EXPERIMENT 904 - WEREWOLF

(AKA " WAHR-WILF")

(Observe my MST inventory)

Since the launch of this site, many have complimented me on the quality of my DVDs. I frequently get asked why I don't have in-depth reviews of the experiments I offer for trade. Well, thats a great question, and I think the time has come to start posting reviews of select episodes.

A successful MST experiment has one thing in common: a goofy and fun movie. The rare occasions when the Brains picked a depressingly bad film (i.e. Red Zone Cuba, Monster-A-Go-Go) the riffing is terrific but the episode is just too damn awful to sit through. Fortunately, "Werewolf" belongs to the former category.

Starring the always great Joe Estevez and the always-great-but-usually-slimy Richard Lynch, we are in for a treat. The movie concerns an archaeologist (Lynch) and his team discovering the bones of a "skin dancer". No, not a spice girl, but a real bona-fide werewolf who died and got themselves buried somewhere in the Arizona desert. (This particular stretch of Arizona desert seems to attract European actors with bizarre pronunciation and unplaceable accents.) An unscrupulous member of the science team with a bad case of the "dry look" causes one of his laborers to get scratched by the bones., and the nightmare begins. I don't mean the werewolf, I mean the movie is allowed to continue unabated. Anyhoo, said werewolf is eventually killed, but not before converting another youngish Euro-actor. Our heroine, a blond German...er Greek.....er Danish...whatever, a European scienctist attempts to untangle the whole mess (and fails). This actress, Adriana Miles, has only one additional credit - as a "German National" in 1993's "Nemesis". So me have a clue about her nationality, but we're left scratching our heads as to why she pronounces "Werewolf" as "WAHR-wilf". A race against time to find the cure leaves the audience snoring....as does the most gratuitiously bad surprise ending since "Manos".

You get the feeling that director Tony Zarindast didn't have much to work with. Richard Lynch disappears early in the film, as does Joe Estevez (in fact, Joe's appearance is so minor that the movie would lose nothing if he wasn't in it....but then again this movie has nothing to lose anyway). After using up his allotment of "D" list actors, Zarindast pulls a hitchcock in a forgettable cameo as a security guard that can be talked into anything.

The host segments are exemplary. In the intro, Mike is convince he's James Lipton (who looks suspciously like Leaonard Maltin). Crow whacks him with a clown hammer, and good 'ol Mike is back to normal. The remaining host segments focus on the werewolf genre - we get a discussion of the ideal Werewolf movie cast, and even a Mike Nelson song "Where O Werewolf". Later, Mike turns into a Were-Crow, and Servo changes into a Were-Mike after ingesting essence of Mike. Ewww!

As far as MST3K experiments go, "Werewolf" is first rate. It combines the usual brank of Best Brains humor with the one thing required to make a successful experiment - a really goofy and fun film. The depressingly bad films really only make depressingly bad MST3K episodes, and by Season 9 the Brains had figured this out.

No breasts, no explosions...but some well-aged cheese. Recommended.