Last time on Weird Movie of the Week, we saw a woman with a strange growth on her shoulder that wound up being the fetus of a 400 year-old demonic Native American. This time, we return to an old WMotW theme: weird werewolves. So we’ve got a movie called Wolf Guy, which starts with a pretty standard WMotW description, but slowly grows more worthy:
The incredible Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba is WOLFGUY, the only survivor of a clan of werewolves who relies on his feral, full-moon-activated superpowers to solve mysterious crimes. One night, a bizarre and bloody death in the Tokyo streets plunges him into a far reaching conspiracy populated by crooked politicians, naked white women, bit players like Hideo Murota, a phantom tiger, and – best of all – a shadowy organization (called the J-CIA) out to steal the secret of Wolfguy’s powers and the blood right out of his veins.
Oh, and it has an alternate subtitle you see sometimes, “Wolfguy – Enraged Lycanthrope”.
Unlike most Weird Movies of the Week, I have actually watched this one before posting about it, so I can tell you that this is indeed worthy of the label. A few thoughts:
- Chiba never actually transforms into a werewolf, but he does jump around like a wolf a few times.
- At one point, Chiba has been disemboweled, but since it was the full moon, he was able suck his intestines back into his body using only the power of his mind.
- Chiba sleeps with every woman he meets, often within only a couple of minutes. Ah, the 70s.
- The soundtrack is an awesome, swanky 70s affair with some psychodelia thrown in for good measure.
- Visually, it’s a pretty trippy affair. Lots of zooms and dutch angles which combine well with the funky soundtrack.
- I watched this on Shudder, which has the recent Arrow restoration of the film, so it’s a really good transfer. Better looking than most exploitation of the era, though maybe that’s just because it’s been restored.
It’s one of those movies that isn’t particularly good, but still a blast to watch for some reason. Well worth checking out for fans of weird schlock.