Wolf Guy (1975)

Jumping forward 34 years from The Wolf Man, we get washed out and low dynamic range color, guitar rock, and a massively freaking out Japanese man in a fantastic white suit. "She turned into a tiger!" he yells in a panic. "Miki has cursed us!" Just to be clear, it's not called Tiger Guy. I hope these subtitles are alright. Anyway, he walks off camera and then is somehow sliced to bloody, bloody bits. We've come a long way in 34 years, indeed. Once they were men, now they're guys.

The intro credits roll over a series of brutal historical gun murders. Riflemen ruthlessly mowing down women and children. I don't know how this is going to add werewolves, and I'm excited!

The only witness is down at the police station when the coroner's report comes in. Cause of death: "a demon." I don't know what Japan is actually like, but boy do I hope it's actually like this. They release the witness because he's not a demon. On his way out, we learn the guy's name: Wolf. He is played by none other than Kill Bill's own Hattori Hanzō, Sonny Chiba. He drives around with some guy, listening to 70s porn music on repeat, and they talk about the recent death and the tiger curse. The dead man was in a band, and everyone in the band has died of tiger (and/or demon, and/or wolf) slash wounds. There's one band member left alive.

It cuts weirdly to them interviewing the alcoholic band member in the gutter. He says Miki was a groupie who slept with all of the guys in the band. They gave her an STD, and she gave them a supernatural curse. It feels like the script was written by a 16-year-old.

I don't think it has said what Wolf's profession is. Some sort of private eye? He picks a kung-fu battle with a big group of yakuza, and he's winning thoroughly until one of them shoots him. He's saved by a mystery woman on a motorcycle, who lays him down on a spinning round, velvet bed. This movie isn't going to concern itself with making sense, I wouldn't think.

She strips naked for no reason, the porn music stutters, and she licks the blood from his wound and fingers. They have sex without introducing each other or explaining anything. She calls him an animal, and we can be pretty sure that he is, in fact, Wolf Guy. Also, the full title is Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope, which is so far the only hint we have that this film involves werewolves.

Some lady sings about Tigers in a stripclub, which I suppose is Miki, while the crowd yells angrily and throws things at her because she isn't stripping. Wolf teleports in, sits on the bouncer, and tries to make any sense of Miki. The scenes are cut together haphazardly, and without any sense of continuity nor progression. Miki suddenly ends up in a yakuza basement where they're playing some sort of ring toss game.

Wolf comes in and defeats the yakuza by throwing coins in their faces and doing some flips. The martial arts choreography might be the most thought through element of this film. Wolf hallucinates a floating tiger, and one of the yakuza is suddenly ripped to shreds.

Wolf explains a lot of what's going on in a voiceover, but understanding the plot doesn't improve it. The murders in the credits weren't arbitrary, it was the slaughter of the wolf tribe people. Our Wolf is the last wolf. And on a full moon, he becomes: Wolf Guy! We're only halfway to the first full moon, oh my god. Wolf is in love with Miki now and hates humanity.

A yakuza hitman throws a mouse at him and then they fight with a long piece of rope. He is saved by a secret government hitman, who kills the first hitman and kidnaps Wolf and Miki on behalf of some government intelligence agency, the… JCIA. They want his wolf powers and her tiger curse. The government locks them in a sci-fi room and hypnotizes them with voiceovers. Miki murders people with her mind, and they hire her as a government assassin.

The still-imprisoned Wolf is taken to a sci-fi medical lab and sliced open by surgeons, who twiddle his organs around as punishment for not cooperating with their evil government plans. They put him back in his cell with his organs still spilling out of his stomach.

The full moon arrives while he's "recovering" from surgery. Moon power heals him instantly, and he blows through his chains and cage bars. The porn music picks up, and a bunch of people run around in what looks like Dr. Evil's secret lair. There's some kung-fu fighting, and then he's saved by that motorcycle woman, who I guess worked for the government. He doesn't even transform into a wolf.

It transitions instantly to a third, even stupider movie, and he has breastfeeding flashbacks while having sex with a stranger in a cave, who immediately becomes his wife. At this point, they're just splicing any two pieces of footage together.

He gets machine-gunned, but it's still full moon time so he's literally invincible. They do kung-fu in a gravel mine. Miki is brought in by jeep to kill Wolf with tiger mind powers. While she's tigering, Wolf's new wife shoots her in the chest and she explodes.