12 to Midnight (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on episode 210 of the podcast, and I figured with the Bronzi factor, it was worth covering on the site as well. I don't know how true that is actually, but I'm going with it.

12 to Midnight has nothing to do with the 10 to Midnight that it's cribbing its title from--thought that would be an interesting idea for a prequel, no?--but it seems like it might when we find out early on that Bronzi's wife was murdered by serial killer who's still on the loose, and could kill again. But this thing ain't shaping up to finish with Bronzi confronting a nude dude, oh no, it's a backdoor werewolf movie! Fortunately Bronzi's of Eastern European descent, and as such, this isn't his first werewolf rodeo--which, for an animal lover like myself, that may be the best kind of rodeo and the only kind worth supporting--so he's onto what's happening pretty quickly. Well, not quickly enough to spare myriad other victims from the werewolf's wrath, but if he didn't have that Eastern European background, this could easily be a 150-minute slog, so I'm not complaining. It's going to take everything in Bronzi's bag of tricks to bring this werewolf killer to justice.

This wasn't half-bad. You take the concept of Robert Bronzi having a career based on being a Charles Bronson look-alike, which is bonkers enough on its own, mix in Tito Ortiz and werewolves, and I think you have yourself a fun 90 minutes. To be honest, this is doing a lot better than a lot of modern DTV. It knows what it is, doesn't try to be anything it isn't, and the result is something that's pretty fun. That all being said, this is bonkers, and if you're looking at the cover expecting a hard-boiled actioner, you don't really get that. Bronzi has some cop on the edge in him, but once we add in werewolves, all bets are off. Sadie Katz, who we've seen before, looks like she could add in her own "sheriff on the edge," which would've been a fun twist on that premise, but, again, werewolves throw all that out the window. Sometimes you need that though. I don't know how many rough-sit Randall Scandals we've seen that probably would've been more palatable with the inclusion of werewolves. At least half the Bruce Willis ones anyway. 

We've now seen Bronzi twice on the site, which is four behind the actual Bronson's six. It's possible he could catch him, because Bronzi has a bunch of other stuff out there, and we don't really have anything more DTV-wise for Bronson--I'm a little less lax on what I consider DTV than I was in the past, and I don't know that any of the six we've already reviewed for Bronson qualify as DTV by the standards I have now. Anyway, everything, including the title, is meant to evoke Bronson. Throughout the film, characters tell Bronzi he looks familiar, so they're leaning into it, but I don't know how much I like that part. I almost would rather they act like we don't get what's happening, right? "Wait, what? You think Bronzi looks like Charles Bronson? That's crazy! I don't see it though... no, we cast Bronzi because he was the right man for the picture." "A picture about a cop from Eastern Europe living in Pennsylvania who kills werewolves? Bronzi's perfect for that?" "Exactly!" I don't know how many movies we'll see just for Bronzi, but he has enough listed on IMDb that I think we'll see him again, and considering how this one was pretty fun, it might be sooner than later.

Speaking of doppelgangers, Tito Ortiz has a name of his own from his time in the UFC, but he also fills a Vin Diesel niche if you need too. He needs to practice his Diesel yell ("The buster kept me out of handcuffs!"), but the rest is there. He's also a big guy, which helps too for action movies. We don't get to see much of any of that here, because he's down the list on supporting characters, more here to be a face they can add to the tin, which is fine, because he does have some films with bigger parts, like another Ty and I covered, Operation Black Ops. (Yep, that's right, technically "Operation Black Operations.")The other thing is, how much do we need movies with him as the star? Give me a Michael Jai White movie where Ortiz plays the leader of a biker gang or something. Either the kind of biker gang White needs to take down, or the kind where they and White have a common enemy, so Ortiz helps White bring down the baddie. As long as he's living his life .4 kms at a time, I'll be happy.

Another name we're seeing again is Sadie Katz. She plays a hardo police sheriff, who has a change of heart when she sympathizes with Bronzi's personal motives. The characters in the movie used a different term than "hardo" to describe her, which may have been a bit much, but she also came in hot in a way that made her character off-putting to start, so she was really working uphill to become likeable by the end. I think there's a happy medium between Lt. Chapman on Rockford Files and instantly friendly that her character could've existed in to start with, because when she does warm up to Bronzi, it's hard to believe it, no matter how well Katz can sell it. Since we first reviewed one of her films in Nipples and Palm Trees over ten years ago, she's amassed a great genre career, which would make her a big get for a film like this. That's one of the things about doing the site this long that's really cool, to see names that are just starting out grow into something bigger.

Finally, this film features a railroad connecting areas of Pocono County, PA, which as it exists in reality is something just for tourists, and doesn't function as a passenger rail service like it's depicted in the film. It's funny how the concept of rail is great in movies in America, but we can't fund them in real life, so for people watching outside the US, we can add a functioning, robust intercity rail service to the other myths movies perpetuate about us, like we're all pretty and speak region-free American English. And it looks like rail service in Pennsylvania is only going to get worse. Republicans in the senate here are blocking a budget that would help fund not only SEPTA, the Philadelphia transit system, but transit systems in other PA cities as well. It's part of this whole "us folk in Pennsyltucky want to make life difficult for those Liberal Elites who like riding their hoity-toity subways--plus oil companies give us a lot of money to attend Super Bowls and stuff, so there's that." The thing is, they're not very bright, and don't understand that properly functioning, robust transit systems are the engines that power cities, and for those Pennsyltucky senators whose own districts rely on tax revenue from cities like Philadelphia to keep their dead coal communities afloat, it means their communities will suffer too, perhaps even more, when Philadelphia isn't generating enough tax dollars to prop up their failing infrastructure. (Also, coastal elites don't ride the subway here in Philly.) But that's America for you, the country where passenger trains are more likely to exist in Robert Bronzi DTV werewolf movies than in reality.

And with that, let's wrap this up. IMDb lists this to rent on Prime, but as of this writing, you can also stream it free on Xumo too. Despite the bevy of commercials Xumo loads into its movies, I think that's the best way to go with this one. And also check out the podcast Ty and I did, number 210 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21913192

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

WolfCop (2014)

I first watched this film for the podcast I used to do with Jamie.  It's still available if you look up "DTVConnoisseur" in iTunes if you want to check it out.  The idea with the podcast was that I'd eventually also do the films here in written form, but then the unplanned hiatus happened, so here we are 5 years later, finally reviewing it.

WolfCop takes place in a small town in Saskatchewan beset by a massive crime wave.  At the same time, drunken cop Lou Garou wakes up after investigating a disturbance in the woods with a pentagram carved into his stomach and an enhanced sense of smell.  Looks like we got ourselves a WolfCop on our hands.

This is a pretty great deal.  First and foremost, it has an 80-minute runtime.  Anyone who's been rockin' with the DTVC over the years knows that I love me a good 90 minutes or less.  Also, this had a good mix of humor, horror, and action, which is something I need in my 80 minutes of movie.  When I wasn't watching a werewolf cop shoot or slash people, I was laughing.  Granted, it's easier to not have any wasted space with only 80 minutes of time to fill, but we've seen worse before here, so it's worth giving this film credit in that respect.  This is just good, independent horror/action done refreshingly right.

That then begs the question: does it beat out Howling II: ...Your Sister's a Werewolf for my top werewolf movie of all time?  Unfortunately no, but finishing second isn't too bad.  Where does it fall short?  One, no Reb Brown.  Two, no Christopher Lee.  And then how can you ever top the incomparable Sybil Danning as Stirba, the immortal werewolf queen?  Before I turn this into a review of Howling II, I should get back to why I liked this as a werewolf movie.  First, the canon surrounding it was unique.  I don't want to get too much into it and give away too much of the movie, but the basic idea was that a person was turned into a werewolf in order to carry out a centuries-old ritual, and usually the person chosen was the village idiot because they would be easier to control.  That's pretty far from the standard "a werewolf bite will make you a werewolf" we're used to.  From there they had some really interesting takes on what a werewolf's powers would be.  You had the standard enhanced senses and superhuman strength, but thrown in were the idea that donuts and booze make a werewolf stronger, and the notion that a werewolf is a crack mechanic who can make custom alterations to a vehicle at blazing speed.  It'll be interesting to see if they explore that last thing more in the next movie.

Another area where this and Howling II dovetailed was in the line of human-werewolf sex--though to be fair, in Howling II that was more like an orgy, and this was just one woman having sex with our hero in his lycanthrope form.  The great part about this one was they tried to play it straight, despite the fact that this massive werewolf was having sex with a human woman, which made it all the better.  I feel like if we looked it up, there are some states in the US that still have laws on the book making fornication with werewolves a crime.

Going back to the werewolf love-making scene, a song plays in the background, "Moonlight Desires" by Lawrence Gowan.  Jamie mentioned in the pod that she thought it sounded very retro, and found out that's because it was an actual retro song that Gowan had released in the 80s.  She also said that Gowan was the lead vocalist and keyboardist for Styx.  At the time, I was like "ah, that's why Gowan sounded familiar when I saw it in the credits," but something about it didn't sound right, because I thought Dennis DeYoung was the lead vocalist and keyboardist for Styx.  I did some digging--er looked Styx up on Wikipedia--and found out what I probably should have known a long time ago: DeYoung isn't in Styx anymore, he was replaced by Gowan.  The other thing I discovered when I looked the song up on YouTube is that it's a huge piece of nostalgia among Canadians because it was used in the late 80s in Degrassi.  It made me wonder how many other inside Canadian references were made that I didn't get...  

I'm going to use my last paragraph before the wrap up to vent a little about Hulu and their online movie player.  Unlike Netflix, which removes the slider and the play/pause buttons if you wait a few seconds after pausing, giving you a clean picture to take a screenshot, Hulu's never goes away, so to get screens for the blog, I had to take them while the movie was running and hope I got the shot I wanted.  For this reason, I won't be doing anymore movies through Hulu, which isn't the worst thing anyway, because they don't have a great selection, but still, pretty annoying for us movie bloggers and instagrammers trying to get screenshots for our content.

Vent finished, time to wrap this up.  This is definitely worth checking out--and I'm realizing now as I say that that the only place I could find to stream this is Hulu, so after I'm killing them for how their player won't let you hide the slider on pause, I'm then telling people to go there to watch this.  Either way, however you can find it, WolfCop is deserving of our support: solid, earnest, independent film making that I think reminds us how good this can all be.

For more more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2781516

Strippers vs Werewolves (2012)

I've seen this one on Instant for some time, and it looks like it could be a lot of fun.  Plus it lists Robert Englund in the cast, which is another selling point.  On the other hand, I had similar expectations for Zombie Strippers!, and was somewhat disappointed with that one, so who knows.  That one also had Englund.  Am I sensing a theme here?

Strippers vs Werewolves is about a London strip joint where Justice, giving Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet a private dance, turns him on so much he turns into a werewolf and she stabs him in the eye with a silver fountain pen, killing him.  That's not a good thing, when his werewolf friends want revenge, and it'll only be a matter of time before they trace his death back to the club.  That leaves club owner, Sarah Douglas, with a choice (and no it's not to jump in a flying parallelogram and escape into space): fight or run.  She chooses to fight, resulting in the ultimate showdown between strippers and werewolves.



You ever heard that joke "how many people with ADD does it take to change a light bulb?  Let's ride a bike!"  That's how I felt watching this movie.  My God, it was all over the place, it never knew what it wanted to do.  Not to mention, it did this comic book editing/cinematographic device where the screen would be split into panels and make things even worse.  I don't remember that device working in Ang Lee's Hulk either.  The worst was how it would look like it wanted to develop something, and then just totally abandon it.  Whether it was Martin Compston's character torn between protecting Justice, his fiancee, or siding with his fellow werewolves, which runs through the film only to have him decide on his werewolves in a way that made it seem like he was never torn; or the strippers vs. zombie scorecard during the end battle, which is inexplicably abandoned after two minutes, and really never even kept score considering the strippers who were killed weren't actually killed.  I understand, a movie called Strippers vs Werewolves should be all over the place, but considering most of the jokes were of the "waka waka waka" notsomuch variety, and the gore mixed with the bad jokes felt off in terms of dark humor, the inconsistent story had me thinking "what am I doing here?"

Why is a movie like Strippers vs Werewolves so hard to make right then?  It sounds like it should make itself?  When I tell people about the Direct to Video Connoisseur, it's movies like this they think of, and movies like this they assume I'd love, and I assume it too.  I think it's that problem though, it feels like it should make itself, and then the film makers start going off the rails, whether it's a story that doesn't know where it wants to be, jokes that are just "hey-oh! Irony! waka waka waka!", or this Michael Bay split second take combined with comic book frames all over the screen style of editing.  Simpler is often better.  Maybe because I grew up on the coast of Maine, where simplicity is desired, where a lobster is simply boiled alive, cracked open, dipped in butter, and that's it, I have trouble with too much being done to jazz up something that should be so good on its own.  This story of Martin Compston and Adele Silva's Justice should be enough to carry the day if he throws in his lot with her to protect her, and in the late 80s early 90s, it would have been, and all of this craziness would've been dialed down.



Don't get me wrong, there were some great touches in this that worked really well.  The opening credits had "Hungry Like the Wolf" playing, which was really cool.  At the end, when the strippers confront the werewolves at the end, they dress as Little Red Riding Hood, which I liked and was really hot.  I liked the idea of the strippers fortifying their club for the showdown with the werewolves, but like a lot of the film, it felt like the build up was better than the payoff.  And the actors, which I will get into more in the next paragraph, all turned in great performances and seemed to be on board with what the film was all about, even if the film didn't seem to know.

All right, so let's start with Martin Compston, who we've seen before in The Disappearance of Alice Creed.  If you look at his imdb photo, he seems so happy to see you, doesn't he?  Man, he was perfect for the guy who doesn't feel comfortable being a werewolf, and wants to protect his girlfriend, but doesn't know if he wants to cross Billy Murry, the werewolf leader.  It's too bad we never got there with that.  Billy Murray we've also seen before in One in the Chamber, and he was perfect as the baddie.  Sarah Douglas was equally great as the strip club owner, but her death was pretty weird and muddled, something I was disappointed in.  Even worse was Alan Ford, Brick Top in Snatch, who was fantastic, and is rubbed out by the werewolves without a fight.  What a waste considering they somewhat developed his character.  Finally, of all the strippers, I really liked Barbara Nedeljakova's (the two Hostel movies) character, though I think if they'd gotten rid of her awkward vampire hunter boyfriend character and made her the expert on the occult, it would've been so much better; and Adele Silva as Justice was good too, but would've been better had her character along with Compston's not been at odds with each other.  Oh, and I almost forgot Martin Kemp and Robert Englund.  That's because they're barely in the film.



I'm writing this review as my Celtics start their first season since 1998 without my favorite player, Paul Pierce, and of all the places to see someone in a Celtics Pierce jersey, it's here in a campy horror film shot in England.  Yes, I'm also watching my Red Sox play in Game 6 of the World Series tonight too, and hopefully they'll win it, but still, I'm in for a long year with my C's, and seeing that jersey didn't help.  On the other hand, I guess it's cool that those jerseys are sold there.

Okay, enough of that, let's wrap this up.  It didn't work for me.  You might dig it though.  Too all over the place, too many things started but not finished, too hard to concentrate on anything.  As of this posting, you can get it on Instant.  Maybe check it out, at least you don't have to finish it if you don't like it like I did to write this review.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1702009/

Howling V: The Rebirth (1989)

I went through my archives and found that it's been over four years since I last reviewed a Howling flick, that one being the one that preceded this one, Howling IV.  We've also done Howling III and the amazing Howling II if you'd like to see what we thought of those ones too.  Anyway, this one was added on Instant recently, so I figured, why not make our way through some more of the series.

Howling V takes place in Budapest, where a group of Americans and Brits are taken to a castle out in the country that's been locked up for five hundred years.  They're the first to see it since then, the only problem is they may not make it home alive to tell their friends and family about it, as someone or something is bumping them off one by one.  Who could be doing this?  Why?  And will they find out in time?



Let's try to understand this: we're talking about a werewolf flick as a who-dun-it mystery movie?  Which guest is the werewolf?  Col. Mustard Seed?  I'm not kidding, and as you can imagine, in the framework of a late 80s low-budget horror flick, it's as boring as all get out.  We don't even really get a good look at the werewolf.  Occasionally he takes someone out like a monster in a Three Stooges episode, or he bursts through a wall or a snow bank like the Kool-Aid man-- and if you're wondering, I did shout out "Oh Yeah!" each time he did that--, but for a werewolf film it's pretty scant.  Maybe with a big crew of veteran riffers you could tackle this on a bad movie night, especially with the Instant availability, but otherwise I'd skip it.

I understand that the werewolf film is tough to shake up, tough to find new ways to attack, but the problem with the way they went about this was that they didn't set it up right away as a murder mystery.  Why not cut to the chase and tell us the moment everyone gets into the castle what you're doing?  "One of you is a werewolf, and we're going to figure out who it is and kill him or her."  Boom, now we're rolling.  It wasn't just that this was a werewolf murder mystery, but the execution of the murder mystery was off.  Perhaps with better execution we might have had something new, something better than "what am I going to do when the full moon comes?  Someone help me!"  Of course we always have Howling II for a clinic on how to make the werewolf flick.



This guy above us had some potential as a real heel character, and he just seemed really awesome, but he, like everyone else, was never fully developed.  Still, he worked as just being cool, and sometimes in these bad DTV horror flicks, just being cool is enough.  We don't have enough of that kind of guy in modern films do we?  The hair, the dark suit, the power tie, the smooth, sophisticated, condescending voice.  He's in it for himself, can be a jerk, but we have to admit if he offered for us to join him for a beer, we'd be flattered and stoked.  Here's to you this guy, you were one of the good ones.

The guy whose pic I posted first is Phillip Davis, and I recognize him from a Woody Allen film, Cassandra's Dream.  He's been in plenty of other stuff too, but that's what I knew.  In that one he didn't have anywhere near as big a part as he did here, but I imagine he's more likely to put the Allen flick on his CV than Howling V.  I will say, I enjoyed Cassandra's Dream, but I would've enjoyed it much more had it been a werewolf film.  As far as I know, out of all of Woody Allen's flicks, he's yet to go werewolf.  That's too bad, but maybe on his next one he will.  "I... I... I just don't know why I'm so hairy all of a sudden... my God, next I'll have fleas... this is horrible..."



I'm thinking as far as the being born lottery goes, 1489 Budapest had to be a tough one.  I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of people not enjoying 2013, and maybe some who live in Budapest too, but on a bell curve, 1489 Budapest is probably huddled around a "man, this sucks" mean.  Maybe Budapest 1389 would've been worse?  Or maybe when the Ottomans took it over in the early 16th century that would've been worse?  Christ, considering that they made this movie there in 1989, maybe that was the worst time.  "Howling V being made here was a bigger tragedy than the Ottoman invasion!"

Okay, this is on Instant, and maybe for a werewolf film that you and your buddies can make fun of this is a decent pick, but I certainly wouldn't attack it alone, and I wouldn't attack it with amateur riffers.  It's boring, which is a death knell for any film, but especially bad for a late 80s low-budget horror flick.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097534/

Battledogs (2013)

I saw this was added recently to Netflix Instant, and I really wanted to give it a look.  It's an Asylum joint with a prodigious cast, and it's about werewolves.  All things I could go for.  The Asylum has had a pretty decent track record lately, and this looked like it had every chance to be another winner.  Let's see what happened.

Battledogs is about a woman who is bitten by a wolf in a forest outside of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and it's given her the werewolf virus, which she proceeds to give to a bunch of people in JFK airport after she lands there and turns.  Not cool.  President Bill Duke calls in the big guns: General Dennis Haysbert and contagious disease specialist Major Craig Sheffer.  Now they have all the werewolves from JFK in quarantine under armed guard while Sheffer races for a cure, the only problem is, Haysbert thinks a cure is a bad idea, and he wants werewolves to fight in the US Army.  I can't imagine that wouldn't end well.



I didn't care for this.  First off, we get some sweet werewolf action right away, and then it tapers off to a dull howl until we get to the end when it becomes that silly craziness we've come to expect from The Asylum.  In the middle, we're treated to two plot devices that I don't like: first, our hero is looking for case zero, our lady from Yellowknife, and he's talking to her, telling her how he needs to find case zero, and she falls asleep from the drugs before she can tell him, so we're given 15 minutes of our hero trying to figure out what we already know, which was very annoying, especially when it was in lieu of hot werewolf action; and second, Haysbert as our baddie was more like a heel with more power, which is always a bad baddie.  His main evilness was that he was too stupid to figure out what was going on, which isn't fun.  We need a calculating baddie who schemes much more effectively than the average heel.  This isn't the worst we've seen from The Asylum, but I think the bad outweighed the good, so overall it's a pass.

Craig Sheffer as the main hero was pretty great though.  He seemed like such a nice guy, but he had all those lantern-jawed 50s schlock scientist lead type qualities that worked so well.  What might have worked better, is if he and Haysbert had been on a team, as opposed to adversaries.  Like one of Haysbert's soldiers, playing the perfect heel, lets a werewolf out and then they all get out or something.  And then Haybert and Sheffer working together would've made for a fun crew, maybe leading different groups and coming together in the end to finish things off.  Then I think we would've had the movie we wanted.



As I mentioned above, this movie is full of name actors.  The Yellowknife woman was played by Ariana Richards, who you may remember from Jurassic Park.  She and I are about the same age, so I won't do the "it's crazy how much she's grown up since then", because I have too-- kinda.  The great Ernie Hudson pops in as the TSA head at the airport.  We always love to see him here, and he doesn't disappoint.  Veteran Canadian character actor Kate Vernon plays a doctor working with Sheffer, and like most Canadian character actors, she's solid and helps fill out the movie.  I can't forget Wes Studi, who plays a colonel working under Haysbert.  When you talk about character actors who take care of business, he's another one.

Oh, and I almost forgot, Bill Duke as the President.  I was trying to think if he was the best person cast for the President since we've been doing this at the DTVC.  We have Jerry Springer in the Dolph flick The Defender.  Rutger Hauer, who isn't even American, played him in Scorcher.  I gotta put Bill Duke up there though, if only for his iconic roles in The Predator and Commando.  No, he didn't buy a car and run over the salesman as he drove it through the showroom window, nor did he have his brains splattered on a rock, so that was disappointing, but you can't have everything.  It was an inspired casting decision, and it's too bad the rest of the film didn't live up to that.



Finally, Buffalo played the part of NYC in this, only with plenty of CGI filling out the rest of the skyline.  I remember one scene when Sheffer drove by the HSBC Center, which is where the Sabres play.  I see they've gone back to their old logo, which I love, it reminds me of their old Adams Division days playing against my Bruins.  I know a lot of the Rust Belt cities have been having a bad time of it since the recession-- or more accurately before the rest of us felt it--, so it's nice to see some movies shot there to help boost the economy.

So this is a pass for me, but it has some elements that I think some people might enjoy, especially those Asylum touches we're used to.  There are also some good inside jokes, like Sheffer finding the remains of a guy's face on the floor, a la Nightbreed, so someone might forgive the bad parts more than I did.  You can check it on Instant, or SyFy might show it from time to time too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2457138/

FDR: American Badass! (2012)

After the 90-minute awesomefest that was Poolboy: Drowning out the Fury, this was highly anticipated.  It had a short theatrical run in the fall, and then was released on Netflix Instant, where I eventually put it down. I was ready for Barry Bostwick as FDR to destroy me with his wheelchair of death.

FDR: American Badass! has Bostwick as one of our greatest presidents ever, FDR, who is bitten in the leg by a werewolf and contracts polio, which confines him to a wheelchair.  He then wins the presidency, only to discover that the dictators Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, are plotting to spread werewolf-ism throughout the globe, and they know FDR is the only man that's badass enough to stop them.  The question is, can he do it?



Is there any question?  This movie is what you want from a Ross Patterson flick.  It has all the dirty jokes and bad action spoofs we loved in Poolboy, only it's frickin' FDR doing this stuff.  And the idea of werewolves as the Axis Powers is genius.  If I'm comparing the two, I'd give the edge to Poolboy, but it's not FDR's fault Poolboy was the greatest film since Citizen Kane.  FDR still has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and more than gives you your money's worth.  This is American history done right.

The key to this film is how well the actors play it straight, especially with Barry Bostwick in the lead.  Yes, he's definitely having fun, but he also never betrays his part and always plays it seriously, even when he's delivering some absolutely ridiculous lines.  He buys into what FDR is all about, and by doing that, he gives us the movie we want when we see that title.  And from there, it's as if everyone else follows his lead and does the same thing, which makes this whole thing work.  They create a world where the silliness of FDR makes sense to them, which makes it all the funnier to us.



Keven Sorbo should be up for a best supporting actor nod for his cameo as Abe Lincoln.  He's so fantastic, and I love seeing him in Patterson's films.  Speaking of Patterson, he plays a senator from Georgia, and his accent makes everything he says funny.  I have no idea how anyone can act opposite him and give a good take, because I know I couldn't keep a straight face.  Bruce McGill, who played Dalton in MacGyver, is essentially Bostwick's straightman as Louis, FDR's personal bodyguard, and he's great in that role.  Eleanor was played by Lin Shaye, and what was funny about her, was she was the only one who wasn't an anachronism.  It was almost as if she was taken from the 30s and dumped into the 2010s.  I loved veteran character actor Paul Ben-Victor as the Mussolini werewolf, he's always great to see.  Finally, Patterson's character's wife was played by Keri Lynn Pratt, who, according to her imdb bio, is from Concord, NH.  Nice to see the Granite State get some shine in FDR: American Badass!

I left Ray Wise as Douglas MacArthur for this paragraph, because I've noticed that Twin Peaks is really popular on Tumblr, at least among the blogs I follow.  And this isn't people my age or older who remember when Twin Peaks first aired, these are kids who were barely alive and have found it on Netflix or DVD.  Yes, I was only 12 when it first came out, so it's not like I could've been a good judge of what would still be relevant 20 years later, but out of everything that was on TV then, Twin Peaks would've been at the bottom of the list.  Anyway, the question now is, who is more likely to bring the Tumblr kids in to watch FDR: Bostwick and his Rocky Horror fame, or Ray Wise and his Twin Peaks fame?  And why can't it be Sorbo and his Hercules fame.



Last summer, I visited the JFK Presidential Library in Boston.  It was a really cool experience, and made me want to visit some of the others.  The next closest to where I live of course would be FDR's in Hyde Park, NY.  After seeing this movie though, I feel like maybe we should organize a DTVC field trip down there-- or up there, depending on where you're from.  I don't want to sound like Mitchell, but does anyone living in New York have a sofa I could stretch out on?

All right, before we go way off the tracks, let's wrap this up.  If you haven't seen Poolboy yet, stop reading this immediately and go watch it.  Then, finish this review, and go check out FDR: American Badass!  Ross Patterson/Saint James St. James strikes again.  If history had been this cool in high school, I might have actually wanted to get up in the morning and go.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1811315/

Monster Dog (1984)

This movie was the first of three that we watched during last Saturday's Neflix Bad Movie night, which was organized by fellow bloggers at Mr. Gables Reality, Morbidementia, and Guts and Grog Reviews. It was a great time, where a bunch of us watched three movies on Netflix Watch Instantly and tweeted about it to each other. Keep an eye on their sites, and/or my Twitter feed and Facebook page for when the next one will be.

Monster Dog has classic metal luminary Alice Cooper as a pop singer who goes out to his family's cabin in the woods with a bunch of friends and coworkers to shoot his next music video. Something's not quite right though, as there are fresh sandwiches in the fridge, and crazy dogs lurking. The neighbors think Alice Cooper is a werewolf, and they want him dead, but the neighbors don't look that great either, so Cooper's friends would rather take his side. Could that be their undoing?



This was a pretty fun movie. It starts and ends with an Alice Cooper music video for a song called "Identity Crises", which was pretty sweet with Cooper dressed in all kinds of outfits and whatnot. The movie itself is pure schlock, directed by the guy who did Troll 2, meaning if you're watching it, you can't piss on hospitality. As far as the werewolf aspect goes, I'm not sure it's even there. It's mostly just dogs biting people, like a really bad episode of the People's Court, and then at the end Alice Cooper turns into more of a were-Elliot Gould than a werewolf, which is pretty funny, but might not be what you're looking for if you're in the market for a werewolf movie. Then there's all the silly stuff thrown in, like an inexplicable empty milk carton on the dash of Cooper's van, random sandwiches in the fridge, and Cooper's $9.99 sweater he got at Sears-- very befitting a rockstar. A perfect choice for a bad movie night.

My first introduction to Alice Cooper came when I was in fourth grade, through the song "Poison", which was a very popular Hair Metal track at that time. My fourth grade teacher (named Mrs. Kruger, which automatically made her a little scary) overheard a few of us talking about it, and she told us about his stuff from the 70s that she grew up with. This was before the age of the Internet, so we had to rely on her showing us some albums and stuff, which was probably a lot cooler than Googling it would've been. As far as Monster Dog goes, Cooper is the main attraction, and whether he disappoints or not might be debatable, but the novelty of him never wears off, which is all you can ask for as far as I'm concerned-- though no one was beheaded, which was a disappointment for me.



Do any of you MSTies recognize this guy? He was the manager from Pod People. Unfortunately the "It stinks!" guy wasn't in this as well, and also no one broke their neck from a high fall requiring the manager guy to carry her off, making sure he jiggled her spine around some more. This movie could've used some Trumpy, I'll tell you that. Alice Cooper vs. Trumpy: this time it's personal!

The female lead in this, Victoria Vera, looked hotter and hotter the more disheveled she became. That's good stuff right there, and something modern horror directors need to take note of. Torture porn is just gross, give me a chick that looks even better with fake blood and messed up hair than she did earlier in the film with her hair and make-up done perfectly. Her character was kind of all over the place, between just being a pretty face, to gradually turning into a tough chick with a shotgun and a sweater torn into Jennifer Beal mode. This is Scream Queen done right.



I worked with a guy who saw Europe in concert, and he said they opened a closed with "The Final Countdown", and since Monster Dog opened and closed with the same Alice Cooper song, I figured I'd open and close with Cooper as well. First, his voice in the English version is not his, someone else dubbed it. It sounds pretty close to it, so I was fooled. Second, Cooper can play in all the golf tournaments and open all the restaurants in Arizona, but he'll never escape this bad boy as long as people like us are fighting the good fight and reminding people. I got your Man vs. Food right here baby, and it's in the form of a were-Elliot Gould! Finally, it was really cool to go back and revisit some of those Hair Metal era Cooper songs over at his YouTube VEVO page. I embedded a couple on the image page.

As far as the movie goes, this is a great choice for a bad movie night, it has all the elements you'd want, from the badly dubbed dialog, the schlock special effects, random elements like a milk carton on the van's dash, and finally the novelty of Alice Cooper. You can't go wrong here. As far as the Netflix Bad Movie night went, that was great as well, so thanks to Mr. Gable, Morbidimentia, Tromeric at Guts and Grog, and everyone else for having me along, and I can't wait until the next one!

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087616/

Werewolf (1996)

This is one I've been wanting to get after for a long time now. Between the Richard Lynch, the Joe Estevez, and the fact that MST3K has hit it, it seemed like a sure bet. The question was, could I manage it without Mike and the 'Bots first?

Werewolf takes place in Flagstaff, Arizona, where some archaeologists led by Richard Lynch find what looks like a werewolf skeleton. Joe Estevez is one of a few local Native Americans hired by Lynch and his archaeologists-- and physically attacked by his ill-tempered colleague-- and he sees bad things in this skeleton, and he's right when his buddy turns into a werewolf too. Then some dude comes into town, and he's also attacked by Lynch's ill-tempered colleague, getting slashed by the werewolf skull. As you can imagine, he turns into a werewolf too, and all hell breaks loose.



Wow, this is all kinds of bad. Slow moving broken up with some hilarious moments of ineptitude. Not to mention, the main stars after Lynch and Estevez all speak English as a second language, and sound stilted and unnatural when they deliver their lines, making for more unintentionally funny moments. What makes it a tough watch though is the long periods of inactivity. In a group this is something that could probably be handled, and if you can handle it, you'll be rewarded with some amazing stuff, including a werewolf driving a car into some exploding barrels, one of the funniest werewolf horror movie kills in the history of film, and a well proportioned female archaeologist wearing a white tank top with no bra in a chilly pool hall.

That being said, the MST3K version is the definite choice if you're attempting this solo. Think of it like rock climbing-- it's safer to have someone there to hold the rope and guide you through the route, and the MST3K guys are experts. This also had some pretty funny host segments, which wasn't always the case during the late Mike era. The best jokes for me came during the werewolf driving sequence, where they made cracks about him behaving like a dog: "I hope he remembered to crack the window for himself" "He's just going to run around in the back seat while he's driving" [about the traffic lights:] "Hey, I'm color blind!" They also used lycanthrope as a verb, referring to the werewolf transformation as "lycanthroping". Top to bottom an excellent episode.



One of the things that struck me about the MST3K heckling was that they didn't know who Richard Lynch is. In one scene where he had a white sweater on, they joked about how much he looked like a grandmother. It really elucidated the dividing line between what we do and what MST3K does, because, while we both watch bad movies, they do it for a job, and we do it for fun. They have no idea who Richard Lynch is, and they're cool with that; we know exactly who Richard Lynch is, and with a movie like this, seeing his name on the cover is a selling point. Is that a bad thing?

Joe Estevez is only in this at the beginning, and then for whatever reason, he's gone. The hair is fantastic. He must've had other things going on, because he would've been great throughout the film, especially with that hair. The guy does like five or six movies a year, so I wonder if it's a deal where, if a film maker wants him in his or her film, they have to lock him up quick, or he's already committed to like three projects and the best they can hope for is a cameo at the beginning. He has over 215 acting credits on imdb. I wonder if that's a record, and if it isn't, how many he needs to break it.



MST3K brought up a great point about werewolves: they aren't very canine-ish, if you know what I mean. They're more like felines in the things they can do. I mean, how many dogs do you see climb buildings or trees? How about use their claws to attack people? I get that they're supposed to be half human half wolf, but maybe half human half tiger would make more sense. Also, loved the Native American connection to werewolves in this, ten years or so before Twilight.

The stand-alone DVD of this is no longer in print, and can be kind of pricey on Amazon. The VHS is much less so, so that may be the way to go if you're thinking of attacking this without Mike and the 'Bots. The MST3K version, on the other hand, is available on Netflix Watch Instantly, which was how I watched it. I think you're better off letting them do the heavy lifting, but if you and you're friends are looking for a challenge, this could be worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118137/

The Wolf Man (1941)

Though made almost 8 years later than the other three classics I reviewed for Halloween, this one is no less important or influential. Just the same, that time, though it doesn't make a huge difference in the type of film we get, is enough to make difference still noticeable. A great film on which to end our Halloween celebration.

The Wolf Man has Lon Cheney jr. as a man who has come home to England after his brother's untimely hunting accident. Cheney is the heir to a large fortune, and he's come home to patch things up with his dad, Claude Rains. Unfortunately, he runs into trouble, when he takes a date and her friend to the edge of town to get their fortunes read by a gypsy played by Bela Lugosi. Lugosi is a werewolf, and he kills the friend, and Cheney kills him, but not before Lugosi bites him, turning him into a werewolf too. Poor Cheney.



If Frankenstein examined what it means to be human, Dracula looked at mortality, and The Mummy showed the power of love, The Wolf Man explored the human psyche, and the power of our minds. Not only that, but it said a lot of things about the way we deal with mental illness in our society, and truth be told, we're only now starting to listen to those messages. When Claude Rains insists against his son getting treatment because of the shame it would bring upon his family, his sentiment is echoed today in the mindset that depression, schizophrenia, body dysmorphic disorders, etc., are signs of weakness more than they're signs of illness, and it's a part of the culture that we're still trying to change today, almost 70 years later.

But the movie isn't all gravy. Lon Cheney jr. didn't work for me. As opposed to Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, who were simply just men of their time, Cheney sounded weird and out of place. Even though he would be known best for this role, his look as a combination of Greg Brady and ESPN college football analyst and BYU stand-out (and New England Patriot long snapper) Trevor Matich definitely suited him better when he starred in Of Mice and Men in 1939. In The Wolf Man it was obvious the studio was trading on his name to get a quick buck, and on that score, we all lost. (Also of note, his father, Lon Cheney, was born on April Fools Day, only in 1883, 96 years before me).



My all time favorite movie is Casablanca, so it was cool to have Claude Rains in this. You may also remember him from the Hitchcock classic Notorious, the plot to which Mission Impossible 2 ripped off. Anyway, he played Lon Cheney jr.'s dad, despite the fact that the two were only 17 years apart. Of course, he's only six years younger than Cheney's real dad, so it's not that much of a stretch. He died in 1967 of an intestinal hemorrhage in Laconia, NH. People from the area know that Laconia hosts a major motorcycle fest each year. Don't get me wrong, motorcycles are cool, and the riders are usually badass, but one thing they do is drive their bikes up the auto road to Mt. Washington, which annoys the hell out of me. If you're so badass, hike the fucking mountain.

I don't know what Bela Lugosi thought about taking a bit part in this. One the one hand, from Dracula in 1931, to this ten years later, he was in 39 movies, so he must've been used to bit parts. On the other, he had to feel that Lon Cheney jr. was only getting the part of the wolf man because of his father, and I bet that irked Lugosi, no matter how much Lon Cheney jr. tried to have his own career without his father's help. I guess the question is, who would've made a better wolf man? I say neither-- Boris Karloff.



The new Twilight film features werewolves, and they fight vampires. These new werewolves look nothing like their 1941 counterparts-- they resemble bigger, CGI, natural wolves, as opposed to wolf people. If you're wondering which I would rather have, I'd say maybe a happy medium, like, say Teen Wolf. I mean, from what I gathered from the commercials, that's all this kid is is a modern Teen Wolf who works out more and turns into a CGI wolf. If you're asking me which of the three looks the least dumb, I would have to say Teen Wolf, because it's not CGI, but it's not as silly as the 1941 one. Can you imagine the third movie? The vampire guy, Teen Wolf trying to impress the girl with his basketball skills, Dracula wanting to kill them all, and the Frankenstein robot refusing to carry out the orders of his creator, Dracula, all so he can take the girl to the prom. And a fourth movie with the mummy. If they listen to me, the Twilight series is going to get good.

(As an aside, my friend and I had a conversation with his wife about whether or not the guy from Teen Wolf Too had done enough since to necessitate calling him by his real name, or for us to continue calling him the guy from Teen Wolf Too. We decided Arrested Development and a co-starring role in the new Vince Vaughn comedy wasn't enough, so until further notice, he will still be the guy from Teen Wolf Too.)

If the first three had a little silly in them, this one had a little more. Cheney doesn't exactly work, Lugosi is fun, and who doesn't love Claude Rains. In 1941, movies were becoming more movies, and less plays on film, and you can see that, which makes it cooler if you watch it after the other three. Plus, the wolf man looks they taped wool to the face of the guy on the airplane wing in the Twilight Zone with Shatner in it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034398/

Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988)

We're just plugging along with the Howling series, trying to make it to part VI, which has the inimitable Bruce Payne. After this one, though, I'm getting worried. I don't know if I can make it to VI. I know, I only have one more, but if V is like IV, I may die on the inside, and no one wants that.

Howling IV is about an author having bad nightmares who goes up to a cabin in a small California town with her husband. Turns out, the town is just a bunch of werewolves. Even the doctor. He made it through med school despite his werewolf-ness. Anyway, she catches on, and she has to trap them in some church tower or something and set them on fire. Even if it's a fierce, murderous werewolf, that's still a pretty rough way to go.



Snooze-fest. Hard to deal with. Lots of nothing going on. It's supposed to be ramping up the suspense aspect, but because we already know the big surprise is werewolves, there's no mystery, hence the whole trying to keep us in suspense thing was annoying. Some of the werewolves looked cool, which actually wasn't a good thing, because it just pissed me off even more that they weren't featured better in the film.

The only one I recognized was the guy from The Pretender. He has a great voice, and he shows off his man-chest some, but do I really care? I tried watching The Pretender once, but it sucked ass hella. The premise sounded hot, but I think you really need great writers to pull something like that off, and they didn't have them. As an aside, he did a movie with Peter Coyote called Written in Blood that I saw on one of the Encore channels a while back, and I could've sworn I posted it when I first started the blog. Apparently I haven't. Weird how that stuff works.



The female lead had that late 80s hotness that kind of sneaks up on you, but when it gets you, it's there. Her hair was a little big, and her skirts and dresses were all cut at weird angles, but there was something about her... I'm not going to pull one of those "women just looked better back then" because they definitely look hot today too. It's more like I didn't know what to make of this woman at the beginning of the film, and by the end she was irresistible. She was one of the bright spots in an otherwise lackluster sack-of-asscrack.

The guy from The Pretender plays the woman's husband, and she also has her agent, who's a hunky Australian. This brings up a common fact of life regarding women in America: no matter how hot you are, you'll never be hotter than an Aussie to them. That goes for Scots, the Irish, the English, and anyone who speaks a romance language as a first language. How do you counter this fellas? Do what I do: learn to imitate accents. It worked like a charm one night when I was out with some friends, and the girls we were with were taken by these travelling British soccer players. My imitating the accent made it silly and less exotic. Unfortunately, that strategy didn't work for the guy from The Pretender, because he turned into a werewolf. That's part two of the advice fellas: don't become a werewolf.



This is the fourth werewolf film we've reviewed here, which is one fewer than snakes, two fewer than zombies, and three fewer than vampires. Considering three of the four werewolf films are Howlings, that means we don't do werewolves much at the DTVC. I think that has to do with the actors more than the films: the big-time hall of famers just prefer vampires and zombies to werewolves. I'm not sure I blame them. Werewolves are hairy, and vampires generally aren't.

Skip this. Let me suffer the inanity so you won't. I'm going to soldier through so I can make it to part six for my ladies at Payne's Angels. If you haven't you should check out their site. There's a link to it on my page here. It's a better use of your time than watching this horrible movie.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095334/

Howling III: The Marsupials (1987)

The Howling 2 is probably to werewolf movies what Blade is to the vampire genre. That being said, it's a no-brainer that one would want to see what the sequel to all that awesomeness was all about. Blade 2 was pretty sweet, so this film had a lot to live up to. Maybe that's not really fair, but life isn't fair.

Howling III: The Marsupials has nothing whatsoever to do with it's amazing predecessor. It takes place in Australia, where a sociologist thinks an old film of an Aboriginal tribal ritual is proof of the existence of werewolves. He's right, but not before a runaway hot chick/werewolf is impregnated by a dude who looks like my cousin Kevin. She has a fit in public, and the Aussies decide werewolves suck, and they take over their compound, imprisoning the werewolves so they can experiment on them. The sociologist feels bad, and he helps some of them escape and lives with them. That's it.



According to the trailer included in the DVD, this was lauded as the best werewolf movie of 1987. I did a little research, and found three other werewolf films that year. First, Monster Squad, is only tangentially a werewolf film, so it doesn't count. That leaves Teen Wolf Too, which the less said about that, the better; and Werewolf, the TV movie pilot to the TV series. I need some help on that, but I think that show was on USA after the Hitchhiker or something. That one may have been better than this, but I don't remember it well enough to have a solid opinion, and it may not matter anyway, because a TV movie pilot might not count when a trailer is bragging about its film.

This film totally reworked the werewolf genre, and I'm not sure if it worked. The idea is supposed to be that they're just a genetic off-shoot of homo sapien sapien. With that in mind, the story is preaching acceptance and understanding. There was still plenty of savage eating of people, so it wasn't all Up With People, but on the other hand, it didn't have that real horror movie feel that I want when I rent a werewolf picture. I need silver bullets and full moons. I need Christopher Lee toting a crossbow. This just didn't do it for me.



That doesn't mean it didn't have its good points. There's the great image of the nun werewolves that looked like the dog from the Snausages (sp?) commercials. I don't know who thought they were werewolves instead of dog people, but I owe whoever it was a beer. There were a couple of great werewolf attacks by these teddy bear-esque creatures that looked more huggable than scary, and it was amazing to see them in action. The head werewolf looked like a fat, bald Colm Meany, and I was extremely disappointed it wasn't actually him.

This movie spoofs on other horror films, and there's a director who's supposed to be an homage to Alfred Hitchcock who's making one of these bad films. This is a much better homage than that atrocious Psycho remake that came out however many years ago. That shit hurt. It was also better than Mission Impossible 2, which was a total rip-off of Notorious. I love Thandie Newton and Tom Cruise as much as the next guy, but they're no Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.



The sociologist in this picture does what we in the biz call Going Native. It's a very un-PC term, and I'm sure the American Anthropological Association would frown on its usage, but I can't think of a better way to put it. He falls in love with one of the people he's studying, and gives up his entire life to be with her and raise a child. I totally understand the allure of the foreign, and can see an anthropologist studying actual people falling for someone he or she is doing field work on; but a werewolf is a different story. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Speaking of old fashioned, I noticed Rampage, the arcade game, show up in the film for a few seconds. I had no idea that game was that old, or that I was that young when I was playing it. 20 years ago seems like a long time. The one thing I remember when playing it on the Nintendo was how you could keep hitting B to get your guy to come back to life. I thought I was the only one who knew that, and scored like however many million, and I looked at Nintendo Power to see how my high score compared, only to find everyone else had 9,999,999.

I'm giving this a tentative no. If you're a big werewolf fan you've probably already seen it, and if you haven't, you may want to give it a shot because it's so different. Otherwise, it's just pretty blah. You'd think with all the Australian accents that I'd be all over it, and if it had more than just a few bright spots, I'm sure I would've been.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093227/

Howling II... Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985)

The first time I saw this it was listed in the TV Guide as Howling IV. It was awesome, and it had Reb Brown and Christopher Lee. I told all my friends, and was surprised I didn't get more of a response. Then recently, the film was on Encore, listed properly. I and my buddy both TiVoed it and watched it from our respective houses, he first. The only thing he told me about it was how the credits showed the queen werewolf ripping off her top, revealing her boobs, and clips of people throughout the movie reacting to other things, but the film makers cutting it so it looked like they were reacting to the boobage. I of course gave him a ration of shit for not noticing the film had Reb Brown: and he called himself a MSTie!

Howling II... Your Sister is a Werewolf picks up where part one leaves off, at the funeral of a dead werewolf. Christopher Lee is a resident werewolf hunter, and he's there to make sure her body is disposed of properly so she won't come back to life. Reb Brown plays the woman's lover, and he and her sister want to make sure Lee doesn't defile the dead woman's corpse. When they see the truth, they join him on a trip to Romania to stop the rising of the werewolf queen. It's awesome.

As you can well imagine, after watching this recently, I know now that what I watched all those years back was not part IV, but this film, part II. And let me say, part II is too awesome for words. Christopher Lee rules, Reb Brown screams and does his whole Lump Beef Broth routine we know and love him for in Space Mutiny, there's this great punk-ish band, and some sweet werewolf sex. This movie does for the werewolf genre what Blade does for vampires... probably more.

Watching Christopher Lee in films like this demonstrates how poorly used he is by major directors like George Lucas and Peter Jackson in their feature films. We here at the DTVC love Jackson for his pre-Lord of the Rings work, so I think it's all the more disappointing that he didn't have the good sense to have Christopher Lee killing werewolves throughout Middle Earth. That would've kept me awake in the theater for the third movie. Lucas did a better job with Lee as Count Dukoo (sp?), only he wasted him for the first movie (I mean, if you're just gonna have that Darth Maul guy in for two scenes, make them at the beginning, kill him off, then have Lee for the rest of it. I guarantee more people would've liked Phantom Menace if it had had more Lee), then killed him off in the third. This movie got it. Just the scene where Lee was rocking awesome sunglasses alone was some of the best Lee ever. After everything he did something in this, I was doing the Tiger Woods "I just hit a birdie on 17 at Augusta" fist pump, because it rocked.

Speaking of Lee in this film, even though I loved him in it, he was of a different opinion. A friend of mine told me Lee worked with the director of the first Howling, and actually apologized for how bad part two was, and apologized for his having acted in it. That saddens my heart if it's true. I'll say it again, this is the best werewolf movie EVER, and it'd be a shame if one of the reasons it so good, Christopher Lee, doesn't recognize its sheer brilliance.

All you MSTies out there know where I'm going next: Reb Brown baby. It still saddens me that my buddy, who's seen Space Mutiny almost as many times as I have, didn't spot Reb in this gem. It's not like he's any different. His hair might be darker, but he has the trademark random screams that seem to get him nowhere. According to IMDb, he's only had a couple things released since his guest appearance on Hercules in 1995. But, in 2008, a movie called Sin-Jin Smyth is listed as being in post-production, and that one also has DTVC Hall of Famer Roddy Piper, and adult film star Jenna Jameson. Looking forward to that.

Another endearing trait of this movie is its 80s-ness. From the outfits, to the music, to the dialog, it's beautiful. Growing up in the 80s, it's hard to look back with my young eyes and watch that wave of coolness that was the 80s break. Maybe Nirvana killed it, or the Clinton Administration, or the end of the Cold War--whatever it was, it was too bad. It's sad now for me, not even in my 30s (29 if you're wondering), to have people in their teens and early twenties refer to Mr. Mister as "old" or "stupid" (okay, they were stupid... but a good stupid). Had things never changed, who knows where we'd be--I just know we'd be a lot better off. Taaaake, these broken wiiiings...

This movie has werewolf sex in it. It's interesting, because we know the trend in vampire flicks is this focus on seduction and eroticism, but werewolves are supposed to be too hairy pull that off. In the Jack Nicholson stinker Wolf, he gets it on with Michelle Pfeiffer, but more as a dude with some animal prowess, as opposed to a hairy wolf man. I think Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf was kind of the same idea. I have to say the latter two, as opposed to The Howling II, have the right idea: werewolves are gross when they have sex. Just too much hair and sweat going on.

You may not know it, but you need this film. You got to have it. Center a bad movie night around it if you haven't already. This is a classic, plain and simple. Even if you're not a horror buff, and dig the DTVC for the bad action reviews, don't pass on this bad boy: it's so worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089308/

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