3 out of 5

Directed by: Lowell Dean

Small town drunk, layabout and police officer Lou gets turned into a werewolf.  He’s still a mighty drunk, but it gives him the passion to start busting some heads.  (And slashing some throats, and beheading folks, and etc.)

WolfCop absolutely has its heart in the right place in its adherence to trashy 80s DTV horror: it gives us ridiculous cheesecake, the “whoa dude” friendly/guide character, and no clear moral throughput while jamming on some 80s-ish tunes and foregoing much in the way of exposition for some montages and gore.  Surprisingly, though, writer/director Dean also tries to include some mythology to justify his character, and ties it into his setup fairly successfully, giving the film an odd grounding that keeps its purposefully silly premise from flying off the rails.  However, those some rails might be what keeps the film from hitting any real high notes.  It is, at most, amusing, and well made – some good grindhouse editing and mega gross transformation effects – but feels like it stalls as soon as its B-movie ethics are established (which is early on).  It remains watchable due to its brevity – I do appreciate when filmmakers don’t try to pad things out to the 90 minute marker if they don’t have to – and its general bravado, which makes me sense that it absolutely would have been that late night movie you watch whenever it’s on, but the world of film is incredibly robust nowadays, and so this style tends to land with a been-there-done-that sensation.  But, again, WC has the edge of seeming to want to come by this vibe honestly, and so it’s not any worse off for it.  Somewhere, there, there’s a more fully realized version of this flick, and maybe that will be in the already in-production WolfCop II…