“You stink of fear. I can smell it.”

Justin’s rating: Sonic the Hedgedog!

Justin’s review: In the grand scheme of things, I’ve found that werewolf movies tend to be a lot more interesting and inventive than vampire ones. Filmmakers keep coming up with new variations on the old classic monster, from Ginger Snaps to Dog Soldiers to Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf. So this time around, why not shove Jason Vorhees himself, Kane Hodder, into the body of a lycanthrope and make the most hardcore werewolf film ever?

Project Metalbeast starts in 1974, when a secret government program to capture some actual werewolf blood to make super soldiers succeeds. One of the team members, Donald, decides to inject himself with it, causing a major outbreak of wolfitis. But as it’s going to kill him, the team freezes him until science can figure out a way to — why not? — coat him in indestructible metal to keep those pesky silver bullets away.

A huge metal-coated spikey invincible werewolf powered by Kane Hodder might be the most deadly force ever assembled on film. And that would be amazing except for the fact that it’s squandered on yet another movie where everyone’s roaming about some sort of military laboratory with nary an exit door in sight.

There’s a lot of padding as the scientists at this lab gradually figure out that their project’s been suckered with an actual werewolf. By the time that Ol’ Spikey is awake, it’s too late to flee the lockdown and a whole lot of people are going to die in reverse order of the opening credits.

There are some decent werewolfy bits here, to be sure, but you’re going to have to wade through a lot of scenes with horrible audio. Good luck trying to hear what anyone’s saying without subtitles, because they mumble more here than my teenage son and the sound levels are all over the place. Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show) shows up to be the most recognizable name here and chew the scenery as the government scum that made this experiment possible.

At least everyone is fully committed to practical effects and costuming here — no dated CGI to drag this down. I just wish that the film had gotten to the metal werewolf sooner than the 54-minute mark. It’s actually only 20 minutes before the end of the movie where everything really kicks into high gear with a rampage, so I guess if you wanted to skip to that, you’d be getting the best of this experience without missing out on much.

Truly, Project Metalbeast comes off as one of those movies where they had a single interesting idea and then called for lunch before they fleshed out an equally interesting story to go along with it. Metal werewolves are all well and good, but there are better all-around packages in this sub-genre.

Intermission!

• If you have a boat with a giant swinging lantern, are you really being a stealthy military operation?
• “The body will swell up like a balloon.”
• Full frontal cryogenics
• The desk nameplate that lists the person’s project rather than role
• Scientists look glum and don’t like to have fun
• The Pope can send holy water via FedEx
• “I’m reading 90 degrees here!”
• Wolfman’s got no nards!
• “Deal with it and get on with the experiment.”
• Did the werewolf just wet the hospital bed?
• Convenient silver bullet gun acquired!
• First-person werewolf vision sounds like he’s underwater
• The door sounds are identical to the ones in 1986’s Aliens
• Werewolves hate those little novelty bobbing birds
• “Nothing out here but a full moon” are guaranteed to be your last words in a werewolf flick
• Hey we’re going to leave the room but you should totally shove a needle in that werewolf’s eye BYEEEE