Werewolf

I've seen some good werewolf movies in my time. "An American Werewolf in London", "The Wolf Man" and "The Howling" are among my favorites (and, incidentally, some of the better examples of the genre).

And then we get to "Werewolf", which seems to be the cinematic equivalent of a really bad train wreck. Up until I had seen this beauty, "Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf" was the worst movie about lycantropy I had ever witnessed.

Even the synopsis is bad: archaeologists dig up a skeleton of a werewolf and when people get cut on it, they turn into werewolves!

Kids, I won't lie to you...this movie stinks in every conceivable way you could imagine. The actors have so many different accents among them you'd think this was a co-production with the League of Nations. There are about ten (that I noticed) different versions of about, say, four werewolves in the whole movie. The director has absolutely no sense of how to set up a scene - scary, introductory, dramatic, what-have-you (a werewolf transformation gets up-staged by a mural in a bar? Yeah, just what I was thinking).

There are pretty women to ogle at, though. Whether or not they can act is a moot point, I suppose, but they talk about "fussinading" things, scream with what sounds like three voice boxes and type letters while pantsless.

But in the end, this is about as sorry an excuse for a werewolf (or "wahrwilf", or "wherwalf" or whatever) film I've seen in my life. Yep, it's bad; as bad as a truckload of dirty gym clothes. Bad like those ties way back in your closet. Bad like a Pauly Shore retrospective. Bad like getting gyros from an Italian restaurant.

Break out the silver bullets, wolfsbane, crucifixes and everything else for this flick!

No stars for "Werewolf" - the worst werewolf movie ever featuring Joe Estevez.

TIDBIT - victims of lycantropy should NEVER drive.

Thrill to the harpsichord music in the pool hall scene! Wonder at our heroine's ability to abuse English syntax and pronunciation! Tremble as the "wuur-wilves" grow wispy hair extensions and don animal puppet heads before striking! Shudder from exposure to the looney militant caretaker! Cackle as the greedy and inexplicably violent archaeologist's hair style and color spontaneously change from scene to scene! And don't miss Charlie Sheen's uncle's critical role as an itinerant site-digger.

Let's face it -- the only way to watch this dud is with the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew lambasting it. Richard Lynch, ordinarily a good character actor, must have really been hurting financially to allow himself to be seen (and wasted) in this were-dog of a movie. Other favorite parts of mine include the hero turning off a radio, abruptly ending the annoying spooky soundtrack, and (in the MST3K version) Mike and the 'Bots' sing-along variations on the end theme.

Since capturing the MST3K version of "Werewolf" on tape years ago, I have sat down and watched it several times, trying to figure out how functional human beings could make a feature film that has a sloppier script, more continuity errors, less coherent performances and ends up making even less sense than a patchwork mess like "Space Mutiny".

Then I happened upon 'billybrown4''s suggestion that perhaps the filmmakers kept running out of money, waiting to get some more, and then trying to resume again over the course of several years while the actors and extras and costume designers and crews kept coming and going. That would explain a lot of things: Yuri's wildly varying hairstyles, Joe Estevez disappearing after the 1st 1/3 of the film, the way the werewolf keeps appearing in totally different guises (a bear, a bat, a hand puppet, Federico Cavellini in spirit gum and floor mats, etc.), Richard Lynch's apparent loss of interest in the whole problem in the last 30 minutes, the jarring "start-stop" feel of the movie and the whole plot thread with the 2nd werewolf (the security guard) which serves no purpose except to establish Yuri as a complete *ssh*le who will stop at nothing to 'be famous beyond (his) wildest dreams'.

Oddly, the movie is filled with physically attractive, photogenic people who nevertheless seem to have the personality of a sack of cement - this may have been caused partially by the fact that English is obviously a 2nd language for the three main leads, especially the female lead "Natalie". So your eyes are drawn to them while at the same time your ear recoils in irritation at their attempts to speak the vernacular. "Yuri" is very handsome and muscular, but chews the scenery without mercy. On the other hand (paw?), there is "Sam The Keeper" who speaks perfect English but looks like roadkill and camps it up something fierce. And there is Joe Estevez, who is an utter cornball, but still is one of the most interesting things in the movie.

So the actors who aren't wooden marionettes in this movie are complete Shakespearean level hams, except for poor Richard Lynch, who probably took the money and ran.

Other discordant and jarring elements in the movie:

1) The longest transformation scene in the history of Western cinema 2)A fight scene between Yuri and the werewolf in which the two actors are never in the same shot and Yuri seems to sustain fatal damage without ever being physically touched. 3)A scene in which the female realtor is thrown over a railing by the werewolf when she visits him in the house she rented to his human form, which fall should have killed or crippled her, but she walks away without a scratch - AND SHE NEVER REPORTS IT TO THE POLICE!! 4)The scene at the benefit party in the museum where "Loud Mumbling Breaks Out", followed by the one were Yuri attacks Paul Niles with the skull of the werewolf. 5)At one point Natalie tells Paul "You're our only hope..." What? Where did THAT come from?? If the archaeological project needed more money, all they had would have to do is issue a press release about the werewolf skeleton and they would have more money and attention than they could handle. Michael Jackson alone would probably bid upwards of $5 million to keep the skeleton after they were done. 6)Most egregiously, the infamous scene where the werewolf attacks the young woman who is necking in the jeep, and she jumps OUT of the jeep and runs screaming with three voices down the middle of the road, only to trip in her pre-muddied dress and founder in a 2 inch deep puddle. Where did her boyfriend go? How did the werewolf catch her when he was writhing along the road like a snake? We may never know...

Anyway, an invigoratingly sloppy and stupid movie. Watch this whenever you want to feel better about yourself in comparison to a bunch of clueless people who wasted thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to make awful dreck.

Saw this one recently with some friends who have an ironic love of truly terrible movies, and in that context, it was just the ticket. It was a double feature with "Satanik," a 1968 Italian piece of junk that was just as bad but at least had a hot Eurobabe as the killer. Both flicks were made by the absolutely untalented, and can be watched only by dedicated students of bad film.

In a "climactic" scene in "Werewolf," the title critter kills a man apparently without touching him, or even being in the same general area. We repeatedly cut back and forth between shots of the werewolf going RARRR, and of the victim crossing his arms in front of his face (again and again), in a posture of defense. Finally, the bloodied victim drops to the ground. At no time do both the werewolf AND the victim appear in this scene together. It's as though the two "actors" involved couldn't coordinate their table-waiting schedules in such a way as to be both on the set on the same day. We all looked around at each other and said, "What just happened?"

See it for laughs, if this sort of bad flickage is your idea of fun. Otherwise, flee like a Texas Democrat.

Well, let's put it like this. They must have spent more money for the cool-looking holographic werewolf-transformation cover than they spent for the entire rest of the movie.

It was a horrible, horrible film. Makes Plan 9 look like Ben Hur.