CURSE OF THE WOLF (2006)

What can I say about this film that hasn't already been said about explosive diarrhea? Sure, it's a low-budget production, but that does not excuse the sheer horridness on display.

But before I get into all that, here's the storyline: Dakota (Renee Porada) is a young werewolf who discovers a medicinal way to keep her lycanthropy under control. When she leaves her pack to start a new life in the city, they are determined to bring her back into the fold. To free herself of her former compatriots, Dakota enlists the aid of Logan (Lanny Poffo), a thuggish barroom-owner, and his heavily armed minions.

Writer/director Len Kabasinski apparently couldn't decide if he wanted to make a horror movie or a martial arts film. So he incorporated both elements, loading the movie with poorly edited fight scenes between humans and werewolves, all of whom appear to have black belts. Forget silver bullets—if you want to take out a werewolf, kick it in the face and chest.

I don't know which format this was filmed in, but the end result is grainy as hell. And it appears to have been made without a single piece of lighting equipment. In more than one instance, you literally can't see the action because it's so goddamned dark on screen. The dialogue is at times inaudible because the actors are too far away from the microphone. And the lack of a windscreen makes the breeze quite audible on more than one occasion. Plus, in classic bad-movie style, it's nighttime at one moment and broad daylight the next. Since werewolves only come out during the full moon, that's kind of awkward.

And I haven't even gotten to the acting, if you can even call it that. Kabasinski managed to find a cast who uniformly deliver their lines in a style that one could charitably compare to a hare-lipped walrus. And given the start-to-finish awfulness, I sincerely hope it was ad-libbed; I can't imagine that many badly written lines crammed into a single screenplay. Not one of the performances here is salvageable, but I'll give special attention to Todd Humes as Michael, the head werewolf who is determined not to let Dakota go. His performance is straight out of the William Shatner school of pauses and over-emoting. He's also not a fan of contractions.

A quick mention of the soundtrack. It is rife with original AOR songs that make Journey sound like the Sex Pistols. It also features shrilly sung acoustic folk numbers that play during the not-infrequent sex and nude scenes. If you like to stare at beautiful women with their boobs out…find a better film than this one. All the tits in the world aren't worth subjecting yourself to 105 minutes of this goddamned thing.

Finally, the werewolves. The actors wear masks and gloves that make the monster costumes in Kolchak: The Night Stalker look meticulously done. And do I even have to tell you, no other body parts except the heads and hands become hairy?

To call CURSE OF THE WOLF one of the absolute worst movies I've ever seen is not doing it justice. Rarely have I seen a film that ascends—or rather, descends—to such a level of awfulness, I'm tempted to petition lawmakers to forbid its crew from ever again coming within 1,000 feet of a movie set.