Rage of the Werewolf

The storyline for Kevin Lindenmuth's Rage of the Werewolf is epic, to say the least. Following a comet hitting the surface of the Earth, a large number of the population turn into werewolves at each full moon. The story focusses on two lycanthrope brothers, Jake and Lazlo, who are pitted against each other. Lazlo is the evil crime boss figure trying to organise the werewolf population into his army, whilst Jake is out to twart his plans with the aid of his crackpot friend who believes himself to be a werewolf, but really isn't. In addition, Lazlo has also captured a vampire who he's trying to convert into a werewolf.

The problem is however that if I hadn't read the blurb on the back of the video box, I wouldn't have been aware of half of this. Partly this comes from the poor audio quality, making dialogue very difficult to make out in places, and secondly it's never really spelt out in the film what the context for the narrative is.

The film's saving grace is however its humour. There's a good indication of the dominant tongue in cheek style early on when Jake is walking along with his friend and they see the full moon above them. His friend starts stretching his hands over his face and crying out "I'm changing Jake, I'm changing!" Jake's reaction is just to stand there despairingly as he points out that his friend isn't a werewolf at all! When the real werewolves appear it's just as amusing. With no perceivable budget film to speak of, Kevin Lindenmuth has got round the potentially tricky task of creating realistic werewolves by putting his cast into gorilla suits with the novelty hairy hand gloves you get in joke shops.

This is particularly amusing in the scene where Lazlo bites into the arm of the vampire he has locked in a cage. She recoils in horror, looking at the mass of plastic and fake fur covering her hand...it's a great cinematic moment!

Overall, Rage of the Werewolf is very odd film. The audio problems are quite off-putting, but it's certainly worth a watch for pure curiosity value.

Phil