A corrupted cop helps the new born DEA to burn down the amapola fields in México.

Based on a true story in the 70’s directed by Nicolas Caicoya, Hyena’s Blood is a gritty action-packed short filled with drug-busting dark humor running through the genre’s stereotypical characters. The film looks at Paul Kavinsky, a corrupt ex cop and DEA officer, who specialized in poppy field suppression in Vietnam. Against his will, he was forced to leave his hometown to go to Mexico, charged with the task of cleaning up the opium fields. He then became directly involved with drug traffickers in Mexico and started to eradicate opium poppy plantations and convert them instead… To the manmade production of cocaine.

Considering the idea was way to serious, Nicolas treated it as a classic B series, a humble homage to Sam Peckinpah.

Drug trafficking between Mexico and the United States began as a response to U.S. opium demand during World War II. This short film is based on a historical fact of the drug war that followed… In 1973 President Nixon headed the Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA was tasked to combat an “all-out global war on the drug menace.” When the DEA launched “Operation Condor”, the most ambitious drug crop eradication program to date, Mexico had become a major opium and marijuana production site.

The film runs long for a usual “online” short, and may also have its hiccups in some low quality audio recording snippets and sometimes predictably cheeky lines, but the overall cinematic quality is one that can easily compare to some of the better productions in TV and film – especially considering the immense production size of cast and crew.