Late Phases

An ornery, blind army veteran moves into a retirement community, where he finds himself under attack during the full moon. He has one month to prepare his defences for the next phase.

What an odd movie. It has a touch of Coen brothers, some Witches Of Eastwick, and a dash of AWILondon. The lead is played brilliantly, with all that gruff dialogue, and many scenes have a powerful whiff of intra-communal paranoia. It really feels like a sophisticated satire on American values, with lots of wry digs at police, army, church and self-imposed isolation. But in the last act it goes fully literal and loses its touch, with no real reflection on what went before.

Sadly the creatures present as extras in furry costumes, but there is a bit of decent gore - although ultimately nothing is scary. I guess the director has to be blamed for the rushed feel of the final showdown.

The music is a bit generic, but effective in setting the mood.

Overall - great lead performance, but an odd mixture that doesn't carry through.

If you need your dose of creature feature, Late Phases may not be a great one, but it is a pleasant one nonetheless. What's rather unusual is that the best bits don't come from the creatures but from the main character, his personality, and the way he deals with things. Played by Mr Damici, I found him quite fascinating.

More points for originality come from the setting itself, a sort of village full of elderly people. Something that you don't see everyday, and that ends up playing miles above all the teenage & monsters rubbish that pollutes our silver screens these days.

Late Phases has all you might expect from a decent B-movie: not the best FX and monster suits, but personality, intriguing developments, and fun. Many things are done right, like going into action right from the start and showing the creature in the first minutes. Even the music score has a couple of great moments. So why not a better note ? Well, none of the flaws is big enough to ruin the story, but I can't just ignore all the little goofs, and the costumes do look daffy after all.

A blind veteran moves to a small community for elders, where he is attacked by an animal one night. Realizing that he has been attacked by a werewolf, he spends his time preparing for the next full moon.

It seemed to be yet another low budget crap werewolf movie. And yes, the werewolves to look like guys wearing cheap Halloween costumes, but the movie in itself is not that bad. The acting is good, the story of the grumpy, blind old veteran preparing for the next werewolf attack is actually more interesting than the attacks themselves.

The fact that most of the characters are elderly is quite refreshing, and they manage to set a mood that kept me watching, not for the werewolves, but because I actually cared about what happened to the protagonist.

Late Phases reminded me a lot of Silver Bullet (the movie adapted from Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf) but with a blind, elderly Vietnam veteran instead of a paraplegic boy as the protagonist. As much as I have always loved Silver Bullet, I have to admit that I enjoyed this movie about as much, and it doesn't feel dated the way that Silver Bullet does when watching it again. It seems fitting that the special effects were handled by the same man who did special effects work on Bubba Ho-Tep, since there are some parallels between this story and that one, except that this one doesn't take place in a retirement facility, rather it takes place in a neighborhood of retirees. I've seen better werewolf creature effects (the creature appears to be a little bit more like a wererabbit because of a strangely short snout combined with the long, pointed ears), but I have seen much, much worse than these. It's not the caliber of the Howling or the old Werewolf television series, but it beats the hell out of the shiny/glossy, god awful creature effects from the Underworld movies and so many others. The transformation process itself, that you don't get to witness until near the end, is actually pretty impressive compared to a lot of them I've seen. The story is captivating for the most part, though it does drop a few steps during the investigative portion of the narrative while the protagonist figures things out and prepares for the next full moon to arrive. The climax of the movie makes up for it though, and then some...and even that slower patch between the full moons isn't the sort of thing that can be skipped over, in part because there is a bit of a twist relating directly to the investigation the protagonist conducts. I felt like now was as good a time as any to watch this particular movie because I am in the process of writing a werewolf story of my own, and it seemed like a good idea to watch some things for additional inspiration...and this one definitely served that purpose well. I wish that the werewolf wasn't such an underrepresented monster in both movies and literature...but it seems like all anyone has time for are zombies and vampires, and that is a damn shame. I would love to see more movies like this.

Late Phases...interesting title i suppose. I was really excited to have a werewolf movie that appeared, judging by the reviews, to have promise. I tend to base most werewolf movies on what i consider the gold standard of that genre, An American Werewolf In London. For me that movie has suspense, humor (to offset the suspense), great special effects (still one of my favorite werewolf makeups and transformation scenes) and a decent story line.

Late Phases doesn't really have many of those but it does have some humor and a couple quasi suspenseful spots. The main character is very likable which i think adds to the film and, for me at least, the movie gets very cheesy in an almost Troma Films like fashion towards the end. The werewolves are far from well done...they are embarrassingly bad. I will say that one transformation scene is actually pretty decent and the profile of the beasts are OK but that's it. The actual werewolf though looks like Fuzzbucket ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286639/ ) on crack (sorry Fuzzbucket, i still like you). The werewolves look like Halloween Express costumes. I enjoyed it though...somehow. Maybe its the Bubba Ho Tep type feel of monsters and Elderly people? I gave it a 6 / 10 because its definitely watchable but you need to be in the mood for this type of movie. Its not as bad as the "bad" reviews are stating but its definitely not stellar. Its just... Fun

I would watch this if you like cheesy werewolf movies. If you are looking for a serious piece of film then you might want to move on.