Recently, I became obsessed with trying to watch each and every werewolf movie that has ever been made regardless of quality. In this new found quest of mine I have scoured every nook and cranny looking for old DvDs to watch and luckily there is a BuyBacks both near my home and where I work so that I can keep an eye out for some of the harder to find movies. I have collected a stack of eight films so far and today I watched a double feature: first "Blood & Chocolate" and "Cursed". These two movies weren't bad. I liked bits of both films but I disliked bits of both as well. Overall, I enjoyed both of these films.
Let's start with "Blood & Chocolate". The story line was good and kept me interested but unfortunately the behavior of the main character, Vivian, was just far too annoying and ruined the movie for me. Who would act that way? I mean the movie opens with a family being killed in their home by a group of armed men and we see a woman help her very young daughter to escape through a window. The daughter is presumably the only survivor. We later learn that this young girl is Vivian the main character of the film. We also learn that she is a werewolf (or rather that in this case she is loup-garu) and that she was responsible for inadvertently leading a group of hunters back to her family home resulting in the death of her entire family! Apparently her parents had repeatedly warned her about playing near humans who may want to harm both her and her family but she did not listen. Oh well, I guess that young children make mistakes right? Actually, I enjoyed the story right up until the later scenes where Vivian just completely lost me with her actions. Lets quickly move through the film to this later part. After the opening scenes (you know the ones where Vivian gets her family slaughtered) we learn that Vivian has grown up and is now living with her aunt in Romania. This is where we also soon learn that Vivian is a loup-garu. The has moved back to Romania in order to live within the safety of her "pack" since her immediate family is no longer alive. Her pack follows a set of very strict rules in order to remain undetected by the humans whom they live amongst and one of these rules is to never hunt outside of the pack. The pack gets together every full moon and hunts a human (whom the pack kidnaps and releases in the woods specifically for the hunt) and as far as I can tell this human is usually someone who is a danger to the pack. Oh another very important rule is never ever to discuss the fact that you are a loup-garu or to discuss loup-garu at all with humans, you know don't draw attention to yourself and the pack, duh! Well guess who does not follow this rule and ends up indangering the entire pack? If you need help then I'll give you a hint, it's Vivian. Yes, the very same girl who did not listen to her parents and led a group of humans to kill her entire family at the start of the show! Vivian is now hanging out with a young human love interest named Aiden with whom she gleefully discusses the legend of loup-garu. Word gets back to the pack and she is warned to stop but she does not. The pack attempts to scare Aiden off and through an unfortunate twist of events Gabriel (the son of the pack leader) is killed by Aiden. On the next full moon the pack gets together to hunt as usual and this time of course the kidnapped prey is Aiden (who by the way is now a threat to the pack because of Vivians indiscretions, oh and let's not forget the fact that he also killed the pack leaders son which also happens to be a direct result of Vivian's relationship with this human boy) Anyway, during the hunt Aiden somehow manages to kill a few more members of the pack and Vivian even helps him to escape and to kill her own relatives! There is a fair bit of the movie left at this point but to sum it all up Vivian continues to help Aiden to both escape and to kill members of her own pack. Vivian even kills her own family/pack while helping Aiden to escape. The movie ends with Vivian and Aiden driving off into the sunset leaving a wake of dead family members behind them. The astonishing thing is that I felt as if the director actually wanted us to feel happy for Vivian and Aiden and that he also wanted us to sympathize with Vivian throughout the film and feel sorry for her... During the entire film I was amazed by her selfishness and total lack of respect and loyalty to her pack! In fact I could not stop thinking about what a selfish and ignorant little b!tch she was throughout the entire film! Is this what the director wanted? It completely ruined the film for me. I found it just completely incomprehensible that anyone would act in such a way as to get her closest family members killed, not only once but in fact on multiple occasions! Ugh!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't get me wrong here, I did enjoy the movie, I just simply cannot stand Vivian!!!
OK, now for "Cursed". This was actually an enjoyable little film. It had just a little too much humor in it for me and some of the gore effects were just way over the top! I mean, does one body even have that much blood? Other than that I don't really have too many complaints about the movie. The story is about a girl, Ellie, and her brother, Jimmy, who are both cursed to become werewolves and how they deal with the effects of the curse. The film starts off at a carnival where a couple of attractive young girls, Jenny and Becky, have their fortunes told by a gypsy. The gypsy tells them that they will suffer a horrible fate. One of the two tells the gypsy that it isn't funny and that she can't tell people things like that. The two walk away laughing it off. Becky cannot seem to find Jenny and goes looking for her in her car. At this point Ellie and Jimmy are also driving along the same road. A large "unknown" animal runs in front of Ellie and Jimmys car causing them to swerve. They hit Becky's car and she is run off of the road and into the woods. Ellie and Jimmy go into the woods to attempt to help Becky and what a mistake that turns out to be! Becky is ripped out of the car and torn to shreds by the same unknown animal that caused the accident! So the gypsy woman seems to have at least been partially correct so far! It is important to note that during the attack both Ellie and Jimmy are injured. During the majority of the film we see both Ellie and Jimmy noticing strange new traits and trying to figure out what is happening to them. Ellie is annoyed by a fly in her kitchen and snatches it out of the air with her bare hand. There is a wonderful scene where Ellie is at her office and she smells something delicious that nobody else seems to smell. She follow she scent sniffing the air and people as she walks through the office. The scene is quite well done and in the end she finds a coworker in the break room with a bloody nose. She had been attracted to the scent of the blood! Meanwhile, jimmy finds that he also has increased senses as well as a taste for raw meat and increased strength which is quite odd as he has always been a rather nerdy, weakling boy that gets picked on at school. He also notices that the neighborhood dogs seem to dislike him all of the sudden. There is another nice scene where all of the neighborhood dogs are outside of Jimmy's bedroom window barking at him. He goes to the window to attempt to get them to quiet down and he ends up howling at them! Another entertaining scene is where we find out that Jimmy's dog has been infected! The dog has horrible fangs and comes after Jimmy who escapes with a new found friend in his car. The whole scene is quite funny with the friend asking "What kind of dog is that!" Oh and before I forget it is around this point that we find out that poor Jenny is ripped to shreds in a parking garage by a werewolf! So the carnival gypsy was correct after all! Later we discover that Ellie's boyfriend Jake is a werewolf and possibly the one who infected them both at the scene of the accident. Jake admits that he is a werewolf but denies committing the killings. We find out that another girl, Joanie, is also a werewolf and that she apparently became infected during a one night stand with Jake. She desperately wants to be with Jake and is insanely jealous of anyone whom he likes or that likes him so she attempts to kill off all of her "competition" with her newly acquired werewolf skills. Of course Joanie ha sit out for Ellie and there is a huge over the top action packed fight scene at the end of which Joanie is killed by the police. The movie concludes with Ellie and Jimmy confronting Bo at their home. There is another action packed brawl that ends with Bo being killed, decapitated in fact with a shovel. This breaks the curse and Ellie, Jimmy and the family dog return to normal. All in all this was a really good movie, it just had a little too much humor in it for me and I was looking for more scares rather than laughs when I happened to watch this one.
Let's start with "Blood & Chocolate". The story line was good and kept me interested but unfortunately the behavior of the main character, Vivian, was just far too annoying and ruined the movie for me. Who would act that way? I mean the movie opens with a family being killed in their home by a group of armed men and we see a woman help her very young daughter to escape through a window. The daughter is presumably the only survivor. We later learn that this young girl is Vivian the main character of the film. We also learn that she is a werewolf (or rather that in this case she is loup-garu) and that she was responsible for inadvertently leading a group of hunters back to her family home resulting in the death of her entire family! Apparently her parents had repeatedly warned her about playing near humans who may want to harm both her and her family but she did not listen. Oh well, I guess that young children make mistakes right? Actually, I enjoyed the story right up until the later scenes where Vivian just completely lost me with her actions. Lets quickly move through the film to this later part. After the opening scenes (you know the ones where Vivian gets her family slaughtered) we learn that Vivian has grown up and is now living with her aunt in Romania. This is where we also soon learn that Vivian is a loup-garu. The has moved back to Romania in order to live within the safety of her "pack" since her immediate family is no longer alive. Her pack follows a set of very strict rules in order to remain undetected by the humans whom they live amongst and one of these rules is to never hunt outside of the pack. The pack gets together every full moon and hunts a human (whom the pack kidnaps and releases in the woods specifically for the hunt) and as far as I can tell this human is usually someone who is a danger to the pack. Oh another very important rule is never ever to discuss the fact that you are a loup-garu or to discuss loup-garu at all with humans, you know don't draw attention to yourself and the pack, duh! Well guess who does not follow this rule and ends up indangering the entire pack? If you need help then I'll give you a hint, it's Vivian. Yes, the very same girl who did not listen to her parents and led a group of humans to kill her entire family at the start of the show! Vivian is now hanging out with a young human love interest named Aiden with whom she gleefully discusses the legend of loup-garu. Word gets back to the pack and she is warned to stop but she does not. The pack attempts to scare Aiden off and through an unfortunate twist of events Gabriel (the son of the pack leader) is killed by Aiden. On the next full moon the pack gets together to hunt as usual and this time of course the kidnapped prey is Aiden (who by the way is now a threat to the pack because of Vivians indiscretions, oh and let's not forget the fact that he also killed the pack leaders son which also happens to be a direct result of Vivian's relationship with this human boy) Anyway, during the hunt Aiden somehow manages to kill a few more members of the pack and Vivian even helps him to escape and to kill her own relatives! There is a fair bit of the movie left at this point but to sum it all up Vivian continues to help Aiden to both escape and to kill members of her own pack. Vivian even kills her own family/pack while helping Aiden to escape. The movie ends with Vivian and Aiden driving off into the sunset leaving a wake of dead family members behind them. The astonishing thing is that I felt as if the director actually wanted us to feel happy for Vivian and Aiden and that he also wanted us to sympathize with Vivian throughout the film and feel sorry for her... During the entire film I was amazed by her selfishness and total lack of respect and loyalty to her pack! In fact I could not stop thinking about what a selfish and ignorant little b!tch she was throughout the entire film! Is this what the director wanted? It completely ruined the film for me. I found it just completely incomprehensible that anyone would act in such a way as to get her closest family members killed, not only once but in fact on multiple occasions! Ugh!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't get me wrong here, I did enjoy the movie, I just simply cannot stand Vivian!!!
OK, now for "Cursed". This was actually an enjoyable little film. It had just a little too much humor in it for me and some of the gore effects were just way over the top! I mean, does one body even have that much blood? Other than that I don't really have too many complaints about the movie. The story is about a girl, Ellie, and her brother, Jimmy, who are both cursed to become werewolves and how they deal with the effects of the curse. The film starts off at a carnival where a couple of attractive young girls, Jenny and Becky, have their fortunes told by a gypsy. The gypsy tells them that they will suffer a horrible fate. One of the two tells the gypsy that it isn't funny and that she can't tell people things like that. The two walk away laughing it off. Becky cannot seem to find Jenny and goes looking for her in her car. At this point Ellie and Jimmy are also driving along the same road. A large "unknown" animal runs in front of Ellie and Jimmys car causing them to swerve. They hit Becky's car and she is run off of the road and into the woods. Ellie and Jimmy go into the woods to attempt to help Becky and what a mistake that turns out to be! Becky is ripped out of the car and torn to shreds by the same unknown animal that caused the accident! So the gypsy woman seems to have at least been partially correct so far! It is important to note that during the attack both Ellie and Jimmy are injured. During the majority of the film we see both Ellie and Jimmy noticing strange new traits and trying to figure out what is happening to them. Ellie is annoyed by a fly in her kitchen and snatches it out of the air with her bare hand. There is a wonderful scene where Ellie is at her office and she smells something delicious that nobody else seems to smell. She follow she scent sniffing the air and people as she walks through the office. The scene is quite well done and in the end she finds a coworker in the break room with a bloody nose. She had been attracted to the scent of the blood! Meanwhile, jimmy finds that he also has increased senses as well as a taste for raw meat and increased strength which is quite odd as he has always been a rather nerdy, weakling boy that gets picked on at school. He also notices that the neighborhood dogs seem to dislike him all of the sudden. There is another nice scene where all of the neighborhood dogs are outside of Jimmy's bedroom window barking at him. He goes to the window to attempt to get them to quiet down and he ends up howling at them! Another entertaining scene is where we find out that Jimmy's dog has been infected! The dog has horrible fangs and comes after Jimmy who escapes with a new found friend in his car. The whole scene is quite funny with the friend asking "What kind of dog is that!" Oh and before I forget it is around this point that we find out that poor Jenny is ripped to shreds in a parking garage by a werewolf! So the carnival gypsy was correct after all! Later we discover that Ellie's boyfriend Jake is a werewolf and possibly the one who infected them both at the scene of the accident. Jake admits that he is a werewolf but denies committing the killings. We find out that another girl, Joanie, is also a werewolf and that she apparently became infected during a one night stand with Jake. She desperately wants to be with Jake and is insanely jealous of anyone whom he likes or that likes him so she attempts to kill off all of her "competition" with her newly acquired werewolf skills. Of course Joanie ha sit out for Ellie and there is a huge over the top action packed fight scene at the end of which Joanie is killed by the police. The movie concludes with Ellie and Jimmy confronting Bo at their home. There is another action packed brawl that ends with Bo being killed, decapitated in fact with a shovel. This breaks the curse and Ellie, Jimmy and the family dog return to normal. All in all this was a really good movie, it just had a little too much humor in it for me and I was looking for more scares rather than laughs when I happened to watch this one.