Wolfman (1979)

JUNE 2, 2009

GENRE: CRAP, WEREWOLF
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Despite coming up on 1,000 movies in a row (!!!), it’s rare I watch a film that is so boring and pointless that I actually look upon my daily viewing as a chore. Sure, there are days where it’s hard to find time to get a movie in, or I have to get up earlier than necessary to watch one before whatever I have to do that day (Comic Con, for example), but in those cases the movies themselves are usually OK. But Wolfman is just a fucking bore from start to finish, without a single moment that made me think “OK, it was worth sitting through this shitpile just to see this or hear that line”. In short, fuck you, Wolfman, because that’s 100 minutes I could have spent playing Xbox or frustrating my cats with a laser pointer.

In terms of story, it’s the same old generic werewolf movie we’ve all seen a dozen times; a family curse, sympathetic hero, fade in/out montages showing the transformation, etc. Director/writer Worth Keeter adds absolutely nothing to the formula (even the title is generic, they merely took out the space between Wolf and Man and dropped the The. Way to make your mark). Even a completely abysmal piece of crap like Werewolf: The Devil's Hound came up with a few of its own ideas. They weren’t GOOD ideas, mind you, but at least they were trying.

Actually, the movie does add one ingredient: Southern-fried goodness! If the exact location is explained, I missed it, but it seems to be in Texas or Arkansas, with a bunch of southern gentleman making up our characters (at least two of them resemble Colonel Sanders). And if I didn’t know better, I would swear that Jack McBrayer and David Koechner got the inspirations for their Kenneth Parcell (30 Rock) and Champ (Anchorman) characters from this movie. But that would mean that they have seen it, and thus couldn’t possibly be as funny as they are today, as movies this dull can put your sense of humor into a coma.

Why can’t the movie follow the killer bee story?

And if you think I’m exaggerating about the dullness, here are some facts: first sign that you’re even watching a horror movie: 38 minute mark. First werewolf appearance: 55 minute mark. Number of werewolf attack scenes: three (including the finale, where the Wolfman plays hero against the film’s “real villain”). Number of lines of dialogue from lead actor Earl Owensby that are delivered without the slightest bit of emotion: All. No one in the movie seems concerned one way or the other with anything that is happening, mirroring the audience (which is probably just me - I’m probably the first one to rent the damn thing from Blockbuster).

Incidentally, the DVD itself is far more entertaining than the film, due to its charming pointlessness. It appears to be one of the first DVDs ever produced, and thus suffered from the same problem a lot of late 90s discs do: quantity over quality. The hideous main menu lists 6 items, only two of which really refer to the movie (play movie and scene access). The others are “DVD-Rom” (which is the exact same content, with the added bonus of links to dead websites); DVD Dictionary - which is actually kind of cool; explaining wacky terms like AC3 5.1; and “Short Subject: Spooky Hooky”, which is a Little Rascals short that has nothing to do with werewolves. We also get a trivia game, which asks 10 random questions that again, have nothing to do with the film (or even horror; hope you know Marilyn Monroe’s dress size, the star of the original Thin Red Line, and whether or not Mickey Rourke was in American Graffiti). In short, it looks feature packed, but it’s just a bunch of random nonsense that doesn’t mean anything. Any DVD can be a special edition if you throw some stuff on it that won’t cost you anything extra to put it there. On the plus side, well, like I said, none of it has anything to do with Wolfman.

What say you?