904 - WEREWOLF

Genre:  Cheesy Horror (1996, Color)

Don’s Synopsis:  At an architectural dig, the remains of a human-like being with a wolf’s head is found under about 8 millimeters of dirt.  The Indian members of the team recognize it as some Indian word, which in the native language means “Dances with Wolves”... no, sorry, it means “One Who Walks on All Four... And Has Face of a Wolf... And Howls At Moon... And Drags Ass Across Carpet... And Is a Werewolf.”  A scuffle breaks out and one of the Indians is badly scratched by the werewolf skeleton.  So he is taken to a hospital where he – you guessed it – turns into a werewolf and has to be put down.  The werewolf skeleton is then taken to a lab, where it is put on a table to be properly stared at by the research team.  The research team consists of the evil Yuri (who speaks like Al Pacino in Scarface and has a constantly changing cheeseball hairdo), Natalie (a cute-looking redhead who is such a bad actress that she’s even less believable as a scientist than Denise Richards was in that James Bond movie), and some other old guy who soon disappears from the movie with absolutely no explanation.  Yuri, apparently after seeing what happened to the Indian, has his own secret agenda to turn someone else into a werewolf.  He first drugs a security guard’s drink and, while he is out cold, gives him a werewolf injection.  The security guard then turns into a werewolf while driving himself home (the funniest scene in the movie), but accidentally wrecks into some explosive barrels that somehow got on the highway and is killed.  So Yuri needs a new “volunteer” for his experiment.  Meanwhile, a writer named Paul moves into the attic of a house run by a crazy bearded guy and a woman who doesn’t wear pants.  He meets Natalie at a party and it’s lust at first sight.  So she soon shows Paul the werewolf skeleton (I guess to put him in the mood).  But Yuri walks in and is so upset that Paul saw the skeleton that he starts to beat him up with it.  Paul is, of course, scratched by the skeleton and, the next thing you know, he turns into a werewolf.  So now he kills stupid people by night and is an anguished and very unproductive writer by day.  Yuri finds out that Paul is a werewolf and want to capture him, but Natalie still loves Paul and want to help him.  After some confusing stuff happens, Werewolf-Paul succeeds in killing Yuri and it ends when Natalie joins Paul on his terms.

Don’s Review:  One of the more recent movies (circa 1996) seen on MST and one of the more awful recent movies seen anywhere.  So much of it doesn’t make sense due to confusing editing, plus the werewolf makeup basically consists of what looks like just a cheesy Halloween mask.  Disappointingly, the riffing on this was rather weak, with a lot of the remarks by M&tBs falling completely flat – so the best laughs were from the movie itself, not the riffing.  The host segments were also a bit weak, in particular the segments with Mike getting scratched by Crow and turning into a Were-Crow.  So, although there are some good laughs here, this is a bit of a disappointing episode.

Don’s Rating: 

Forrest’s Review:  It’s funny, because I remember Werewolf being such a great episode along time ago, and then I saw it again, a few month later, and was not as pleased, thus, in my last review I gave Werewolf 4 CROWS.  But I was wrong, this episode deserves all 5.  Werewolf is arguably the worst movie to appear on the show.  It’s just so bad in technical terms.  The film makers, who created Werewolf were so bad, that there’s this one scene where we focus on our hero, inside of a house, and it is morning time, then we see the outside of the house, and it’s night.  Next scene shows inside of the house, and – surprise! – it’s morning again.  Not to mention that there’s one scene where one car passes the same gas station ten times, a guy who changes his hair style (and sometimes, hair color) in every scene he’s in, and we have three werewolves:

1. The Bat/Bug Werewolf

2. The Bear Werewolf

3. The Humanesque Werewolf

     Yes, nearly every scene in Werewolf has something wrong with it.  Not since Ed Wood had there been such inept film making.  The riffing was pure brilliance in this episode.  Mike and the ’Bots would pull out riff after riff of unruly competence, laugh after laugh, non-stop relentless riffing.  Sometimes stupid riffing – “Bigger then Big Cheezits?!” – sometimes smart: “So his plan is to kill every security guard in the world by having them turn into werewolves, and then crash their car?” – but always hilarious. The host segments above average, with a funny bit about Were-Crows, and a hilarious girl-group song entitled “Where O Wherewolf”.  The Mad segments are not too memorable though, but this is still a pretty damn solid episode.  About as solid as they get.

Forrest’s Rating: 

Related Link:
    (1) Bookworm’s Site (Episode Review)