October 13, 2018
Written by: Kazumasa Hirai, Fumio Konami
Starring: Sonny Chiba, Kyosuke Machida, Yuriko Azuma
Quote: "There is a nastier pathogen than syphilis. It's the one they call hatred of humans. I had clearly caught that infection from Miki."
Trivia: Unlike the previous film, Horror of the Wolf (1973), Akira Inugami (Shin'ichi Chiba) does not transform into a werewolf in this follow-up, although his invincibility in moonlight is retained.
Ohhhhhkay... Wolf Guy... Where do I begin? My friend Matt is watching a horror movie a day during the month of October so he came by and we chose Wolf Guy on Shudder because it looked like it might be a funny movie. It wasn't actually funny. It was... I don't know what it was. This movie is absolutely insane with a plot that starts out making little sense and pretty quickly dissolves into absolute chaos. The movie stars the Japanese action star Sonny Chiba as the last of a "wolf clan" but never actually turns into a wolf, grows hair or fangs, or even howls. There's a lot of violence and a bunch of gratuitous sex scenes... Let me see if I can summarize the plot and let you judge how weird this movie is.
The movie begins with a person running through the street of Tokyo torn up screaming about a Tiger. He runs into Sonny and we see him get ripped to shreds seemingly by nothing. There is a bit of mystery unraveling before we figure out that he was one of half a dozen people who gang raped a girl named Miki. Apparently Miki was in love with a politician's son but the politician wanted him to marry someone else, so he put out this rape job on the Yakuza who contracted these people to gang rape her and give her syphilis. Understandably this is about the worst thing you could do to a person. Bizarrely, this allows Miki to turn her vengeance into an actual tiger she uses to kill those who wronged her. Meanwhile, Sonny meets this government lady, bangs her, and she falls madly in love with him (there is no chemistry between them, the woman falling head over heels makes no sense amongst the characters, but this will be a reoccurring theme). The government lady finds Miki and uses her as a government weapon (those are the guys wronged you, use your tiger to attack them!). She also wants to weaponize Sonny because he's a Wolf Guy (keep in mind it hasn't been a full moon yet in the movie and we don't know exactly what it means that he is a Wolf Guy except during a flashback his dying mom said that during full moons he would be invincible). Oh, and earlier, Sonny met Miki and she fell in love with him. One guy steals a bunch of Sonny's wolf blood to become a Wolf Guy too, but it just poisons him. Sonny is able to escapes the government people but Miki is now a government weapon.
Here's where things really break down. I guess the filmmakers needed to kill twenty five more minutes because by all accounts the movie should be over by now. But no. Sonny goes back to his original village and finds a girl who was friend's with his family. All of Sonny's family were killed by humans because they were Wolf People. He bangs her, she falls madly in love with him. Then Miki, government lady, and a whole bunch of redshirts come to try to get Wolf Guy again. But now it's a full moon. There is this one moment where it seems like he is going to howl, but he doesn't. Anyways, Wolf Guy gets shot a bunch of times, but now he's invincible, he kills all the redshirts and the government lady and his childhood friend kills Miki. We never get that wolf versus tiger battle. And that's it.
My friend Matt and my wife thought the movie was stupid, but I actually really liked it. I cannot really put my finger on why I liked it other than maybe it was the originality of the film. I really had not seen anything like it before. The story is over-the-top but in a fun way. There is nothing either pretentious or subtle about it. It takes an idea and runs with it without thinking or looking back. It is also comical that the movie is about a werewolf that never actually transforms into a wolf at all, in fact there is nothing resembling anything that could be construed as wolflike in the film. Maybe that's why the title dances around the word "werewolf" so much: Wolf Guy, Enraged Lycanthrope. I guess, yeah, technically it never says werewolf.
The soundtrack is absolutely amazing as well! It has this great seventies funk score that comes as a surprise at first but strangely seems to make perfect sense as the film moves on. More of an action flick than a horror movie, there are lots and lots of killings, a handful of nudity (nine breasts to be exact, but who's counting), and one of the oddest meandering plots in movie history. If you're a fan of crappy Japanese action movies, this is a real gem. Try not to think too hard during the movie, just relax and enjoy the insanity.
...what's your thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment