Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

As the opening credits begin to roll in this movie ‘War Wolves’ initially you will find your bitter heart swelling with joy. At least if you are of a certain age because otherwise the fact that John Saxon, Tim Thomerson and Adrienne Barbeau all appearing in the same movie will mean absolutely nothing to you. But to me this means something. Outside of the fact that we are happy to see that Saxon and Barbeau are still alive… we know Thomerson ain’t dying no time soon… so it’s good to see these old timers still doing the damn thing, and while Adrienne Barbeau is more than old enough to be my mom she was one of the hottest things on two feet back in the day. Trust me on this. And if you don’t trust me then trust Google Images. But alas that joy would not last long because we now have to watch ‘War Wolves’ which we will say was high in concept but low in execution and excitement.

Dateline Iraq. A group of soldiers are out having fun and sun in the desert until duty calls. Already under heavy fire and taking on huge casualties you would think that things couldn’t get much worse in this little skirmish. Think again my friends as our under siege soldiers are attacked by something that looks like crazed Zulu warriors with super sharp teeth. Not cool.

Years later we meet one of those surviving soldiers in Jake Gabriel (Michael Worth) who is down on his luck, drinking heavily while living in the basement of the town’s crazy lady Gail (Barbeau). Even though he faithfully attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, lying through his teeth about his last drink, if Jake does stop drinking he won’t be able to control the beast that rages inside of him. Personally, one would think that being drunk all the time would make controlling those killer urges that much more difficult but since I’ve never been infected with the werewolf virus I’ll go with Jake's theory on this one.

Somewhere else in the U.S. Jake's former one true love Erika (Natasha Alam), also infected with whatever happnened back in Iraq, has decided to stop fighting it and along with a pair of her fellow krazy hot infected soldiers in Justine (Kristi Clainos) and Casey (Siri Baruc), the trio decide to go across country to find Jake, force him to accept his fate, and they might as well eat some rednecks along the way. Tasty!

When our girls make it to whatever city Jake is in, they will find that waiting for them in this city will be a couple of old timers in Army General Tony Ford (Saxon) and his Sgt. Major Frank Bergman (Thomerson) who I think wants to cure these infected soldiers. I’m not quite sure. I do know that this cat played by Marty Kove wants to kill these soldiers though again I’m not quite sure why. There’s also another infected soldier floating around named Clay (Dan Southern) who’s totally down with the whole turning into a werewolf thing and has gone all Highlander on us determining that There Can Only be One. Who will live? Who will die? And can love still grown under the full moon?

The main problem with Director and star Michael Worth’s film is that it’s really, really boring. Running at a somewhat lengthy one hundred minutes, considering the genre, the first ten minutes of the film were good and the last ten minutes we cool but those 80 or so minutes in between? Good Lord. Since ‘War Wolves’ moved at such as leisurely, old man behind the wheel pace, we had no choice but focus on the story that was ever so slowly developing before us. Mind you, knowing that this film started out in life as a Sci-Fi original and imagining it to be stupid fun I had an adult beverage or two as I sat down to view ‘War Wolves’. Talk about a buzz killer. The fact that I had to concentrate so hard was bad enough but unfortunately all the concentration in the world still didn’t help me comprehend what in the hell was exactly supposed to be going on in this movie with its myriad of characters, the numerous plot elements and the changes in direction. If it had moved faster the fact that it was all largely nonsense wouldn’t have mattered, but alas…

All that being said I still hate to crap on this movie because it is clear that Mr. Worth was going for something different with a rather tired genre. The acting wasn’t too bad as we’ve seen actress Natasha Alam do hot and crazy in a couple of movies and the girl does do it well, Michael Worth does a good job of being tortured and as I said earlier the last ten minutes of the movie kind of came together in a rush of action and humor that was enjoyable, I just can’t in good conscience recommend you suffer through the first hour and half to get to the final ten minutes. It was also cool watching Saxon and Thomerson interact each other, part of this enjoyment being personal as my father is an old retired Army officer with one of his best friends being his longtime Sgt. Major. Though these ancient dudes have been retired for well over twenty years Sgt. Major still calls my dad ‘sir’ or ‘Colonel’ and my Dad only refers to Mr. McCoy as Sgt. Major. Then they start telling you the same old stories and you’ve got pretend like it’s the first time you’ve ever heard them. Love those old dudes.

‘War Wolves’ was a different kind of movie than we are used to seeing on the self proclaimed ‘Most Dangerous Night of Television’, and though we did like the effort, this was still a movie that could’ve used a little compressing, a little more action and a much clearer narrative to have reached its full potential.