Werewolf – the Devil’s Hound – review

As a movie fan, and a nerdy one at that, the fun of it all is when you find those gems that have fallen between the cracks without ever getting the just due. You live for those films. Well, I wish I could tell you I had found one of those gems but, alas, that is not the case. What begins as a fun werewolf romp on the cheap becomes a mess of mood and shows pretty clearly why you should stick with your initial vision.

I feel bad in not giving you a huge, and detailed plot synopsis but this is a really familiar story to this sub-genre – boy and girl are happy, boy gets wounded by strange ‘animal’ and starts to feel changes happening in him, enter new ‘girl’, who he is immediately drawn to, throw in body count and BOOM! Basically a guy gets wounded and begins to feel strange. Enter a mysterious  woman he is instantly attracted to a mystery woman he sees in a club. She seems linked to his injury, and to his strange new feelings. All the while people are being brutally murdered in the area and it looks like the work of an animal. But can this woman be the thing that is doing the killing, or is it him?

The crummy thing about this movie is, simple as it was in story, it was pretty ambitious. It’s clear that the people behind this had a background in special effects, and it shows – that aspect of the film is pretty fun. Then there is a really interesting direction style that is in your face, but doesn’t get overly obnoxious. Heck, a film like this needs that sort of a personality to guide it. The story, while pretty hackneyed, isn’t awful, nor is the acting.

So what happened?

Suddenly the film, which had been sorta serious, takes a turn and becomes ridiculous and silly. Enter a ‘werewolf hunter’ with an ever-changing accent who seems like a terrible nod to a dozen other, better films, and the movie is off the rails and becomes a farce. The entire climax is ridiculous and the very end is an utter joke. And a bad one. My guess is that someone stepped in and decided that either funny would sell better, that the film needed to be changed drastically to make it work, or someone bumped their head. And hard.

It is a shame that things turned out so poorly because the movie, while silly, wasn’t terrible. It was watchable, for sure. I mean, heck, this was the sort of thing you would watch on television (looking your way SyFy) or would check out on Netflix, as we did. Sadly, the entire affair falls apart and is not worth more than the cursory glance as you pass so you can see the wreckage.

4 out of 10