There’s something that seems very fitting about mixing together the concepts of werewolves and biker gangs. Wolves cross the countryside in packs, just like biker gangs. If there were werewolves out there in the world, it would just make sense that they would stick together in packs and pass themselves off as bikers. Werewolves on Wheels was on to this idea way back in 1971. Scott Rosenberg mixed bikers and werewolves in his unproduced screenplay Bad Moon Rising, which was intended to be a Scream reunion for director Wes Craven and actress Drew Barrymore at one point in time, but ended up getting a comic book adaptation. There was a movie called Howlers that had biker werewolves. When I was a kid, I wrote multiple stories about biker werewolves, and I intend to circle back to those ideas eventually. But the latest person to decide to tell a story about biker werewolves is writer/director Robert Conway, whose film Hellhounds is being released by Uncork’d Entertainment.
Werewolves are very cool monsters, but they’re incredibly difficult to bring to the screen in a convincing way. They are walking special effects. You have to have a sizable chunk of money to set aside for those effects... but most werewolf movies don’t have budgets high enough to properly create the creatures viewers are there to see. (Not everything can reach the level of Dog Soldiers, which was made on a low budget but still has some of the best looking werewolves ever.) Hellhounds is another one that was made on a minuscule budget, so if the idea of biker werewolves brings to mind any awesome visuals for you, you should be warned up front that there aren’t any particularly awesome visuals to be found in this movie. Mindful of the budget, Conway kept the werewolves off screen for as long as possible, giving only quick glimpses of transformed body parts for most of the running time. When we do get a full shot of werewolves in action, the effects aren’t a great deal more impressive than what was featured in Werewolves on Wheels fifty years ago. So go into this one with tempered expectations.
Conway did craft an intriguing story, though. Most of it plays out in an area called the Scrapyard, sort of a desert no man’s land populated by people on the road who aren’t allowed to venture into town or have phones. In this area, a nasty fellow named Dave (Daniel Link) is gathering a collection of people - Amelia Haberman as Emma, Anna Harr as Brandy, Tim Sauer as Tommy - he keeps captive in a shipping container. Whatever Dave is up to, it has put him on the bad side of both bounty hunter Mia (Dana Kippel) and biker Alias (Nathaniel Burns), one of the last surviving members of a gang called the Hellhounds. After participating in a shootout with a rival gang called the Silver Bullets, Alias and Mia head into the Scrapyard to find Dave. Meanwhile, Scrapyard resident Kevin (Cameron Kotecki) is sick from a wolf bite – and then Eva Hamilton of The Mooncats shows up as a woman named Lucella, who claims to be Kevin’s mother. Thankfully, she means she’s the werewolf who bit him and turned him into a werewolf, she’s not his actual birth mother. Otherwise their bloody, fireside sex scene (which brings to mind, a little, a popular scene from The Howling) would have been way more inappropriate.
All of the cast members do well in their roles, which is a good thing since the budget necessitated that we get a lot more scenes of people talking to each other than anything else. The action comes in quick bursts, and is underwhelming in the end.
Hellhounds isn’t quite the werewolf movie I was hoping it would be when I started watching it, but it makes for a decent enough viewing experience if you’re into this sort of thing. And the door is left wide open for a sequel, so maybe Conway will get the chance to make another one of these to continue the stories of the surviving characters – and hopefully get a bit more money for the werewolf effects next time around.
Uncork'd Entertainment will be giving Hellhounds a digital release on January 9th.
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