Late Phases

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.

Wounded war vet Ambrose (Nick Damici) moves to a place where people are dying from mysterious circumstances.

This is the most pleasant surprise in the horror genre in quite a while. Although a few films have caused a bit of a stir (including "The Babadook" and "Starry Eyes"), this may turn out to be the sleeper hit of 2014 when word of mouth begins on the DVD release.

Werewolf films are few and far between, and good ones are even more rare. Although Universal tried to reboot "The Wolfman" a few years back, it was hardly appreciated. The last great wolf film was probably "Dog Soldiers" (2002), now more than a decade ago. "Late Phases" now takes that spot as the last great wolf film.

Leading the way is Nick Damici, who makes a very believable blind veteran. If these sort of films won awards, Damici might even be a strong contender. Horror fans ought to know his background, too: mentored by Michael Moriarty (a Larry Cohen regular), Damici came into the realm of Jim Mickle and Larry Fessenden (who produced this picture). He tends to be the less-often-mentioned part of this team, but should be mentioned in the same breath.

Then we have an excellent supporting cast: beyond Damici and Fessenden, we have Ethan Embry ("Can't Hardly Wait"), Tom Noonan ("Manhunter"), Tina Louise ("Gilligan's Island") and even Dana Ashbrook ("Twin Peaks"). The strongest supporting role is filled by Lance Guest ("Jaws: The Revenge"), as the connection between Ambrose and the local church.

The effects are solid, with both Bob Kurtzman and David Greathouse constructing the creature. Greathouse even wears the costume, apparently. Mix this with a plot that is entirely original (with a nod or two to classics like "Silver Bullet") and you have a winner.

Oddly, reviews are mixed. Shock Til Your Drop says the film is "obviously going for the Bubba Ho-Tep vibe", a contention that is flat-out wrong. Other than this being a community of elderly folks, there is no similarity. They might have said "goes for the Cocoon vibe" and been just as wrong. Bloody Disgusting properly called it "a masterpiece of the werewolf genre".

Director Adrián García Bogliano may not be well known, but after "B is for Bigfoot", "Here Comes the Devil" and now this, horror fans better take notice.

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.

All cheer (or howl…) for this brand new and instant horror gem! Every year there are hundreds of zombie movies being released and only very few of them are worth checking out. Every year there are several vampire movies being released and even less of those are worth seeing. Per year there are just a handful of werewolf movies coming out, so if you stumble upon a worthwhile one nowadays, you should really cherish it. But "Late Phases" is more than just a worthwhile werewolf movie… It's a fantastic and awesomely entertaining werewolf movie; arguably the best one since… I don't even know since when! To be honest, my personal expectations towards "Late Phases" were quite high from beforehand, because I've been following the work of the young Spanish-born director Adrián Garcia Bogliano and, so far, he didn't make a single bad movie. "Cold Sweat", "I'll Never Die Alone" and "Here Comes the Devil" are all terrific films. Of course, werewolf stories are tricky and this is also the first time that Bogliano directs a film that he didn't script himself, but still I was more than confident enough about the great potential of "Late Phases". But what makes this such a good effort, apart from Bogliano's skills and influence? Well, Eric Stolze penned down a sublime screenplay that is original, innovating, suspenseful, fast-paced and – most of all – traditional! Yes, "Late Phases" is finally another movie that respects the old-fashioned werewolf trademarks (full moons, silver bullets, etc…) without serving them as dull clichés or in a satirical way. Ambrose McKinley, a blind and deeply embittered Vietnam veteran is dropped off by his son Will at Crescent Bay; a quiet community where elderly folks enjoy their retirement and that is located next to a large forest. During his first night already, the friendly neighbor Dolores is savagely ripped to pieces and also Ambrose himself and his loyal guide dog Shadow are attacked by a gigantic wolf creature. It turns out that residents of Crescent Bay are killed off on a monthly basis, but everyone assumes that animals from the woods are responsible and they aren't the police's priority. Moreover, the deputy even literally states that animals are God's way to help the world getting of old people! That's nice! Ambrose links the monthly attacks to the full moon and promptly begins with counterattack preparations. Meanwhile, he gets to know the rest of the neighborhood – or better yet, potential lycanthropes – in his own rude and offensive style. Another thing that "Late Phases" features for the first time since many, many moons is a truly awesome lead hero. Ambrose McKinley, as depicted by Nick Damici, is one cool dude. He uses a shovel as a cane, buys massive tombstones for his dead dog, smokes cigarettes with the local priest and nearly switches off the iron lung of one of his neighbors. Last but certainly not least "Late Phases" also contains plentiful of great gore and make-up effects, coming from specialist Robert Kurtzman. The werewolf transformation sequences are sublime and the carnal damage caused by these delightful creatures is even better. See it!

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.