Moon of the Wolf (1972)

I'm not a "so bad they're good" kind of guy. I honestly enjoy movies like The Alpha Incident and Alien Contamination. I think it's a shame that people who enjoy these kinds of movies refer to them as "guilty pleasures" because it suggests they feel bad for liking them. That's sad.

I am saying all of this so that you understand that I have standards. I don't like just any olf movie off of some collection of 50 public domain movies. Case in point: Moon of the Wolf.

Somewhere in Louisiana a girl is killed, possibly by a wild animal. The townspeople are uneasy, so Sheriff Whitaker begins an investigation.

That's your plot. Someone turns out to be a werewolf of course, and eventually the werewolf gets shot to death.

I have to admit up front that I have zero interest in gothic horror, unless the gothic horror has Dean Stockwell with an afro as part of the plot. Werewolves and vampires and stuff? Not interested.

The only thing compelling about werewolf movies is that there is more often than not going to be some good blood and gore effects. However, since Moon of the Wolf was apparently an ABC TV movie you know there's going to be none of that. So you're left with Sheriff Whitaker walking around town, interviewing people. It's one of those movies where you know within seconds who the monster is and you have to wait sixty minutes for the movie to catch up with you.

So I have nothing good to say about this one. As mentioned above it's a TV movie so the direction is dull, but not as dull as the lighting and photography. The best part is where the werewolf is cornering some guy and the scene is from the point of view of the werewolf (so you don't know who the werewolf is... clever!) and the guy does that thing where he tries to reason and plead but they don't want to give any hints about the identity of the werewolf away and it takes too long so the suspense they were going for is ruined. You know what I'm talking about: "No... please... oh no... oh god... please no... but... I mean... you can't... you mustn't... it's just... it's just not possible... it's impossible... I didn't... I won't... aARRRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"