez Tonight,” George Lopez asked fans waiting in line for the premier of “New Moon” to get him to like the movie. He joked that he couldn’t get behind the vampires and didn’t understand the pasty white skin. At one point he asked two women, “Why are Latinos in line to see ‘New Moon? ..‘Cause La Bamba came out and no one was out here.” The two women laughed. At the end of the bit Lopez exited the theater draped in a cape and with white vampire make up on, a new convert of the “Twilight” saga.

But the question Lopez posed to the Latino moviegoers was a good one. Few “Latino movies” ever draw as large a crowd as the “Twilight” series has. “Selena” is the all time exception. (Anything for Salinas!)

How do we get movies by Latinos or about Latinos to reach the mass appeal and commercial success of “Twilight” and “New Moon?”

Jenny Patiño

Where is our monster love saga?

If we haven’t thought of exploiting the mythological monsters of our cultures yet then we are sadly behind the times. The possibilities in our folklore are endless.

The Beauty and the Beast formula is already set. First we need to start off with an innocent teenage girl that is attractive and market friendly. Selena Gomez will do just fine. Then she has to somehow fall in love with something that can eat her. And the monster must be tragically cursed and brooding so that the heroine feels she has to prove her love by accepting his potentially lethal deformities. Ah, true love. (Any resemblance to bad relationships and incidences of domestic violence are purely accidental. Please ladies, don’t date real monsters.)

But what love interest could potentially devour Selena Gomez? That’s a tough call. There are so many monsters to choose from.

The first one that springs to mind is the Chupacabras, the Latin American vampiric ‘goat sucker.’ But Chupacabras is a really lame name and reads as comical to American audiences. Not to mention it sounds like someone is giving a goat a blow job.  So maybe that monster wouldn’t work.

She could fall in love with ‘El Cucuy’ our version of the boogeyman. But in this case, he’s a cursed spirit that begins to suck the life force from Gomez if he stays around her for too long. I don’t really know where to go from there, but it’s a start.

Or how about the Cadejo, canine-like spirits from Central America? Gomez could fall in love with a white Cadejo, which is a good spirit that protects travelers. He’s the new Guatemalan kid in her Houston High School. And meanwhile a black Cadejo, which harms humans, and has been following her love interest’s family becomes obsessed with her. It can have a “Phantom of the Opera” thing going on and awesome CGI fight scenes. And Cadejos have the power to tear humans to shreds or make them go insane.

For some reason Gomez has an immunity to the madness they provoke.  It turns out this is because of a protected locket her grandmother gave her. When the black Cadejo finds this out, he steals the locket from her and she falls under his power for a while. This story could stretch out across a few volumes. (If anyone does decide to fill in the blanks on these ideas, I want royalties.)

Hmm…this is where things get problematic. It turns out that that’s pretty much the extent of possible romantic male monster leads. Most of the other monsters in Latin American folklore are hot chicks that turn out to not be so hot and instead lead men to their deaths. The most famous is La Llorona, our Mexican Medea who haunts rivers. She specializes in killing children, but is also said to make victims of men who mistake her for a damsel in distress and are lured to her by her beauty and cries.

The Dominican Ciguapa with dark skin, long hair, and backward facing feet ravages men in the mountains. The Salvadoran Sihuanaba conceals her hideous face in order to lure men with her seductive body. Men who don’t die of fright at the sight of her monstrous face are driven insane. The Colombian Patasola appears to men in the wilderness who think of women. She takes the shape of loved ones and entices men to follow her where she reveals herself as a blood thirsty one legged monster.

But teenage girls want to see sexy misunderstood male monsters. Romance is the real money maker. Female monsters that have the power to devour the sexy male lead, potentially Wilmer Valderrama, just read as “bitchy.” (Consider his former relationship with Lindsey Lohan.) Stories of female monsters read more as horror/suspense movies than as romances. Think of “Jennifer’s Body,” in which an attractive Megan Fox uses her ahem, attributes, to literally prey on men.

Misogynist views of monsters are potentially problematic. I’m sure there’s a feminist message somewhere in all this, but time is money. This is Hollywood, baby. Have your people call my people and all that.

Jenny Patiño is a student at Columbia College Chicago.