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49%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #6,771
...out of 20,875 movies
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When Derek Cowley takes his college classmates to his stepfather's cabin to party, they are attacked by a strange creature. A cross between Hannibal Lecter and the Wolfman, the lascivious Beast hunts down Derek's classmates and kills them with sadistic glee. Back home, Derek begins to suspect his abusive stepfather, Mitch Toblat, is the werewolf. With help from his friend Samantha, a brash motorcycle-riding tomboy, he begins to investigate -- leading to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Toblat. Ultimately, Derek must find the courage to face the unleashed Beast in a final night of unimaginable horror.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: February 15, 2008
There's a multitude of subgenres in the world of horror, and each one has their own set of rules that must be followed. Take zombie films, for instance: the walking dead are, well, dead, and as such, they can't speak or be reasoned with. They shamble about slowly, they eat human flesh, and they can only be put down by destroying the brain. Then you've got your vampires: sunlight is their natural enemy, a stake to the heart will put one down, and yes, they happen to live forever by drinking human blood. These are the rules of the game, and while some movies can tweak said rules to their liking, the filmmakers really have to know what they're doing in order for it to work. The boys responsible for Big Bad Wolf attempted to change the rules of the werewolf genre, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say that they didn't know what they were doing, the final results were less than impressive.
Our story begins when a group of friends decide to take a trip out to a remote cabin for some sort of fraternity initiation. Derek (Trevor Duke) is the kid who happens to be going through the initiation process, and he's bringing along his female friend Sam (Kimberly J. Brown) for company. Oh, and did I mention that Derek also stole the key to this cabin from his stepfather's (Richard Tyson) keychain? Yes, this cabin belongs to the wicked stepdad, and if he only knew what these kids were up to...
As it turns out, daddy dearest may be finding out sooner than these kids anticipated. You see, the boys barely have time to get their girlfriend's shirts off - why else would they be going out to the middle of nowhere? - before a werewolf shows up and starts slaughtering anything pink and warm. Not only does he kill them, mind you, but he also finds time to rape the women while cracking the worst jokes this side of a bad Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. Fortunately, Derek and Sam manage to escape, and when they return to the city, they must find out who the werewolf actually is and put an end to his reign of terror.
Did I accidentally let it slip that Derek's stepfather is the werewolf? Well, I suppose I probably should have preceded that with a spoiler warning, but it's not much of a secret once the movie shifts over to the city. You see, Derek and Sam know that he's the werewolf throughout the vast majority of the running time, but they want some concrete proof that he is in fact the killer before they do anything about it. His truck was there - in the middle of nowhere - on the night their friends were murdered? He leaves town on every full moon for "business meetings" and "hunting trips"? The werewolf was wearing the same brand of pants that daddy prefers? All circumstantial evidence, my dear reader: these kids want to be damned sure that they're killing the right person before they start werewolf hunting.
Now, granted, it'd be a short film if they simply returned to the city and immediately went hunting, but I have to say that this decision was one of the worst mistakes of the film. As if all of these clues didn't let us know that, yes, this man is the werewolf, we also get to witness him all but transform into one right before our eyes in the early scenes of the movie: he grows hair on his arms, his eyes glow a spooky red, and the words that come out of his mouth regarding his whereabouts on that night could have indicted OJ. Regardless, these kids go through the trouble of first attempting to get a hair sample and then giving up on that in favor of a sperm sample (don't ask) so that they can send it off for analysis. When the results come back that - shock! - his DNA contains both human and animal elements, they still fiddle and fart around before getting down to business. Why? Well, to pad out the running time, of course.
Perhaps I'm being too rough on this film; after all, it's readily apparent that the filmmakers were going for something that would fit in better with Full Moon's catalog than as the final disc of the Wolf Man Legacy Collection. These guys weren't taking things too seriously here, as if the werewolf rape and the little thing about him ripping someone's junk off didn't clue us into that during the opening scenes. No, these fellows weren't aiming for a werewolf classic that would redefine the genre: they simply wanted to make a fun little movie. I do have to give them some credit in that department, as - aside from the "witty" one-liners - the werewolf attacks were surprisingly well done, and although I would have liked to have seen a little more action and a little less Scooby Doo'esque investigations, I'd be a liar if I said that I wasn't at least moderately entertained throughout the running time... and much more than just "moderately" on occasion. The werewolf itself looked damned nice considering the obviously low budget of the film, the gore is also a notch above the usual fare, and the action flows together nicely during the handful of attacks we find sprinkled throughout the film.
So, the final verdict: werewolf purists may be put off by the fact that the Lycanthrope found here is able to speak and that the beast is far from scary (his human side is much more vile than the actual monster), but give it a chance as it's far from a horrible film. It's certainly not the best werewolf movie in existence and it's not a classic, but there is much, much worse lining store shelves these days. 6/10.
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#1:
Crispy
- added January 28, 2009 at 11:53am
Entertaining enough, but not something I'd watch
too often. The werewolf scenes were really good,
but there was a lot of drag in the middle of the
movie.
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