MONSTERWOLF

Monsterwolf (2010)
Directed by: Todor Chapkanov
Written by: Charles Bolon
Starring: Leonor Varela, Marc Macaulay, Robert Picardo

MONSTERWOLF

RUNNING TIME:110 mins

DISTRIBUTED BY:Active Entertainment

REVIEWED BY:Dr Lenera, Official HCF Critic

Just outside the small Southern town of Crowley a group of workers are blasting some land for oil but are confronted first by a strange blue flame, then a monstrous wolf which slaughters the lot of them.  Despite this, Stark, the unscrupulous boss of an oil company, is desperate to get hold of the land, even though it’s Native American and owned by Chief Turner, who will not give in to Stark. Stark then brings in Maria, who once lived in the town but is now a New York Lawyer.  Stark hopes Maria can talk the townsfolk into selling their land but then two people who gave in to her are also horribly killed by the wolf…….

Monsterwolf, though a new release, has been a budget DVD in my local Tesco for a couple of months, selling for £5, and now it’s selling for £3, so I couldn’t say no to buying it!  Actually available only through Tesco in the UK, this is another in the long line of cheap, tacky but usually fun Creature Features made by the Sci- Fi [or rather SyFy] Channel.  If you’ve seen any of these films or indeed read Matt Wavish’s reviews of classics like Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, you’ll know what to expect, though this is the first one this critic has had the pleasure of sitting through.  Just as expected, this is a ridiculous, inept and unintentionally hilarious effort that, in spite of those things, or maybe because of them, is pretty entertaining, though I will say not quite as entertaining as I expected.  It’s often dull and feels half-hearted for much of the time, as if the filmmakers lost their initial enthusiasm, but every now and again something, usually something pretty stupid, happens to liven things up. For some reason the DVD lists this film as 110 mins long, but it’s actually just under an hour and a half.  Nonetheless, you may think it runs for at least 110 mins!

You know what you’re going to get with the opening scene, where people use a huge quantity of explosives to destroy a ring on a small ridge which they could have dug up in a couple of minutes, and do this even when there’s a gaseous flame of some sort burning on top of the ridge!  Anyway, the explosion goes ahead and a huge mist forms, out of which comes what looks like a huge cartoon wolf.  The mist suddenly disappears and the wolf, which is now almost normal sized, rushes at the men.  The camera goes all Shaky Cam, though you can just about make out flashes of gore, and then the scene fades out seemingly half way into it.  So there you have it – bad filmmaking, stupid scripting and unintentional laughs.  After this the film is really quite lacklustre for a bit – I know all the best monster movies have a decent build up but this one has no tension at all, and only cast member, Robert Picardo, effectively slimy as the nasty Stark, seems to be able to act reasonably.   The odd wolf attack is thrown every now and again but usually cuts away before we see any gore, which, though not at all essential for a film of this nature, is something this movie could have done with.  Still, the laughs increase as the action eventually hots up.  Highlights include the wolf being blasted at by a rifle and not moving, then flying back about ten feet when hit by a shot gun, said wolf jumping into the air and crashing into a helicopter, causing it to explode, and someone putting a necklace into a shotgun and firing it out like a bullet.

The script is crammed with clichés such as the evil land grabber, a Native American curse protecting an area of land, someone working for the enemy who suddenly changes heart, and childhood sweethearts quickly reigniting their passion, but there are also elements of total idiocy, including the secret identity of Maria, which is one of the stupid plot twists I’ve seen in ages.  I suppose it might not have been too bad if they had built up to it, but it’s just thrown in.  The wolf is sometimes CG and sometimes, mostly for close ups of its face, a model.   The CG wolf looks reasonable in design but never looks real and its movements, especially when it jumps, are embarrassingly fake looking.   I have no objection to poor effects when a budget is low, but I’ve seen better computer effects on kid’s TV programmes.  The model head actually doesn’t look too bad at all – except that it looks more like the head of a bear than a wolf and nothing like the CG creature.  It’s as if the two sets of people, the folk for the CG wolf and the model makers, worked independently of each other and didn’t have a common view of what the monster looked like.  Then again, scriptwriter Charles Bolon never seems to work out what this creature is either.

The film looks mostly dull and flat but the occasional scene does have some style and there’s a bizarre but interesting cartoon flashback, designed to look like Native American paintings, though the animation itself is quite poor.  In a movie full of shoddy acting, Leonor Varela is simply appalling as Maria, her performance is so stiff and fake, yet she’s normally not that bad an actress, so what happened?   Hang on a minute – she read the script.  Even worse is Jon Eyez, doing a truly inept job as the kind of tough bounty hunter you’ve seen a million times before, he’s almost painful to watch.  The music by Miles Hankins is reasonable but never seems to go away and is sometimes really badly placed – for example, we hear a ‘heroic’ –sounding theme when Stark is driving in his car.  There is certainly fun to be had with Monsterwolf, if you have a weakness for trashy  ‘B’ movies, but much of it is just crap through and through, and while you’re watching you may find yourself trying to work out why all of the credits on the back of the DVD [or at least the UK DVD] differ from the credits on the actual film.  The director Todor Chapnakov is G.E.Furst, Charles Bolon has become Jennifer Iwen, and Leonor Varela has turned into Kristy Swanson.  Wierd.  The DVD says Robert Davi is in the film and he’s not at all!  I might investigate further, and update this review with an answer!!

Rating:

[pt-filmtitle]Monsterwolf[/pt-filmtitle]