When a fight breaks out at an archeological dig over the bones of a werewolf, a digger gets cut and becomes infected with lycanthropy. Later, a writer comes to town, and due to a lab fight over the bones of the werewolf, he too becomes infected.
“Varevolf ” and “whairwof” are some of the exciting new words you can hear in Werewolf: The Search for the Accent. In this absorbing film, you never know what accent you’ll hear next. No, no, it’s not that different people have different accents. Rather, any character might break out with a new accent at any time. Apparently, they picked up a bunch of Romanian actors, gave them extensive language training in Brazil, and then told them all to attempt an American dialect. That doesn’t explain Joe Estevez’s (yup, Martin Sheen’s brother) double accent, but then he disappears from the film without explanation after 20 minutes, so let’s not dwell on him. Besides the fascinating pronunciations, this Tower of Babel mindset gives rise to captivating sentences like “You and Noel is in it for fame and fortune.” Yes, I’m afraid they is.
But don’t let the unusual sentences distract you from Yuri’s hair styles. His hair grows, shrinks, changes from black to brown to a reddish hue, and rises into a pompadour, and all within ten minutes. Now that’s exciting hair. If only the werewolves had been as interesting and frightening as that hair, but they tend to look like Fozzie Bear from a distance, and either Cornelius from Planet of the Apes or a guy in a store-bought dog mask when close. Which appearance they have is totally random. What is frightening is giving werewolves driving licenses as I learned from the unintentionally hilarious werewolf driving scene.
There are other things to learn from Werewolf, such as how unpleasant archeological digs are. I knew they could be uncomfortable, but I didn’t know how dangerous they can be. Yuri (of the transmigratory hair) has the job of sadistically beating diggers. He also injects watchmen with werewolf blood (well, I hope it was blood), and attacks people at birthday parties. He has some impulse control issues. It’s hard to figure what other motivation he might have, but then it’s perplexing that no one has him arrested.
No discussion of Werewolf would be complete without mentioning Sam, “The Keeper.” Sam, who dresses as Castro’s lieutenant and answers the door with a rifle, hangs around a suburban home to dust it. Who is paying him? Why is someone paying him? Why is he in the film? He does tells us, “I just found out that Dracula is a fag.” Ah.
While Werewolf is on no one’s top ten list, it’s a different matter of the MST3K version. It made for their very best show.