Bad Moon [1996]

In a South American pre-credits sequence, this offers gratuitous sex, bad dialogue, a ripped-off face and a werewolf's head blown apart by a shotgun blast. Then, this very brief movie [79 minutes] adaptation of Wayne Smith's novel Thor manages to become extremely draggy as it goes through a plot that boils down to Lassie Meets the Wolf Man. When Michael Paré, survivor of an encounter with the South American monster, stays in a woodland retreat with sister Mariel Hemingway and nephew Mason Gamble, only the kid's plucky dog realises he has become a werewolf [Ken Kirzinger]. Paré alternates between antiheroic torment as he chains himself to a tree to protect his family [he has a vague notion that their love will cure him] and glowering villainy as he lets Thor take the blame for a savaging, which means the dog has to escape from the pound to confront the monster and save his master at the end.

Director-writer Eric Red wrote Near Dark, a radical and exciting vampire movie, but here trots out the dreariest lycanthrope clichés. An extract from The WereWolf of London is seen on TV [and unwisely sneered at by Paré] and, though the script establishes that this werewolf transforms nightly and not on a lunar cycle, there are constant shots of a full moon. Earnest and stupid, with a teddy bear monster.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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