BAD MOON
It could've been a worse moon
Why is it that when Uncle Ted goes out for a jog every evening, he doesn't come back til early morning? He's either got a very long ways to go, or he's really a werewolf and he's handcuffing himself to a tree every night to prevent himself from going on a rampage. If you guessed the first one, you're in the wrong newsgroup.
I expected a pretty bad movie here, and no, this really isn't anything special. But it was substantially better than I'd feared, although if it had gone on any longer than its eighty-minute running length I might have lost patience with it.
This werewolf movie opens terribly (albeit with some nudity, so it ain't all bad) - way out in the Nepalese jungle (they have jungles in Nepal?), a man gets slashed by a werewolf, and yes, we're shown the werewolf, who just looks ridiculous. I mean, obviously a lot of effort was put into creating the animatronic face of the 'wolf, but it just comes to naught here - there's movement all over it, but one never gets an impression of life. I just looks like a robot wolf head stuck on a hairy bodysuit.
Anyway, this werewolf gets his head blown off by a shotgun, and soon enough, the dude comes back to America to hang out with his sister and nephew...and dog, Thor, who knows that something's up.
Obviously filmed in British Columbia, the film has a lot of gorgeous scenery, but that's about it for inspiring visuals. I mean, check out that werewolf!
The film's loaded with lapses in logic, too. For example, Ted keeps handcuffing himself to a tree to keep his wolfiness a secret and of course protect the rest of the world - but then, how does he free himself in the morning? Does he just rely on the werewolf he becomes to be unable to work the key? And after the werewolf manages just that, why would he try it again?
And how many nights does this BC town get a full moon in a row? And if the full moon has nothing to do with the transformation ("Any moon will do", sez Ted), then why is it full all the time in this flick? And wouldn't that mean Ted "turns" every single night? What a pain in the ass that must be.
As for the inevitable "transformation" scene - it starts well, with a nice combination of CGI in makeup, and then it gets wonky by looking fakey (although I did like the "asymmetrical" transformaiton), and then it just starts looking like that in Howling: New Moon Rising (which means REALLY bad). I dunno - the CGI here was bad, but there's only one scene with it, and we see those bad animatronics a LOT. I'm led to believe that this may be part of why the makers of An American Werewolf In Paris decided to use so much CGI. (and let it be known that I'm one of that movie's few defenders - and yes, even of the effects, whose widespread disparagement I just don't understand)
I'm making this all sound like an awful mess, but there were a number of things I liked about it, and helped make it watchable (if unremarkable) throughout most of its brief running length. There's a great, heart-wrenching scene where Thor the dog is taken away by animal control officers, for example. And it's based on a book (Thor by Wayne Smith) that apparently is mostly told from the dog's point of view, and narrates things with a lot of dog-philosophy - it sounds very intriguing, and I intend to keep an eye out for it.
Acting is mostly good all around, even by Michael Pare, whose lousy taste in scripts (and, of course, the fact that he usually couldn't act like he smelled bad if he shit his own pants) have thusfar kept him from big star status. I mean, look at the guy - lack of talent aside, he just looks like a big movie star.
It's nothing too special, but nothing too awful either. Nothing to get worked up about either way - but then, why is this review so damn long?
Written and directed by Eric Red, who gave us movies like The Hitcher and Body Parts (and did one script for Alien 3, just like half the writers in Hollywood).