++Major Spoilers++ Former big game hunter and now deranged lunatic Byron Douglas, Clint Walker, comes up with some far-out ideas about life death and the human condition as well as how to bring a little life and excitement into the lives of the people in town by savagely murdering them and at the same time making it look like some kind of werewolf did it.
Even though the movie tries to be suspenseful and keeps you guessing to who the killer is as soon as you see Douglas and how crazed and unstable Douglas is. Just by listening to his off the wall philosophy by talking about how one is most alive just when he's at he moment of death. This makes you almost look over his shoulder to see if you can catch a glimpse of the men in white with stun guns and butterfly nets ready to grab and restrain Douglas in a padded room at the local loony bin.
You watch the movie hoping that whats on the screen is not really happening. In that that those making the film are just trying to keep you off the track by making you think that Douglas is the killer when the real killer is really someone else in the cast that you don't suspect. Still you just can't convince yourself that there's anyone more certain to be the killer then Douglas is and you end up being right.
Were told that Douglas was attacked by some super wolf some time back in Canada which almost killed him and left him in the condition that he's in now. Trying to explain his mental and emotional state and at the same time throws off suspicion about him being the killer but even that falls apart at the end of the movie.
The only way I could follow the story is by realizing that Douglas is crazy, which wasn't hard to do, so whatever he said and did in the movie made sense only to himself not to anyone else. The end of the film ripped off the movie "The Most Dangerous Game" by Douglas pitting friend and former hunting buddy now writer Peter Graves, John Wetherby, against himself in a life and death struggle to see who's fit and strong enough to survive. Even then Douglas cheated by having a vicious wolf as a partner and leaving Wetherby with a rifle with no bullets in it.
Wetherby had to run for some distance to find a box in the woods with only two slugs that Douglas left for him. When it came to the hand to hand combat that Douglas craved for Wetherby pulled out a gun that he secretly had on him a blew Douglas away. Since Douglas murdered six people there was no point for all that ridicules game playing with him.
A major flaw in the movie was why the police never thought of arresting Douglas even though he was the most evident and conspicuous suspect in town. It was nothing but a waste of time trying to figure out Douglas' weird philosophy and sermonizing during the movie because it was just that, weird.
