There have been many good werewolf films over the years, including The
Howling, The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman and
Moon Of The Wolf.
There have been a number of equally so-so, yet entertaining films of this
nature, such as those starring Paul Naschy from Spain (click
here !) and the werewolf
episodes added to the old Dark Shadows TV show.
There are also a number of
absolutely horrible wolfman vehicles out there and this ranks as one of them.
It is, however, watchable if you look at it in the "so bad it is good "-way,
as in my hollow and humble opinion, it is right down there with The Boy Who
Cried Werewolf and Howling II.
Tige Andrews stars as a hippy hating farmer who is accidentally the victim of
an electric shock, which, rather than kill him, turns him into a werewolf, amid
some of the worst makeup in the history of movies. Andrews, playing a
character called "Bert", goes to wreck the abandoned Woodstock
stage and in the process, gets struck down with the curse, so to speak. That's
what he gets for screwing with a pop culture landmark!
He snarls, spits, growls and claws his way through varied victims as this
movie drags on, but there are few moments really worth remembering and nothing
that can be taken as frightening or even remotely serious. Andrews might have
made a name for himself for his role in The Mod Squad, but this film all but
erases his strong points as an actor.
One bright spot has a group of Jesus-freak hippies encountering the wolfman,
mistaking him for a demon from hell and attempting to exorcise him. This is
the only worthwhile moment in this whole film.
Again, there are many good and even great werewolf movies out there, as well
as countless mediocre ones, all better than this, which is, as far as I know,
no longer even shown on TV in the USA.
Incredibly, the famed Dick Clark helped produced this bomb. Like
with Andrews, it should not rank as one of his crowning moments and how he got
suckered into this bomb has got to be one of the biggest mysteries since
trying to figure which came first, the chicken or the egg.
If you love to laugh at bad cinema though, this may be worth watching, if you
can find it through the tape trading grapevine, on some late night television
show should some horror host get brave enough to air it again or on the black
market. You'll be shaking your head and wondering why people constantly claim
Ed Wood Jr to be worst of all when it comes to horror movies. On his worst
day, the late Wood could have created something better than this.
The movie is nothing to howl about.
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