SCARY MONSTERS ET LES SUPER CREEPS - a review by Stew.

One of my more ridiculous goals for the future is to remake 1970's loup garou flick 'The Beast Must Die'. For those of you not steeped in the world of the Gothic, or just unable to speak French, 'loup garou' means werewolf, (or thereabouts); please ignore me, I am merely being a ponce.

'The Beast Must Die' is a weird hybrid Blaxploitation/Hammer-esque movie; essentially Shaft versus the Wolfman for want of a better description, but not bad at all. It is, however, notable for two things that really scupper the efforts of the fine, fine cast, (inc. Pete Cushing, Mikey Gambon, Oberleutnant Anton Diffring), and undermine the fairly neat script. The first faux pas involves the introduction of 'The Werewolf Minute' right at the end, which is basically a really shit device like the clock from 'Countdown', wherein the screen freezes, a faceless narrator asks you to guess which one of the cast is the monster, and a clock counts down ('tick, tock') on screen for a solid bleeding minute. Stops the film dead in its tracks. Fucking great gimmick there, fellas.

The other real stinkweed growing in the middle of this otherwise top B-movie is the werewolf itself; I can not stress enough that I am not exaggerating when I say that the werewolf is just a big black dog. It is meant to be a transmogrified human being struck down by an ancient supernatural curse, yet it is the exact size, shape and physical dimensions of a big black dog. And it looks as one would imagine a big black dog to look; ie. like a dog dark in hue and expansive of proportion. Ie. not really anything at all like a werewolf. Ie. shit.

Mind you, despite my inevitable moaning, I fuckin' love this film - its very atmospheric and incredibly engaging, despite the two glaring faults listed above. But there we go, you see - that's your werewolves for yer, innit Pete. Even the best ones look a bit shit, 'The Howling' and '…American Werewolf…' included; the transformation scenes in both of those flicks are groovy, but the end result, the wolf in question, still looks a bit shonky. The beasts in 'Dog Soldiers are quite interesting, but still look like ballet dancers wearing furry boots and Alsatian masks when all said and done. Which brings us to the subject of this review: 'Brotherhood Of The Wolf'; not a werewolf film per se, (despite appearances to the contrary), but still blessed with one of the shoddiest examples of wolf-tastic effects in recent memory…

Okay - its French; its based on a true story; it has a shockingly awful CGI monstrosity in it, (which I won't reveal the true nature of, as I want some of you to actually go out and watch this movie); but despite the cards being stacked heavily against it - its really bleedin' entertaining! Its set in 18th century France; the Chevalier de Fronsac, (Samuel Lebihan), and his native American friend Mani, (Marc Dacascos, from 'Drive', one of our Bigger Boat 'Films You Must See' list), are sent by the King to the Gevaudan province to investigate hundreds of killings in the area by a mysterious beast - and so they do, coming into conflict with both the beast itself, the area's strange inhabitants, and the downright kinky titular Brotherhood of the Wolf.

Numerous anachronistic-yet-impressive martial arts rucks occur, there's a heavy air of Gallic mysticism to proceedings, Vincent Cassel, ('Le Haine'), plays a spectacular weirdo of truly epic strangeness, Monica Belluci turns up as an enigmatic piece of Machiavellian ass, and Lebihan's final action scenes are truly heart-thumping - mainly because there is zero wirework/CGI/twatting about involved. Fists and knives all the way - truly visceral stuff, really conveying this man's need for vengeance, (for what, I ain't saying…). For once, violence is employed because the character's arc calls for it as a last resort, rather than because it looks cool. Although it does look cool…

Okay that's the boys' stuff out of the way - at the end of the day, what really raises this above the usual fights-and-monsters shitfest is the genuinely thoughtful and ingenious script. Its actually quite intelligent, and steeped in enough of a veneer of historical 'fact' to make it play as way more than just another action movie. By all accounts there are three or four different versions of this film knocking around to buy, (some featuring whole characters and subplots excised from other versions), but as I've only seen one of them, I couldn't recommend one over the other - just try to see any of them. And, like I do with 'The Beast Must Die', ignore the crappy beastie's obvious CGI origins and just go with it.