Another WolfCop Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Another WolfCop Blu-ray Movie Review

More Blood, Guts, Liquor Donuts—and a New Kind of Beer

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 26, 2018

The WolfCop series is proof that you don't need distressed images and fake trailers to make an authentic grindhouse feature. All you need is gallons of fake blood, a warehouse of gloppy prosthetics, and a cast who can keep a straight face as the story gets progressively sillier. Canadian writer/director Lowell Dean's franchise shows no sign of letting up, with a mid-credit promise that "WolfCop will return". Fans of splatter cinema should rejoice.

The gang is back, all those who survived the first film and even one or two who appeared not to. The Saskatchewan town of Woodhaven is still being served and protected by Officer Lou Garou (Leo Fafard), who turns into an indestructible, hairy monster during a full moon but retains his original personality underneath. (He's basically a werewolf-as-superhero.) Despite the efforts of his former partner, Tina (Amy Matysio), now a sergeant and technically Lou's boss, to keep him locked up during lycanthrope season, Lou can't resist the call to action when criminals are afoot. Lou's former best friend, Willie Higgins (Jonathan Cherry), makes an unexpected reappearance with a troublesome condition that may be connected to the activities of billionaire entrepreneur Sydney Swallows (Yannick Bisson). His company's name, Darkstar, is a big hint that Swallows is different from you and me.

Swallows' face is everywhere in Woodhaven, which he is promising to revitalize by reopening the local brewery. His beer is called "Chicken Milk", and if you think the name is odd, wait till you see its effects. Writer/director Dean borrows a few plot devices from Alien and Halloween III, but he reinvents them for his own purposes, which usually involve something cheesy, gloppy and cheerfully ridiculous. It may not be Strange Brew (which borrowed some of the same devices), but it's equally Canadian, with beer and hockey playing critical roles. (The zamboni that fires armor-piercing bullets is a masterstroke.)

But perhaps the film's most subversively Canadian element is the casting of Bisson, who obviously relished this rare opportunity to play the bad guy, cheerfully sabotaging his entrenched stalwart image after eleven years (and counting) as TV's Det. William Murdoch of the Toronto Constabulary. Bisson gets to kill someone in his very first scene, and his glee in Swallows' villainy just keeps growing. But Swallows isn't the only new character in this sequel. We get to meet Willie's uniquely talented sister, Kat (Serena Miller), who collects moon rocks and has a secret that's a mind-blowing revelation for Lou. And watch for an uncredited Kevin Smith as Mayor Bubba Rich, who doesn't seem to realize (until it's too late) just how dangerous a town he's pretending to run.

Another WolfCop Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Another WolfCop was shot by Adam Swica (The Haunting in Connecticut and George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead). Specific information about the shooting format was not available, but the film is obviously a digital production, featuring the usual virtues of digital capture, with superior detail, clarity and an absence of noise or interference. Swica's approach to lighting both the title character and the film's many other elaborate makeup effects is the opposite of the style seen in such classic horror films as The Howling: He frequently puts plenty of light on these scenes, trusting the technicians and the prosthetics to make the effects as convincing as necessary to convey the right degree of credibility (no one is supposed to take this stuff seriously). He also makes creative use of red and blue washes that tint the entire frame, but without overdoing it to the point where you notice the lighting more than the action (for an example of the wrong way to do it, see Deep Blue Sea 2).

RLJ/Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presents a faithful and enjoyable reproduction of Swica's work, with solid blacks and a nice contrast between the vivid colors of critical elements like blood and the duller tones of Woodhaven's deceptively normal everyday surface. There's some occasional color bleeding in darker scenes, although it's hard to tell whether this is a fault in the Blu-ray or inherent in the original. Strongly lit scenes (e.g., the extended hockey sequence that serves as the film's grand finale) are bright, sharp and clear. The elaborate makeup that transforms Lou into WolfCop looks impressively convincing, as does the intensely sexual makeup of his new lover (of whom I wish I could show more, but I'd run afoul of Blu-ray.com's prohibition on showing bare breasts in screenshots). Some of the other creatures look decidedly fake, and I'm sure that's on purpose.

RLJ/Image continues to use BD-25s wherever it can get away with it, but Another WolfCop's short running time of 79 minutes has allowed it to achieve an average bitrate of 22.99 Mbps, which isn't bad for digitally originated material. The encode appears to be capable.

Another WolfCop Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Another WolfCop's 5.1 sound mix, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, can't compete with big-budget studio efforts, but it supplies all the necessary oomph that the story needs, particularly in the film's explosive finale. The surrounds are used sparingly but effectively to expand the listening space, and the track is filled with plenty of icky audio elements to complement the gross-out visual effects (almost entirely practical rather than digital). Composer Toby Bond and the Canadian heavy metal band Shooting Guns resume their scoring duties from WolfCop, and their work hits just the right grindhouse note.

Another WolfCop Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras are short and promotional, but taken as a whole, they're more informative about the making of the film, and the spirit behind it, than the bland EPKs typically prepared by today's Hollywood studios. The single most important fact: Another WolfCop was shot in seventeen (17) days, which, when you consider the complexity of the stunts and effects, is a sad comment on the inflated budgets and protracted shoots that have become routine in the mainstream film industry.

• The Making of Another WolfCop (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:13).



• Friends and Foes: Meet the Cast (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:57).



• The Monster Shop: Special FX (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:55).



• Shoot or Die! Surviving on Set (1080p; 1.78:1; 7:26).



• "Barn Burner" Music Video by Shooting Guns (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:52): Instrumental, with footage of WolfCop in the countryside shot specifically for the video.



• Introductory Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for the original WolfCop, Mayhem, All Cheerleaders Die and A Christmas Horror Story.

Another WolfCop Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Another WolfCop is a worthy sequel and a gift to fans of horror comedy. It accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do and does so with panache (and my feature rating reflects that). I don't relish this style of filmmaking as much as I used to when Rick Baker, John Landis, Dick Smith, David Cronenberg and many lesser talents dominated it, but I know worthy successors when I see them. Lowell Dean and his creative partners are the real deal—fitting successors in the art of splattery cinema with a comic edge. For those who appreciate this sort of thing, highly recommended.