Take a moment to look at this cover.

Just…look at it.

Okay, now that we have you in the right mindset, let’s give you a peek as to what went through my head when I saw this. I walked into Best Buy that Tuesday, March 10th, as I always do, for some fresh new DVD goodness. Pickings were slim that week…the “major” (and we’re using that term very loosely) releases that week included Night at the Museum 3 – Ben Stiller Still Needs Money…and Still isn’t Funny, Mortdecai, Russell Madness (look, my last two dogs have been Russell mixes, but seriously? Who buys this crap?), Pioneer and The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age Smackdown (I…I’ll rant about this sort of thing in a later article. Let me try and stay on topic). Then, out of the corner of my eye, on the lower left hand side of the shelf, sat copies of Wolfcop.

“Your eyeballs will never forgive you if you miss this one!” – Bloody Disgusting

Well, you slap a review like that on a picture of a werewolf police officer and you’re going to at least get me to take the disc off the shelf to take a look.

“Half Man. Half Wolf. All Cop.”

There are two things that can happen when you rip-off Robocop: you achieve a movie bliss akin to that created by Paul Verhoeven’s original masterpiece of 80’s satire…or you’re hoping to achieve a connection on subconscious level so you can convince a simpleton to buy your festering piece of cinematic shite [And then Robocop shows up at your residence to shoot your nuts off. – Ed.]. Turning the blu-ray case to the back did little to help me determine which side of the equation this movie would be on. So, at this point, it’s time to get to basics…the 3 B’s: Beasts, Breasts and Blood. Beasts was pretty easy to answer…I mean, the damn movie’s called Wolfcop. Breasts? Well, obviously they can’t show those on the cover and the lady cop wearing the aviation sunglasses and looking all pissed off wasn’t exactly selling me…but on the back there’s a picture of actress Sarah Lind with a top clinging to Bert and Ernie pretty tightly there [If you know what I mean and I think you do. – Joe Bob Briggs]…so there was sufficient evidence for B numero two-o. And, again, werewolf police officer…so blood is probably a gimmie. Add to that the fact that two of the on-package reviews came from Shock Til You Drop and the aforementioned Bloody Disgusting, so, yeah, big checkmark on that one. With all three B’s accounted for and a price of only $10 on Blu-ray, well, let us simply say that there was not much arm twisting required for me to make the purchase.

To say it was the best $10 I ever spent…maybe not…but DEFINITELY in the top 5! Sure, it’s a low-budget independent Canadian film…but it doesn’t feel that way. In fact, it feels exactly as its creators intended, a late-80s/early 90s horror film that you should probably own on VHS. To keep it in that time frame, there are no digital effects…everything is practical…and it really adds to the feel of the picture. The plot is about what you’d expect, an alcoholic cop is abducted and subjected to a satanic ritual, turning him into a werewolf in the small Canadian town of Woodhaven. And yes, you could look at this as a superhero origin story…scratch that…let’s say comic-book antihero origin story, because Lou Garou isn’t looking to save the day. He’s in it for the booze. That drive alone gives us something in the movie that now, having seen it, I demand it make the transition to real life…a store called Liquor Donuts. Seriously…how incredibly AWESOME would that be?!?! Sure, maybe that’s the alcoholic in me talking but still…I’m kinda getting the craving for how a maple topped cream stick (or éclair or long john or whatever it’s called in your neck of the woods) would taste with some maple-infused whiskey to wash it down.

Ultimately, whether or not you’d enjoy this film depends on how you react to the following questions. Do you think Liquor Donuts is an awesome idea? [Yes, we get it…how about moving on now, eh? – Ed.] [See what I did there, eh? – Ed.] [With the Canadian question mark…yeah…nevermind. – Ed.] How thorough is a werewolf’s transformation…i.e. what happens to the guy’s junk in the process? Do you enjoy mindless dismemberment? Have you, at any time in your life, felt that the local government was run by shape-shifting reptiles looking to maintain the status quo? [Coming from northeast Ohio, I had to firmly vote ‘YES’ on this one! – Ed.] How about having someone’s face ripped off leaving them with a literal screaming skull…that appeal to you? And, most importantly, is having sex with a werewolf considered bestiality?

But don’t bail once the film is finished. I’d highly encourage checking out the special features. You see, the way this movie got made was through a program called Cinecoup…kinda like a Canadian Project Greenlight. Over the span of the competition, the creators had to submit ‘Mission Videos’ that would flesh out their ideas and grow their fan-base not only on a national level…but on the world stage! And the Mission Videos on the disc give you some great insight into the filmmakers’ minds…and apparently, they’re just as warped and irreverent as me.

And so…with Wolfcop loose in the world, I learned the valuable lesson of, when in a Best Buy on a Tuesday where nothing notable is coming out on home video, take a look at the cheap stuff…the stuff that starts off in that $10-$13 range and only goes down from there. They may not be widely recognized films, there certainly won’t be an Oscar winner in the bunch and the quoted reviews will likely come from the deepest, darkest bowels of the internet [That’s where we are…and there’s nobody else down here. Maybe you should go with ‘deeper, darker large intestine of the internet? – Ed.] but there’s some good stuff there, a spirit that current big-budget Hollywood productions lack. From this discovery…IMPULSE-BUY THEATER was born.

[It should be noted…we’re not talking about Z-grade films, like that crap that comes from ‘The Asylum’. I am NOT subjecting myself to that shit. If I’m going to watch a movie with 2 beasts fighting each other and there’s a ‘Versus’ in the title, the first name damn well better be Godzilla. Nor am I going to watch a movie that has a title that can VERY easily be confused with some other movie that more than likely has an incredibly larger budget…for example, Transmorphers. Then there's the subject of Sharknadoes...sigh... – Ed.]

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