Wolfcop

 

2014

In the small of Woodhaven (Canada) there’s this cop Lou Garou (save the groaning for later) and he’s a pretty sorry excuse for a police dude as he goes to work late, drinks a lot, vomits (how lovely) and pretty much just drags his sorry self around at half speed. The town is messed up too with crime, corruption and other such nastiness. We get to witness more evidence of Lou being almost worthless at his job and he has some kind of relationship with the bar owner Jess. One night Lou goes out on a call to the woods and some oddness happens and he gets knocked out. He wakes up at his place and soon realizes his facial grows back really fast, his senses are more acute and oh yeah he has a big bloody pentagram carved on his chest. He has to rush back out to the woods to where the dead body of a the guy who was running for mayor has been found. This guy seemed straight and had vowed clean up the town if he won over the old mayor, but it appears like he was a junkie and overdosed. Lou continues to be overwhelmed by his new powers. One night while at Jess’ bar he gets attacked by robbers, but he gets all hairy and rips some of them apart. One of these guys runs back to his boss who was definitely targeting Lou. Lou eventually falls in with local loon Willie who coaches his wolfishness out and rides around in the newly modeled wolfmobile stopping crime. Meanwhile the writers realized they need a little more plot involving something that happened years ago. Something funny happened to Lou’s dad (also a cop) and Lou’s co-worker Tina lost her dad (who used to own the bar that Jess now owns). Lou’s fuzzy alter ego continues to kill baddies, but when Willie calls in to someone else behind Lou’s hairy back we know that something is up and that Lou is being set-up. Tina is beginning to think that Jess is on some plot and likely so are others in the town. So the town has crime, murder and plots to do more badness-guess I won’t be moving there anytime soon. Eventually this all leads to everyone ending up out in the woods for the final showdown. There’s rednecks, shooting, blood, shape shifters and an attempt to tie everything up and finish this beast off. Let’s just say Tina is pretty much the only one in town who wasn’t against Lou and they survive. They ride off in the wolfmobile and we get the promise or threat of a sequel. Roll the credits ahhwhooooo!

The bad-The film has a lot of humor and from the title we knew that it would. The problem is that the humor is often limited. Yeah, he’s a cop and a werewolf, but that part wears thin sooner than I wish it had. The acting isn’t the best by a long shot.

The good-If you like violence there’s plenty of that in both blood and flesh ripping as well as shootings a plenty. I thought the effects and make-up were all quite decent  given the obviously limited budget. I definitely liked the wolfmobile. The outside settings were very good, the shot of the three cloaked figures going across the field was particularly memorable.

The makers of this film are obviously fans  of both 80’s werewolf films like An American werewolf in London, The Howling, Silver Bullet and even Teen Wolf as well as 80’s shoot ’em action films. They try to combine the two genres. Overall it’s a decent but flawed film. I really wanted  to love it, but felt like just over halfway through it had done most of what it was going to do. Despite being a horror comedy we still should have been given some reason for us to like Lou and I never felt that connection. If you like werewolves and mindless action flicks then give it a try.