Howlers

Canyon Creek. 1863. A town is under siege by a pack of outlaws led by a man named William Price (Tom Zembrod). A hunter named Colt (Chad Michael Collins) is out to take them down. But these are outlaws with a difference. They are lycanthropes, a pack of terrifying werewolves out for blood. Colt uses a mystical weapon to eliminate them but as part of a magical pact he made, he must give up his life now that they are gone. 156 years later he finds himself revived and confused by a modern day Texas that's about to fall prey to the same roving pack of flesheaters.

This sounds like it could be a bit of fun right? Oh no. No. NO.

Howlers is dreadful. It's the kind of release that gives DTV movies a bad name. It's inept in every single way. It's wild west set prologue is about as believable as a junior infants christmas play. The acting is off the charts bad, the kind where it seems dialogue is being read off a piece of cardboard just beyond the camera. Hideously bad production values include CGI that's dwarfed by the wavy effect we saw 30 years when Bosco went through the magic door and Werewolf masks that look like they were picked up in the local Dealz 5 minutes before the first camera rolled. Plot lines start and trail off never to be finished. A 19th century cowboy uses words that didn't even exist in his lifetime, something that 30 seconds on google could have remedied but you get the sense the people behind this weren't too big on research. There's 101 things wrong here and each of them on their own would be bad enough to cripple a movie.

The Joey Tribbiani school of acting

Annoyingly there's a trace of something good in here but it's diluted to almost nothing by the rest of the muck. Seeing a man out of time is always intriguing. His reaction to modern technology and modern society. A better movie might have done something with this but here it's touched on and then forgotten about in the rush to get to the terribly staged action. Films like this can usually be redeemed somewhat by decently shot fight scenes but here it feels like the camera operator was instructed to make things as unclear as possible to paper over the actors lack of skill. It's truly excruciating stuff. So bad that one of the lead actors just disappears at one point, never to be seen again. One imagines he realised how bad it all was and decided to cut his losses.

It's the kind of movie that would make you question your station in life, that makes you feel ashamed for both yourself and the actors involved. The only recognisable face is Sean Patrick Flannery, best known for the inexplicably popular Boondock Saints and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles tv show. Based on the evidence here he's given up trying at all. He's trying to be hammy but he's just offal. Offal....get it.....oh forget it. Every time he opens his mouth you'll plead for the ground to swallow you. It's so bad that you just cannot stop watching. It's not bad in a fun way, at least then you'd have a reason for spend your time on it. It's bad in a watching a car crash in slow motion kinda way. You end up pinned to it just to see will it get worse. It does and it's cumulative effect will leave you feeling really crappy about yourself.

Why yes, this is a werewolf cowboy on a motorbike. Why do you ask?

I watched this because I love westerns and horrors. The thought of a film combining both always appeals to me. Sometimes it works. Grim Prairie Tales or Ravenous are two that instantly stand out. I took a chance on this and lost out big time. Now you don't have to. Do not waste your time on this trash. Luckily it's so bad that netflix won't even go near it. And that's saying a lot.