Wolf Girl

There's a saying about freak shows and movies featuring Tim Curry: You can't turn away. So it is with this movie, which features both Curry and a freak show. It's not a great movie, by any means, but you can't turn away. The plot involves an oddly attractive extra-hairy teenage girl who has lived her life in a freak show. She meets an odd boy who gives her an experimental treatment, but, as a side effect, the treatment turns her violent. In other words, there are no real surprises in the plot (though it didn't end quite the way I expected it to end), and there are a lot of "what the?" scenes. How did that character know that, why does this character do that, why was this scene in the movie at all, etc. It's an affliction common to made-for-cable movies, of course, and this one actually has less than most. But, beneath all of that, there are some great looking scenes. The scenery, costumes and photography give lots of the movie a neat, old-world sort of feel (even though it appears to take place in the present). Freak shows are an anachronism today, and the movie presents them as such. To watch the scenes around the show, you'd think that the movie took place at least a century ago, and that's to the movie's credit. It's the style that makes this movie worth watching. I've seen plenty of horror movies, made-for-cable and otherwise, that didn't even have that going for them.

Only Tim Curry and Grace Jones could have pulled this one off! Never judge a DVD by its cover! The cover implies that it's a werewolf movie, but really it's a drama surrounding a VERY hairy girl. Poor thing never figured out that all she needed was some good shaving cream and a sharp razor. At the very least, this film demonstrates what it would be like to be part of a traveling freak show. It would have been MUCH more believable if it were completely set in the distant past instead of having a gypsy clan collide with a modern day town. Costumes were most excellent and the freaks were freaky, but story lines strayed far from the plot. A must see for Tim Curry or Grace Jones fans. Wolf girl becomes wolf woman and is not afraid to show us her goods, but this movie had the worst ending of all time even though wolf girl goes through a complete character change! UG!

Saw the late showing of Wolf Girl recently on USA. It was good fun, but I'm naturally biased towards most movies with Tim Curry as he is one of my faves!

On the whole, the movie was paced nicely with some good performances and some bad ones as well. Tim Curry is good as the eccentric, yet caring freak show owner, Harley. And Victoria Sanchez plays her part well also as the lonely wolf girl who just wants to be a normal teenager. She's very believable.

The other performances were solid as well, with a few exceptions, most notable the group of teenagers who harass Tara. They are horribly stereotypical, egocentric and dull. (Though the running gag with the size of their "manhood" is good for a few giggles).

The movie is filmed with a kind of washed out color feeling, similar to, but nowhere near as effective as Tim Burton's, "Sleepy Hollow" and the music is passable. Tim Curry even gets a chance to show off his singing skill in a wonderful little number about "plucking" that kind of reminds me of Frankenfurter from "Rocky Horror"

***

It would seem that Tim Curry would welcome the role of a kind-hearted, singing, dancing sideshow entrepreneur, roving through the European woods in a gypsy caravan. He seems to be enjoying himself greatly being able to be the understanding father figure to the physically impaired entertainers who also seem to be enjoying their work. It is also a coming-of-age story. Most teenage girls seem to think of themselves as grotesque until love is in the air. I had a little trouble with the ending. Without giving it away I can say that, with a good character, sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone. I give it 10 points, so there.

I Got this film in one of those cheap 4 movie double disc paks wich i bought mainly for Return of the living dead 3, Unlike the american cover art which seems deceived a lot of people to think this was a werewolf horror flick this had a naked woman looking at her wolf like reflection on a lake and since one of the other movies was the terribly bad Wolfhound(wich instead of having werewolves or even wolves in as the cover deciveingly portraits, it has some crapy dogs and a california playmate pretending to be native irish) i was expecting your average skin flick with some bad werewolf story line, man was i wrong.

Wolf Girl is neither a horror film nor a skin flick, it is a really good drama about the pain of being diferent. The characters are well written with none of them becoming too clishe, it shows how the cruel kids have dark shameful secrets of their own, and it shows the ring master as a real father figure, one that often makes mistakes and acts towards needs and not his childs feelings but truly loves his family. The various segments of the show are quite entertaining and the music is really good. My only real problem is i can't figure out if its ment to be in the present or if they just had some errors, because of the nature of the story and the prduction design it often feels as if its ment to be set around the late sixties early seventies (they even have the good bad and ugly on the marquee on the streets background) but the cosmetics lab looks to modern and then you have shots of the wolf girl walking trougth the street were you can clearly see 90's cars that could have easily been edited out witougth ruining the flow of the scene, I find that really annoying. Overall i liked this film a lot, it just seems to be really bad marketed.