WolfCop
It’s the bottom of the whiskey barrel for Sergeant Lou Garou, staggering into the police station late again having thrown up his stale breakfast beer in the driveway outside his dingy apartment, spending more time in the Tooth and Nail Tavern than on patrol, leaving his diligent colleague Sergeant Tina Walsh to pick up the slack and no longer even bothering to pretend to care about cases or his career.
A call from local conspiracy theorist Willie Higgins drawing Lou to the forest at night to find what he expects to be some kids into heavy metal, instead he stumbles across the body of local politician Terry Wallace, rival to Mayor Bradley in the upcoming election, Lou knocked unconscious before he can call it in and waking the next morning to find a pentagram carved into his skin.
A low-budget action comedy horror which provides exactly what would be expected from a film of that title, the opening credits confirming the high-energy clichéd craziness to follow, WolfCop was the second feature written and directed by Dark Match’s Lowell Dean, starring Leo Fafard and Amy Matysio as Lou and Tina with Jonathan Cherry as Willie and Sarah Lind as barkeep Jessica who harbours a soft spot for Lou who now has an enhanced sense for smelling trouble.
With a focus on practical effects including a full wolf costume for Fafard who continues his duties under the full moon more effectively than under the influence, WolfCop is not subtle but it is well produced for the small budget and benefitting from a script which is smarter than it lets on, the name of the lead being a play on loup-garou, the French term for the more familiar lycanthrope and the local petty thieves masked as three little piggies.
Fitting the visual and thematic Weird West ethos as Wynonna Earp, filmed an afternoon’s hard drive down the road in Saskatoon and the surrounding lands and with a strong ensemble who never play the premise for a joke even while knowing that it is, Dean knows the lore as well as the eccentric Willie, linking back to the early werewolf films with the hallmark of the pentagram though with increased drinking, shooting and doughnuts.
The violence gleefully outrageous as limbs and faces are torn off, as a provincial Canadian production WolfCop cannot hope to compete with the iconic werewolf movies, proud alphas such as The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, but as a howling good time it easily takes its place among the wider pack alongside Silver Bullet and Late Phases and the strange beat it walks is more all around entertaining than the shaggy dog story of Wolf Man.
WolfCop is available on Shudder now
