The Beast of Bray Road

After seeing this movie, if I were single, I'd be moving to Wisconsin. A small town full of smokin' hot women where all the men are drunken derelicts sounds perfect for a decent guy to move into.

But on to the movie. I thought it was a decent low-budget werewolf flick. Certainly worth the rental and far better than a lot of junk out there (Carnosaur, Alien Apocalypse, War of the Planets). Really, the acting was much better than I expected. The romance scenes were light-years ahead of Star Wars, Episode III (although that's not a huge endorsement).

The special effects were also pretty good considering the obvious low budget. The werewolf certainly didn't compare to anything from Underworld, but it wasn't nearly as cheesy as I was worried it might be.

I thought the plot moved along at a decent clip and even had a couple of unexpected twists.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie as a good, check-your-brain-at-the-door type flick. It was fun. What more do you expect from a low-budget monster movie?

A nice little and a little too easy going indie' B-movie, The Beast of Bray Road, is, allegedly, based on factual reports of sightings, circa 1989, of the legendary sasquatch and werewolf myth, or cryptozoology as the scholars would pronounce, and wild as the beast itself, the over active imaginations of the peoples' of Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Directed and written by Leigh Scott (b.1972), aka Scott Slawner, brings his extended family together for another outing, this time to do battle with modern folklore and superstition. Released by Asylum Home Entertainment, whose category embarks on the wonderful B-movie drive-in genre as Snakes on a Train (2006), Vampires vs. Zombies (2004) and The Fanglys (2004), all straight to video, and all for sale at the bargain basement bin at your local video rental shop. Most here, at least, have worked together in other projects, Jeff Denton (as Sheriff Phil Jenkins), working in Leigh Scott's Art House (1998), Sarah Lieving (here as Kelly), and Andrew Lauer had played against said director in the T.V. movie H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds (2005). Ms. Noel Thurman (playing Sheriff Pamela Fitske) in Mr. Scott's The 9/11 Commission Report (2006).

Mr. Scott's movie is very light comedy; too many weak points to be taken seriously, The Beast of Bray Road could be taken for a Saturday morning T.V. matinée parody at best. If it were not for the gross out flesh eating scenes and, once, light nudity and some coarse language, but not often. We can forgive Mr. Scott for trying too hard, but try he has and he has, forgivingly, done reasonably well. The attention to detail can be somewhat lacking, sadly, and it is this that has The Beast… looking a little too unprofessional and unfortunately this gives it its comical look, the desired effect perhaps or a bad dose of laziness and complacency.

The beasts makeup, on the other hand, is impressive, and done by Eva Lohse, regrettably, the only highlight of the movie, and not really seen enough, and Dizzworks Design too played their part. Ms. Lohse is credited as key makeup artist and having worked on Rent Control (2002), Employee of the Month (2004), plus many others as Dead Men Walking (2005) and Dracula's Curse (2006), which coincidently has five members of The Beast…co-starring.

The poor attention to the editing, again by Leigh Scott, has given The Beast…more plot holes than Emmental cheese, we are left scratching our heads and left feeling the efforts are rather curdled in the process and that this could, if at best, have been a half decent movie. This could, and to be fair, be down to a lack of proper funding, if so then the parodying of the major American beer companies and their logos that are seen in "KELLY'S Roadhouse" might be understandable.

The clichéd character development, too, is feeble and the lack of originality only separates its need to be taken seriously. All in all The Beast of Bray Road is a group of new family and old friends making movies, if it doesn't workout, then fine, lets make another. If one should hit the jackpot and stir up peoples imaginations then all the better for them, but in the meantime The Beast…will remain an okay movie, but it will never walk down the road of being a good movie.

This Wisconsin werewolf movie is supposedly based on a local legend, however, it appears to take massive liberties with the original fable. Unflattering stereotype hicks abound, and at some point, almost every character has a beer in their hand. Now some of this is actually amusing, as almost every monster on the loose film out there has been "borrowed" from. There is some gratuitous nudity involving a couple parking for some "business" and perhaps capturing a werewolf cell phone picture, that borders on the ridiculous, but does add to the fun. The ending is a real rubber band job (stretch). Not bad of it's type, and marginally recommended. - MERK

Leigh Scott's "The Beast of Bray Road," released in 2005, is a very loose telling of the legendary "dogman" of SE Wisconsin. In reality, the beast has only been sighted and has never killed anyone. In the film, however, numerous people bite the dust in extremely gory scenes, heads getting torn off, the beast eating their innards, etc.

In the beginning it's unclear what type of beast the "dogman" is, is it a bigfoot? A werewolf? A cryptozoologist appears and helps the police pinpoint the probable nature of the creature.

POSITIVES:

• I liked the main protagonists, the police chief (Jeff Denton), the cryptozoologist, the beautiful bartender Kelly (Sarah Lieving) and the other police personnel.

• The story is generally compelling and moves right along.

• The killer creature looks excellent and you get quite a few good looks at it; no CGI.

• The story turns out to be a mystery. The beast may be a human being that transforms into the bloodthirsty creature. If so, who is it? If you've seen films like "The Howling V: The Rebirth" you know what to look for.

NEGATIVES:

• Although the story takes place near Elkhorn & Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the film was shot in friggin' California, near Los Angeles, likely to keep expenses down; they did fine, however, making sure the scenery didn't look too much like typical Southern California. It sorta passes for SE Wisconsin, I guess.

• The film is filled with gorgeous women from beginning to end but Mr. Scott fumbles the ball and doesn't truly take advantage (and I'm not talking about top nudity or sex scenes at all; the film has some of both). Scott does much better in this area in 2008's "Flu Birds" and 2009's "The Dunwich Horror."

• Until the last act the film has a we're-not-taking-this-too-seriously vibe. It wasn't so bad to ruin the horror experience, but it was there. This is a minor cavil, however; all-in-all the filmmakers did a decent job balancing camp with serious horror.

• Every Wisconsin yokel, male or female, is portrayed as a hip, dour, alcohol-guzzling sex-fiend.

BOTTOM LINE: "The Beast of Bray Road" is a worthwhile killer beast flick but contains enough negative elements to prevent it from being truly good. The non-CGI monster looks great, however, and is worth the price of admission, not to mention this is a must if you're a gorehound (I'm not; I can take gore or leave it; all I care about is that the story & cast be interesting and entertaining).

The film runs 80 minutes.

GRADE: Borderline C+ or B-

OK I felt the need to stick up for this movie a little bit. You have to take it for what it is, it's a low budget independent werewolf movie. With that in mind this movie really wasn't as bad as another reviewer has claimed. I purposely rent low budget indie horror flicks to see what people can do with a low budget, and sure there were things that could have been better, but there were a lot of good things about it too. For one, the fact that it didn't look like a kid grabbed his mom's video camera and started recording is a big plus, considering the picture quality on many indie horror flicks out right now is absolute CRAP. Most of the effects weren't bad. If you are like myself and can enjoy a mindless horror movie than you might like this one.