WEREWOLF THE BEAST AMOUNG US

Universal Pictures this year celebrate a century of movie production. If you were not aware of that, within seconds of inserting the WEREWOLF THE BEAST AMOUNG US DVD you bloody well will be! Never before have I witnessed such an unashamed example of self-promotion. That in itself was acceptable, but witnessing vintage Universal Monster flicks and JAWS sharing the same spotlight as that irritating twat Eminem bouncing up and down in rap music’s answer to Rocky just didn’t sit well with me! Once the endorsements were out of the way, however, it was onto the movie.

The premise is simple. A long time ago, in a small Romanian village far far away, a werewolf is on the loose. The bodies are piling up on an increasingly regular basis and it is up to the towns’ dark hearted Doctor (Stephen Rea) and his young protégé, Daniel (Guy Wilson) to, not only incinerate the corpses, but also determine whether any lacerated flesh injuries have been inflicted by beast. Such is the Dr’s expertise in this field, including the knowledge of how the lycanthropic virus spreads, means he keeps a gun handy. Anyone identified as being lucky enough to have escaped the night wolfs jaws will not fare so well from a point blank bullet to the head. Dealing with one wolf is bad enough - but a legion of them would be positively apocalyptic!

The community has within it a few bogus hunters who claim they have caught the beast in order to secure the rather modest reward. But still the beast is hidden by day and ravages by night. Enter a quad of out of town hunters who have yet to fail in their endeavours of capturing howling predators. There is Charles (Ed Quinn) a seasoned pro, whose sharp shooting skills and attire wouldn’t look out of place in the Wild West! Hyde, (Steven Bauer - yes THE Steven Bauer from SCARFACE infamy), is the eye patch wearing rogue of the group. Kazia (Ana Ularu) a female huntress who beautiful looks veil a lethal assassin. Finally Stefan (Adam Croasdell), a silver tongued devil, whose lightening quick and razor sharp knife throwing skills are mirrored by his witty discourse.

They make a deal with the town’s chief law man that, if he doubles the prize, they in return will genuinely capture the defeat the wolf. But this is no ordinary fiend it would appear. Although the blood hungry beast has unflinching lethality, it also seems to have an almost discernible quality to it, preferring to savage ‘low life, scumbags’ from a crowded public places. Is it simply a werewolf they are up against – or secreted knowledge of the townsfolk regarding the beast’s real identity?

WEREWOLF THE BEAST AMOUNG US is a 90 minute action packed horror movie with a healthy budget and an array of almost super-heroic characters. The protagonist’s traits were a little over inflated which pulled their diversification a step too far apart. As elite individuals they were entertaining. But as a team, they were not so plausible.

The story itself is a mix of werewolf legend tradition that, for a large part of it, played out almost like a lycanthrope giallo! I am referring to the fact that the film’s title alludes to a plot which is equally concerned with WHO the beast is as much as whether it gets defeated. The picture does a reasonably good job at prolonging the anonymity of the nocturnal wolf and handles the red herring angle with reasonable restraint. This mystery coupled with various skirmishes motivates the movies pace which can’t be accused of having any padding.

As you would expect, anything coming out of the Universal stable is going to have slick production values. But what did surprise me somewhat, was just how liberally laced the movie was with gore. This however proved to be a bitter sweet pill. Yep you guessed it, as big as the budget was, it didn’t quite stretch to fake blood! Not that ALL the gory moments were CGI, just the more spectacular ones. A few heads succumb to a shotgun blast from point blank range and these were obviously CG-ed. Thankfully the close up visceral bloodshed actually featured liquid (us horror fans don’t ask for much, do we?) but the pixels had already polluted the atmosphere by this point.

Then there was the transformation of the beast itself. Nowhere to be seen was the ground breaking of past Universal glories such as AN AMERICAN WERWOLF IN LONDON. While the beast, when revealed, effortlessly altered from human to wolf, it was clearly a case of computer animation as oppose to award winning animatronics.

I felt the scenes in which the Werewolf itself bounded around the village was like watching a furry cartoon hurdle around the place! It was only when I got to the extras section that I actually appreciated how much animatronics and actual costumes were utilized in order to craft the lunar driven creature. Again, the smoothing out via computer effects, only served to do the real time effects a little injustice.

Although this may seem a little negative, the movie flew by and was an entertaining hour and a half.

I found the discs print was adequate but the contrast between warmly coloured indoor scenes and the toned down outdoor colours maybe fare better on a high definition blu ray presentation.

The audio comes courtesy of a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and it struck a fine balance between subtle ambience and thumping action when required.

The DVD’s Extras section is comprised of four segments. The 3 minute ‘deleted scenes’ segment is followed by MAKING THE MONSTER and TRANSFORMATION: MAN BEAST which are a couple of whistle stop behind the scenes featurettes which reveal the special effects elements of the movie.

Completing the bonus material was a 4 minute MONSTER LEGACY skit. Basically the cast of the movie declare their eternal love for the Universal back catalogue of Monster movie classics which was fine, but to try and talk of this movie in the same breathe as classics such as 1932’s Frankenstein; and to suggest the computer induced graphics are as exciting as Jack Pierce’s wizardry on Karloff, sat a little uneasy with me. (At least there wasn’t any fucking Hippity Hop playing in the background I guess!)

It just seemed an extension of the self-indulgent opening to the disc and wouldn’t fool any horror fan worthy of their salt. So all in all, a slightly confused effort; On one hand it’s quirky enough to be aimed at a younger more commercial market, but given the generous amount of gore, has been rightfully granted an 18 certificate. With a full moon occurring on Halloween 2012, this could easily make for some fun viewing while munching your ‘treats’!

Review by Marc Lissenburg