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House of the Wolf Man (2009)
Topic Started: Jul 16 2011, 09:21 AM (313 Views)
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A group of young people who don't know each other and a cantankerous big-game hunter are invited to a creepy old castle for the reading of a will; they discover they all share a familial tie, and their host - a mad scientist in the creepy old mad scientist tradition - is also a werewolf. Plus, he's got the Frankenstein monster chained up downstairs. Plus, Count Dracula is flapping his way for a tête-à-tête.

Okay, consider this a warning: this is one of those "90 minutes of your life you'll NEVER get back and regret on your death bed" films, amateurish beyond belief and completely lacking in any entertainment value for the first 80 minutes (none of the monsters ever show up, seriously, until the final reel). You'll be struggling to stay awake, it's too crummy to even laugh at. The appeal here is Ron Chaney (great-grandson of Lon, whom he strongly resembles, and grandson naturally of Lon, Jr.), and apparently in his family the acting trait skips several generations. The Chaneys must have an old chair up in the attic they could've put a hat on, attached a little sign saying LON CHANEY'S CHAIR, and let THAT play the mad scientist, it would've been no less wooden.

I strongly suspect that somebody made the sequence where the Monster and the Wolf Man battle, and it was so good (and frankly, it IS very good) that somebody said, "Let's build a whole movie around this!" If you DO have this film or want to see it, really, skip to the last 10 minutes. Trust me on this one. You WILL miss Cheryl Rodes as the "bad girl", she's easily the best in the cast (and wears sexy undies, almost worth watching the rest of the dreck for).

The film's in B&W and 1.33:1 ratio, but the photography isn't very good, with none of the richness, say, of Larry Blamire's B&W films. In fact, we all came away from THIS film with a LOT more respect for Blamire's talent for being able to make 1930s-40s homages that are as good as the films to which they're loving tributes. This one? Bleeech.

"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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