THE CULT OF KIM NEWMAN
The critic and novelist selects the month’s weirdest home-ent releases
TWO COLUMNS AGO,
I rounded up recent vampires.
Now, it’s the turn of perennial poor-monster-relation, the werewolf.
The high concept of Patrick Rea’s I Am Wolf (formerly I Am Lisa) is I Spit On Your Grave mashed up with Ginger Snaps. Shy, bespectacled Lisa (Kristen Vaganos) runs foul of thugs who are protected by interesting, crooked female sheriff Deborah (Manon Halliburton). Roughed-up, raped and dumped in the woods, Lisa survives wolfen mauling and is nursed back to health by mystery wise woman Mary (Cinnamon Schultz). Made over as a clear-sighted, confident, fanged and taloned werewolf, she starts revenge-ripping through the ranks of the villains. Vaganos is excellent as the put-upon doormat who becomes a sleek, sexy, killer beastess, and the film offers a nice collision of woodland folklore and small-town corruption.
Made before but arriving after the lively, enjoyable film inspired by the computer game Werewolves Within is Steven Morana and Chris Green’s Beast Within , a metafictional monster movie set at the launch party for a new edition of classic card game ‘Werewolves Awaken’. A soap-opera cast of pretty people forget their silly problems as soon as guts start spilling on the floor at the remote estate of unethical games tycoon Brian Fenris (Art Hindle). In the grand old tradition of The Beast Must Die, it’s a tricksy whodunnit as well as a creature-feature. The monster effects are okay and there are script felicities — such as a speech by one hunter about the way social media has evolved into a tribe, but failed in one crucial aspect (“You forgot to keep the wolves out”).
Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma’s Teddy is an oblique homage to Hammer’s The Curse Of The Werewolf. Bitten by something in the woods, 19-year-old, short-fused misfit Teddy (Anthony Bajon) sprouts hair from inconvenient places — his tongue, an eyeball — and has blackouts during which he gnaws on animals. When his out-of-his-league, younger girlfriend Rebecca (Christine Gautier) dumps him, something monstrous happens at the local school’s bingo night. Bajon is excellent as the unlikeable yet human monster, and the film has a real feel for dead-end provincial life. It eventually delivers a full-on wolf-out, but privileges subtler, creepier horrors and a particularly French melancholy.
Shawn Linden’s earthy, woodsy suspense film Hunter Hunter casts Devon Sawa — who’s weathered into an interesting character actor — as a modern-day fur-trapper who drags his wife (Camille Sullivan) and daughter (Summer H. Howell) into the wilderness. Animal and human predators come prowling around their off-thegrid cabin. It isn’t exactly a werewolf movie, though note that the rogue wolf disappears just as Nick Stahl shows up as an ambiguous stranger called Lou. This tough, haunting little picture — Leave No Trace versus the Big Bad Wolf — doesn’t pan out the way you expect, delivering an extremely gruesome yet poetic finale.
If you seek out something called Werewolf In A Womens Prison , you give up any right to complain about shoddy acting, ropey videography, copious gore and nudity, a wildly derivative script and a big, hulking, hairy monster outfit with Christmas-tree lights for eyes. Star Victoria De Mare and auteur Jeff Leroy, the Dietrich and von Sternberg of no-budget schlock, reteamed for Dracula In A Women’s Prison and Frankenstein In A Women’s Prison, which at least have the budget for possessive apostrophes in the titles.