Spooktacular Savings #17: WOLFCOP
So, hey, you see the title above there? Do you think you'll get what the title promises you? By that metric, you should know up front if what you expect to see is a Wolf Cop ... you're damn right you get a cop that's a wolf! Or a werewolf, at least, and he's actually the Sheriff not a regular beat cop, but YOU'LL GET THE POINT!
This independent title comes to us from Canada, and it wasn't immediately apparent (though a friend watching the movie pointed out a map showing the Canadian train line in the background of a scene). But no matter - these darn lycanthropes are everywhere! In this case, we have a Sherriff in a small town named Lou Garou (get it! Uh, there's some kind of connection there I think). He drinks. A lot. And he also has to watch over this town that is infested with crime and has a mayor who doesn't really give a shit about much, and the other cops on his team are actually effective or want to do more (Amy Matysio), but what can they do with so much crime and so little will. At least on Lou's part. At first.
Then things happen and, you know how it goes, one thing leads to another, he's taken by some people in the middle of the night and a ritual is performed on him (big star-shaped symbol included in his flesh), and he has been... afflicted, cursed you might say, and now he can do things like smell things much more sharply and can feels something 'off' in his mind and, yeah, what's with that big symbol carved into his flesh. So he goes to the Tooth & Nail bar (great name, legitimately) and has some drinks, but the bartender seems to want him to drink more, so he does... and then as he pees in the restroom his PENIS IS TURNING INTO A WOLF PENIS AND HIS BODY IS TRANSFORMING AND AAAAAAAHHHHH NOW HE IS - WOLFCOP!
Ok, I so I tried to build up the story a little more than it needs to. If there's a weak spot with this flick, which knows what it is immediately from the title, it's that it takes a little while to get going. I thought back to another movie, steeped in schlocky violence, where a figure comes to rid the town of crime and human vermin, and in Hobo with a Shotgun they didn't waste any time in getting to the excessive gore and gross-out beats and exaggerated performances. With this one, well, perhaps it should get a modicum of credit for not diving into completely unbelievable characterizations (i.e. certain Troma movies, looking at you), but at the same time none of the actors, except possibly for the mustached Jonathan Cherry, are particularly strong or could do much with the ok dialog given, and that goes for Leo Fafard who reminds me too much like Jason Jones from The Daily Show (and I mean in a way that was oddly distracting).
That noted, once the WolfCop-ness and the transformations take off, then the movie takes off too, and the tone gels into a place where the writer/director Lowell Dean put together some magnificently stupid-terrible-fun-awesome set pieces. It starts off with the WolfCop putting together his new 'Wolf-Mobile', which is just a revamped cop car, spray-painted black and given a "W" emblem on the back trunk (they never do give it a name, I don't think anyway). and with the front doors ripped off (all that's missing is a special motor to make the car go WHOOSH with a fire to the engine). Then two scenes, one set at a convenience store (you can imagine the madness that happens there - a lot of lopped off limbs and ripped-off heads in the process, one of the victims getting their bodies hit with a limb as well), and one at a barn where a meeting of the same douches that made Lou a wolf have congregated. But does he get them all! They are shape-shifters, after all, which we learn in a kind of exposition dump that comes from a book dubbed, literally, Occult Mythology.
Oh, this movie doesn't give a fuck about certain logic things, but it does more than try to get some genuine laughs and be funny in its knowing-bad-B-ness. This stuff can be tricky, like if the movie is trying to hard to shock and have blood-splattered violence just for the sake of it. These parodies of bad horror movies can be bad unto themselves, but the key is to make it a giant live-action cartoon and just have fun with it. A sex scene that happens, which I can't spoil too much of the details about who with or what is set about in the room to make it 'sexy' (if it even is a room), is one such example. Oh, and the WolfCop loves to drink just as much as Lou does when he's on the clock or wherever, from the local store called Liquor Donuts. I had pondered for a moment if it was actually called 'Liquor/Donuts' with the slash, as if you can get liquor and OR donuts. But, no, alas, they are donuts slathered with liquor.
WolfCop is horror-sometimes-comic trash, and it knows it, but it's fun more than its not. I had my share of laughs and I had some uncomfortable moments with the performances here and there. And damn does this director love his schlocky rock music to go with his manic action-fights. It's the kind of movie you see at Best Buy on the shelf and you'll either pick up by instinct or you won't by the same impulse.
This independent title comes to us from Canada, and it wasn't immediately apparent (though a friend watching the movie pointed out a map showing the Canadian train line in the background of a scene). But no matter - these darn lycanthropes are everywhere! In this case, we have a Sherriff in a small town named Lou Garou (get it! Uh, there's some kind of connection there I think). He drinks. A lot. And he also has to watch over this town that is infested with crime and has a mayor who doesn't really give a shit about much, and the other cops on his team are actually effective or want to do more (Amy Matysio), but what can they do with so much crime and so little will. At least on Lou's part. At first.
Then things happen and, you know how it goes, one thing leads to another, he's taken by some people in the middle of the night and a ritual is performed on him (big star-shaped symbol included in his flesh), and he has been... afflicted, cursed you might say, and now he can do things like smell things much more sharply and can feels something 'off' in his mind and, yeah, what's with that big symbol carved into his flesh. So he goes to the Tooth & Nail bar (great name, legitimately) and has some drinks, but the bartender seems to want him to drink more, so he does... and then as he pees in the restroom his PENIS IS TURNING INTO A WOLF PENIS AND HIS BODY IS TRANSFORMING AND AAAAAAAHHHHH NOW HE IS - WOLFCOP!
That noted, once the WolfCop-ness and the transformations take off, then the movie takes off too, and the tone gels into a place where the writer/director Lowell Dean put together some magnificently stupid-terrible-fun-awesome set pieces. It starts off with the WolfCop putting together his new 'Wolf-Mobile', which is just a revamped cop car, spray-painted black and given a "W" emblem on the back trunk (they never do give it a name, I don't think anyway). and with the front doors ripped off (all that's missing is a special motor to make the car go WHOOSH with a fire to the engine). Then two scenes, one set at a convenience store (you can imagine the madness that happens there - a lot of lopped off limbs and ripped-off heads in the process, one of the victims getting their bodies hit with a limb as well), and one at a barn where a meeting of the same douches that made Lou a wolf have congregated. But does he get them all! They are shape-shifters, after all, which we learn in a kind of exposition dump that comes from a book dubbed, literally, Occult Mythology.
Oh, this movie doesn't give a fuck about certain logic things, but it does more than try to get some genuine laughs and be funny in its knowing-bad-B-ness. This stuff can be tricky, like if the movie is trying to hard to shock and have blood-splattered violence just for the sake of it. These parodies of bad horror movies can be bad unto themselves, but the key is to make it a giant live-action cartoon and just have fun with it. A sex scene that happens, which I can't spoil too much of the details about who with or what is set about in the room to make it 'sexy' (if it even is a room), is one such example. Oh, and the WolfCop loves to drink just as much as Lou does when he's on the clock or wherever, from the local store called Liquor Donuts. I had pondered for a moment if it was actually called 'Liquor/Donuts' with the slash, as if you can get liquor and OR donuts. But, no, alas, they are donuts slathered with liquor.
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| What this cop does with this torn-flesh of a man's face... is actually hysterically funny. |
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