That ’80s Werewolf

The 1989 werewolf movie Night Shadow has more problems than just its super lame name. In human form, the werewolf is a drifter who looks like he spent the night under a cactus along the desert highway he trolls for victims. And he never utters a single word though the entire movie and just glare stares at you until you’re hypnotized. Or bored. (Growls don’t count as words, they’re just one long syllable.)

A big city news reporter gal comes back to her home town on vacation just as bodies and half-eaten parts are showing up like highway litter. Then there are three young guys who joke their way through the whole thing, all with bad mullets and mid-drift tank tops. (Those things were outdated the minute they went on sale.) The Asian member of the trio happens to be a martial arts expert (and motel fix-it dude) and Bruce Lees several bikers who are trying to have a romantic moment with a screaming biker chick in one of the rooms.

What does this have to do with the werewolf? I’m still trying to figure that out. And speaking of, the woolly bully makes his first fully formed moment one hour and seven minutes into the 90 minute flick. When he makes with the fur, he looks like a sheep that needs to be sheared.

The werewolf in human form has been staying at the roadside motel and stalking the big city girl, attempting to put her under his leash. (When he stares long enough, lightning bolts flash around his eyes. Wish I could do that. Then I’d be a millionaire or something.) He keeps maggot covered body parts snacks in the dresser where neatly folded clothes and/or local magazines go.

The local sheriff, whose hot for the city chick (they almost smooched, for cryin’ out loud), ends up in a face off with the werewolf in an abandoned warehouse. The kung-fu kid, who was being blamed for all the maggot-y chew bones, comes to the aid of the sheriff, whose deep in the doghouse with this non-speaking wolf-man.

Painful ‘80s hairstyles, day-glo clothing, Valley girl dialogue, and overly furry werewolf costume. Night Shadow is totally fer sure non-bombdigity.

Vampire vs. RoboCop

 

Also known as The Vampire Lives (1989), Counter Destroyer (ugh – sounds like something I’d come up with while under the leadership of cold hard booze) is about Joyce, a young gal needing peace and quite to finish a movie script. So she and her micro-bikini wearing, she-male voiced secretary move into a secluded, yet haunted Japanese home.

A Taoist priest warned them not to move in as the place was already occupied by an evil vampire who jumps around, wearing Freddy Krueger knife gloves. (You don’t want to second guess Taoist priests – they know things. Spooky things.)

After drinking a possessed soft drink, Joyce unleashes Hell. And by Hell, I mean for anyone watching this stunning piece of vampire droppings, as the plot suddenly shifts to the movie company’s secretary assassinating a rival film studio trying to make the same movie.

When a blow-dried American boy shows up to check on Joyce and finds her arm is possessed by a vampire, he rotates counter-clockwise a few times and turns into a ninja warrior with a rifle. Think Robocop (1987) with a mullet. If you’re anything like me, you’ll get lost right after the opening credits roll.

In closing, Counter Destroyer/The Vampire Lives is insanity bad. And that’s me being nice for a change.

Aliens vs. Rednecks

Fifteen years ago some young boys were out hunting and ran into some aliens wanting to play “probe the redneck.” Thankfully, they don’t show this. Now potty-mouthed adults with mullets and guns, they manage to track and trap one o’ them gol’durn aliens and make him pay for killing one of their friends and messing up the mind of another.

They wrap it in tarp, bind it in chains and put a welder’s mask on it so that its thought beams can’t shoot out and get you. They bring the alien to the house of the sole abductee survivor for a little R&R (revenge and retribution). It’s here this entertaining film turns up the fun volume.

If the alien bites you, you’re cooked. Literally. Like a Komodo dragon, the infected wound eats you up from the inside until you’re begging for someone to put a bullet in your rotting face. The best scene comes when one of the aliens plays tug-of-war with human intestines still attached.

Loosely based on the TRUE Travis Walton UFO incident in 1975 where Travis was actually sucked into a UFO (OK, that didn’t sound right), Altered (2006) is as taut as a stretched intestine. Though it was directed by one of the people behind The Blair Witch Project (1999), one of the worst horror movies of all time and space, Altered, with an alien that seems to like Earth bathrooms, is a probing good time.