Metalbeast

I must admit I wasn't expecting much when I first rented this movie, but the concept of a metal covered werewolf is a unique twist on an old story. Also the effects were very good. But if your not into werewolf movies then you may not like Metalbeast.

I GIVE IT (7 STARS) ******* ON THE POSITIVE SIDE (+ HITS)

+ CONCEPT (I always give kudos to an original or a new twist on an old concept)

+ CREATURE EFFECTS (The Metalbeast was just plan cool)

+ ATMOSPHERE (It has spooky atmosphere with substance)

ON THE NEGATIVE SIDE (- MISSES)

• SLOW (It has several places of slow peroids while they build up suspense, a little too long at times)

And Finally:

• FAN BASED (If you are not a fan of horror or werewolf movies then steer clear of PROJECT: METALBEAST)

I'm not sure exactly where that phrase comes from, but when I saw it attached to the YouTube video description it made me laugh so much I just had to watch the movie. Turns out to be a watchable farce with some fun aspects and a few genuinely good moments.

There is a lot of cliché here, but from the opening moments it's clear that the movie was meant to be very much tongue-in-cheek while simultaneously preserving some degree of "serious" horror environment, and it works pretty well at that level.

The creature effects are solid enough to sustain a fair amount of screen time. Most of the shots don't linger very long, which is probably for the best; some of the scenes with the soldier/creature strapped to the table suffer from showing us the obvious makeup/prosthetics for too long. However, the action shots tend to be more fleeting and the creature looks pretty good in those.

The women look pretty good too. :-) Kim and Musetta are visually similar enough that I wondered why they didn't cast one of the two roles differently, but they're both beautiful so that's forgivable. They can act, too, so that helps. :-D

I liked the setting in the facility pretty well; there are enough different locations that the visuals don't get too stagnant, while still having some feeling of cohesion. When we go from room to hallway to room to wherever, it seems plausible that this all could be one large facility. The few exterior shots are good, although it seems odd (at least, to me) that there's a swimming pool right outside a military research facility. Oh well.

The pacing and editing were good. The directing was fine. The acting was good enough from the leads, although the continual varying of Musetta's accent was distracting. Thankfully, the lousy Mexican accent guy departs quickly (as noted by an earlier reviewer).

I was hoping for a bit more exploration of the whole "metal werewolf warrior" notion; mostly this is a fairly standard "experiment gone wrong, trapped in installation with monster" story, and the unique(?) angle is only partially explored. However, for a B-movie, it's entertaining enough. They probably would have needed a bigger budget to do more, like turn the guy loose on some test mission somewhere, or something.

Check this one out if you like the genre and are up for some fairly well-done silliness. If not, skip it.

After finding, killing and extracting a blood sample from a werewolf in Europe, a soldier injects himself with it's DNA, turning himself into a werewolf in an American military base, where he's captured and cryogenically frozen. Flash foreword 10 years, where scientists are given the man's body for an experiment involving a metal-based, organic, self-restoring skin. Upon giving the soldier the skin graph, he awakens and turns into a werewolf, but this time faster, meaner, shinier and bullet proof. I picked this movie up the other day from my local video store for $2, as they are going out of business and need to sell all their videos. I grabbed as many as I could carry home, "Project: Metalbeast" being one of them. Despite the terrible title and having heard nothing of it before, "Metalbeast" turned out to be an okay way to kill 90 minutes in my book. It's got a script that's more intelligent than your usual straight-to-video horror flick, a decent score, some likable characters, a couple of gory bits (the highlight being the death of the creature at the end), and even John Carl Buechler's creature effects weren't bad, though the Metalbeast itself looks more like a Hedgehog on crack than a werewolf. Granted, the film never steps very far out of genre territory, and the portrayal of both the scientists and the military are as clichéd as can be but in the end, "Project: Metalbeast" offered a fine dose of gore, monster action, and a interesting concept that puts a nice spin on the werewolf myth.

$2 well spent, I say.

6/10.

I saw "Project: Metalbeast" last time when I was a kid. After that, I completely forgot about it. Recently I watch it again, and have to say, it's wasn't that bad.

Story starts with two soldiers coming to Hungary who kill a werewolf. They take his blood for the purposes of military experiment (this never gets old) to create a super-soldier. Of course, things turn rotten, and project is shut down. Flash forward ten years after those events, research continues, but naturally, everything goes wrong.

Shot on low budget, Metalbeast surprised me. It looked lot better then most of the direct-to-video(TV) movies of it's era. FX are also very descent with nice amount of gore. Script is also lot better then it appears to be, with some interesting moments thrown here and there. Of course, movies doesn't go too far from it's genre, leaving most of the clichés intact, but surprisingly, they kinda work in this movie. While true acting talents are pretty limited, Barry Bostwick and Kim Delaney (who would latter star in NYPD Blue) save most of the picture.

Negative side: Movie suffers from pace. It tends to slow down from time to time, has relatively slow start, but luckily becomes bit faster as the movie progress. Some dialogs are corny, but that's not a big problem. You are watching a movie about genetically enchanted werewolf with "indestructible" skin after all. I start laughing just when I say that.

Overall, "Project: Metalbeast" definitively is not a masterpiece, but it's a descent and unusual take on werewolf genre. If you are fan of werewolf movies, you might like this. You might like this if you don't have high standards for horror movies, but if you are looking for Hitchockian movie, you should avoid it.

Having no idea this movie even existed, I was surprised to come across it late one night on cable. I thought it might be good for a few laughs. While it is worth a chuckle or two, ultimately it's not as much fun as I hoped it would be. The plot's a rather involved one that starts in the 1970s where a crazy soldier who was part of a mission to take down a werewolf injects himself with werewolf blood. For reasons, I guess. Then he's cryogenically frozen for twenty years by bad guy Barry Bostwick. In the present day of the 1990s, some scientists led by Kim Delaney are working on creating a new type of artificial skin to treat cancer patients and the like. Bostwick comes in and takes over the experiment, forcing them to test their new skin on his frozen werewolf guy. Long story unfortunately not short enough, the werewolf awakens with super strong skin that makes him even more indestructible than he already was. He goes on a killing spree and you can pretty much figure out the rest. It's a cheaply filmed bit of business with Kane Hodder in the cheesy werewolf costume. Barry Bostwick provides some fun but Kim Delaney treats the whole thing more seriously than it deserves. It's goofy and unintentionally funny at times but, as I said already, never as much fun as you want it to be. Still it's pretty watchable so give it a shot if you like low-budget '90s horror.