Alpha Wolf

No pun intended - and I really like Casper van Dien. I mean he was in freaking Starship Troopers, one of the best Science Fiction movies of all time. But this is a long shot away from that. And I reckon if you saw this movie first - like if this was your first impression of him ... you may not think too highly of him. Go watch Starship Troopers is what I am trying to tell you.

And it is not just because of any effects (quite decent for a low budget movie actually) ... or the fact that many things do not make sense! Acting choices or him turning up with his pants but without shirt, when he should be without clothes ... like not have any on him ... for reasons. But I guess the pants had to be there - not just rating wise. And he still should show off his upper body (kudos by the way, he is not the youngest and yet has stayed in shape).

If all this does not interest you ... well ... the movie will not get more interesting! Story wise there is not much and the characters are quite weak ... well strong in wolf form, but that is a different story ...

"Alpha Wolf" has all of the low-budget eccentricities that those of us who are B-movie fans like. There are lovably bargain-basement werewolf costumes and there is amusingly awkward acting and there are nice California countryside settings. What more could a bad movie fan ask for?

Over-aggressive Casper Van Dien and his wife and their dog are going up the country to re-connect with nature and with each other. Before long there is a werewolf attack, Van Dien gets bit and all low-budget lycanthrope hell is breaking loose.

Van Dien's real-life wife Jennifer Wegner carries much of the movie, even as she struggles with a script that contradicts itself on how long she's known Van Dien's character! Van Dien himself turns out to be playing such a jerkoff that even fellow werewolves can't stand him, and only Wegner's dog Larry is loyal and trustworthy.

While bad CGI (is there any good CGI?) is used for fires and such, good old practical effects are used for the werewolves and in the violence scenes and there is some blood-splash here and there, a heart gets ripped out, a guy gets brained with a hammer and so on, with the gore shown briefly and the violence on the moderate level. There is also a jaw-dropping surprise involving were-transformations that I'll let you see for yourself. Even though it has a "You've got to be kidding me" quality to it and should have been done better, I don't believe any other moviemakers have ever used this idea, so "Alpha Wolf" deserves credit for that.

Other than that, characters regularly contradict themselves here and the script seems to have been written by utter amateurs who never even bothered to double-check it. Luckily this becomes part of the fun and one soon begins to sense the ghost of Ed Wood hovering around.

Even the fact that the real-life couple Van Dien and Wegner's love scenes are actually awkward, or that Van Dien appears to have had plastic surgery, does not detract from, but adds to the overall enjoyable air of B-movie angst. You know who you are if this sounds like something for you, so head on over to You Tube or Hulu to catch it!

The writing sucks, Casper van Dien couldn't act his way out of a wet paper bag - and this isn't even one of those horror movies that's so bad it's funny, it's just bad. Verdict: Ninety minutes of your life you'll never get back.

This film begins with two hunters out in the woods late at night when they hear a growling noise nearby. Not being very intelligent they decide to disregard it and continue along their way. Neither of them live to see the morning sunrise. The scene then shifts to a young man named "Jack Lupo" (Casper Van Diem) his wife "Virginia Lupo" (Jennifer Wenger) driving along a winding road looking to spend some time together in a remote cabin in the woods. Along the way they stop at a small country store where Jack proceeds to ogle one of the female customers and almost start a fight with another man. Although Virginia doesn't care for his alpha male tendencies they eventually make up that night at the cabin only to be attacked by a large animal not long afterward. The very next day Jack begins to act rather strange and it's then that Virginia begins to realize the type of person she has recently married. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I really enjoyed this movie up until the last 30 minutes or so when the plot took a definite turn for the worst and everything came crashing down immediately afterward. To that effect, I'm not sure what the director (Kevin VanHook) was thinking but perhaps he should find another line of work because his decision-making skills in the motion picture industry are definitely in need of some serious improvement. That being said, I have rated this movie accordingly. Below average.

I stumbled upon "Alpha Wolf" by utter random luck. I saw that it was a werewolf movie, and I saw that Casper Van Dien and Patrick Muldoon were together again in the same movie, so of course I wanted to watch "Alpha Wolf".

Well, a werewolf movie might be stretching it a bit far, because the were-creatures looked nothing like wolves, actually more like weregerbils. Yeah, they looked like hybrids between humans and gerbils. It was just such an eyesore to witness.

The storyline was fairly simplistic and easy to follow, but I can't claim to say that the storyline was interesting. It made for a less than mediocre movie experience, and "Alpha Wolf" offers nothing to the genre that hasn't already been done or seen before. Well, I stand corrected, because apparently if a canine is bitten by a were-creature, it can changed into human form from dog form come full moon. Are you bloody serious? That was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in a werewolf movie.

The movie had a very small cast ensemble, which means that the actors and actresses had even more riding on their shoulders in terms of carrying the movie. So did they manage to do so, No, not really. The characters were flaccid and not particularly interesting. And to be honest, then the actors and actresses had very little material to work with here.

For a weregerbil movie, then "Alpha Wolf" could have benefitted from a more elaborate and costly CGI budget. They had some CGI effects in the movie, they served their function, sure, but they weren't convincing. It was actually the practical effects that won the contest here.

"Alpha Wolf" is not the type of movie that you will watch more than once, provided you manage to get through it the first time around.