REVIEW: Silver Bullet (1985)

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Silver Bullet: C-

A crippled kid has to convince Gary Busey, his alcoholic uncle, that a werewolf is behind all the murders in their little redneck town. You can imagine how difficult this would be for the kid to accomplish since crippled kids probably want all sorts of special attention all the time and adults in his life, like Busey, are all but conditioned to drink more whenever he opens his crippled little mouth to tell his crippled little stories. Like all kids in horror movies who figure out who the monster is, he sounds like a raving dumbfuck every time he tries to explain his theories. Plus, all Busey wants to do is drink Wild Turkey 101 and sing anti-Union Civil War songs. It’s clear he loves his crippled nephew, but his monster obsession is a real buzz-kill.

This is a Stephen King movie, so if that matters to you, there you go. The werewolf looks pretty cool but he keeps slaughtering people in a disappointingly non-werewolf manner. Here’s what I mean:

1. When the sheriff (John Locke from Lost) gets wise to what’s going on, the werewolf… beats him with a baseball bat.

2. The werewolf breaks into a young girl’s bedroom and… throws her against the wall.

3. The werewolf hides in a redneck’s greenhouse and… impales the guy on a broken floorboard.

The movie is funny as hell and has basically every ugly thing from the 1980’s you could think of. The soundtrack is entirely horror synth stabs and 80’s butt-rock. At times, you’d swear you were watching The Goonies or Karate Kid. The cripple has a motorized wheelchair which he later swaps for a WHEELCHAIR/MOTORCYCLE HYBRID. He does wheelies and cheers during a four minute long butt-rock sequence.

Busey’s acting is cranked to level-11; you can almost see the coke dumping out of his pores and his neck veins look like fucking tree roots. So fun to watch. There’s also a priest with an eye-patch and unlimited expendable rednecks who drink Red Stripe with the labels ripped off.

There is a werewolf showdown at the end and, yes, there is a silver bullet involved.

REVIEW: The Howling (1981)

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The Howling: B

Other than An American Werewolf in London, this is probably the best werewolf movie.

The film moves very slowly but the payoff is so worth it. This woman Karen is stalked by a psycho killer named Eddie. The cops use her as bait to catch the guy but the experience is so traumatic, Karen develops amnesia. The scene is pretty fucked up; the cops stick Karen in a porn theater where some rape/snuff is playing. She has to watch it while Eddie creeps up on her and fondles her a little bit. Then he gets capped.

Her shrink sends her to a little retreat called The Colony out in the cuts. Bad news: everyone there is a werewolf (one motherfucker is REALLY obvious; he looks like fucking Sabretooth from X-men). They all have this feral “Lost Boys” kind of vibe.

A half dozen strange occurrences and some explicit werewolf action lets the audience realize what’s up as soon as Karen gets to The Colony. Karen just don’t get it, though. She sniffs around for answers and not a lot happens. There is all sorts of implied shapeshifting and distant/mysterious howling. Her BF is bitten and becomes a werewolf who has werewolf sex with another werewolf.

Finally, in the last few minutes of the movie, the Colony folk reveal themselves in what are some of the most impressive werewolf transformation scenes I have ever seen. The effects are on par with (maybe even better) than Carpenter’s The Thing. You have to sit through about and hour of 80’s perms, mustaches, and backwards-ass reasoning, with very minimal action/effects, but the werewolves are so fucking dope. No CGI garbage like most other werewolf movies. We’re talking real snotty/furry make-up and all sorts of crunching, stretching prosthetic limbs and snouts. One of the werewolves is that asshole Eddie from the rape theater, but he catches a silver bullet shortly after his terrifying transformation.

Karen escapes and just when you think the film is over, there is one last shapeshifting scene. It’s Karen! Fucking idiot tries to shapeshift on live prime-time news so she can warn the world about werewolves. Someone caps her with a silver bullet and various viewers believe they have just witnessed an elaborate showcase of television special effects.

This film has spawned my sequels which all deteriorate into shittiness with each new release. One sequel has a “werewolf vs. vampire” theme. Another features a werewolf on roller-skates. See the first Howling and I promise you won’t regret it.

REVIEW: Big Bad Wolf (2006)

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Big Bad Wolf: B-

Surprisingly non terrible werewolf movie that actually had a semi interesting mystery, and a somewhat different take on the classic horror beast. Trevor is kind of a nerd who for some reason hangs out with the cool kids. One weekend Trevor tries to impress the dudes he is hanging out with and steals the keys to his mean stepdad’s cabin so they can party there. However once the party gets rolling, a lewd, surprisingly well done werewolf appears and kills everybody except Trevor and his punk rock girlfriend. Once they are back in town Trevor and his chick start to suspect that Trevor’s stepdad may be responsible for the killings by realizing that he is “on a business meeting” every full moon.

From here the mystery unfolds as the stepdad continues to transform into a werewolf once every 12 minutes or so, to tear off a head or gash open a neck. The kills in this movie were surprisingly well done as decapitations of limbs and heads is the main vehicle for demise. We also get several shots of very nice boobs and some hilarity as the werewolf spews one liners such as “Are you ready for some bestiality!?!”

Overall a solid horror film as the piss-poor acting was thankfully over shadowed by a good pace, and some good gore.

 

REVIEW: Werewolf: The Beast Among Us (2012)

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Werewolf: The Beast Among Us: UV

When a little boy survives a werewolf attack that kills his parents, he devotes his life to being a nomadic Brisco County JR. wanna-be know-it-all werewolf hunter. He is like a Safeway Select version of an already shitty monster hunter like Jackman’s Van Helsing; imagine Antonio Sabato Jr. trying to play Walker Texas Ranger. The setting is some ambiguous Carpathian-like village where people either speak with American, Russian, or English accents. Anticlimactic kills, cheap CGI, predictable everything. If, after twenty minutes into the movie, you can’t guess everything else that happens, I will shit my pants from shock.