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.

In 1974, two American agents are sent to Hungary by his superior Miller (Barry Bostwick) to get werewolf blood for a secret project for the creation of an invincible warrior. One of the men dies and the other decides to inject the blood in himself, being killed by Miller. There is a shutdown of the secret project. Twenty years later, the scientist Anne de Carlo (Kim Delaney) is carrying out a research of mettalic skin to replace burned ones under the command of Miller, and the body of the dead agent is delivered for the experiment. The agent is transformed in a kind of killing metallic werewolf.

"Project: Metalbeast" is a low-budget movie, with a screenplay wirhout originality. I do not know how many films I have seen with similar storyline. The villain performed by Barry Bostwick is the best this movie can offer. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Metalbeast"

Note: On 07 June 2024, I saw this film again.

Despite my love for all things horror, I had never actually heard about it. I managed to track down the movie, as I found out that Kane Hodder was in the movie, and thus I had to get to watch it, given his iconic horror status.

Sure, I had no idea what I was in for here, aside from what I could discern from the synopsis, and thus only knew it was a werewolf movie of sorts. But I had zero expectations to the movie as I sat down to watch it for the first time here in 2025, and thus director Alessandro De Gaetano had every opportunity to entertain and impress me.

Writers Alessandro De Gaetano, Timothy E. Sabo and Roger Steinmann put together an okay script. I mean, it was watchable, but nothing extraordinary. The pacing of the narrative, however, was a bit slow paced and the interesting events in the narrative were few and far between one another.

I was surprised to see that the movie was starring Barry Bostwick, so there was a familiar face on the cast list, aside from Kane Hodder. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

The effects in the movie were quite good for a movie such as this, and definitely added to the overall enjoyment of the movie.

My rating of "Project: Metalbeast" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

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.

A group of militants head to a Hungarian castle to get a sample of werewolf blood from the apparent tenant. Despite one of the men being killed in the process, the mission is a success. Back in the U.S., military scientists are studying the blood under the supervision of Colonel Miller (Barry Bostwick) and the militant who secured the blood in the first place, Butler (John Marzilli). The latter tires of waiting for the scientists to do their thing, so he foolishly decides to inject himself with the remaining blood. It isn't long before he turns into a werewolf and mauls two of the scientists, but Miller puts him down with some silver bullets and has him cryogenically frozen. 20 years go by as Butler remains on ice. The same military installation is now home to a research group working on a synthetic skin called bio-ferrin. Metallic in nature, the skin is meant to help burn victims. Miller gets wind of their work and decides that it's time to thaw out Butler and have these scientists fit him with the skin, in turn making an indestructible killing machine for use on the battlefield. As usual in these types of films, things do not go according to plan.

I rented this film back in the mid-90's and found it to be an entertaining shot in the arm to the then all but dormant werewolf sub-genre. I recently revisited it for the first time in over a decade, and I'm happy to say that it still holds up as an enjoyable treat amidst the sea of bad werewolf pictures. The idea of creating a super soldier is hardly original, but who cares? Where else are you going to see a werewolf with armored skin? Lycanthropes are threatening to begin with, but this film takes it a step further with it's metallic monstrosity. It's a hulking behemoth of a creature too, as it should be with Kane Hodder wearing the monster suit. We also get some pretty good half man, half wolf make-up following Butler's first escape from the lab. Most of the killings are partially offscreen, but they're juicy enough.

The gorgeous Kim Delaney plays Dr. Anne De Carlo, head of the bio-ferrin research group. Delaney is a personal favorite of mine, and a sorely under-appreciated actress to boot. Despite appearing in popular TV shows like "NYPD Blue" and "CSI Miami", she also did her fair share of horror films such as this one, "The Drifter" and a few others. Her character here immediately clashes with Miller, who naturally keeps the scientists in the dark about his true intentions. As Miller, Barry Bostwick chews the scenery and relishes the slimy nature of his role, that of a man who takes time to touch up his hair while being mauled by the titular "metalbeast". The rest of the cast members are nothing to write home about, but Delaney and Bostwick do more than enough to carry the picture.

While "Project: Metalbeast" certainly isn't a masterpiece of the genre or anything like that, it succeeds at being an entertaining little monster flick, which is exactly what it set out to do. Yes, Delaney runs a little too easily for someone who just had a metal rod run through her foot and the werewolf's impenetrable skin isn't milked to it's fullest, but whatever. This thing makes for a damn good time while delivering a new spin on lycanthropy. Watch it if you like low budget monster romps. And someone get this out on DVD already!