WolfCop (2014)

There are people out there giving this movie 1.5 star reviews. People are watching a low-budget independent Saskatchewanian film called WolfCop, with a picture of a werewolf in a police uniform with a revolver as the cover art, and giving it a 1.5 star review. I don't know what they expected a low-budget independent Saskatchewanian film called WolfCop, with a picture of a werewolf in a police uniform with a revolver as the cover art, to be… but it is exactly what it should be. It's Grindhouse. It's Werewolf Women of the S.S.

Obviously, it's a comedy, but unlike other werewolf comedies, it doesn't feel the need to deliver every punchline like a zinger and pause while you react, reiterating at every step that it is still a comedy; WolfCop just plays out a ludicrous werewolf story, and is funny. It never even stoops to slapstick physical comedy or potty humor (well, ok, once); it has enough natural situational farce built in to the premise that they could just film it straight, and let the laughs shake out where they may. They shake right out.

Our titular cop starts out human, a mix between Who Framed Roger Rabbit's depressed alcoholic detective and Clerks' this-job-would-be-great-if-it-wasn't-for-the-fucking-customers Randal, showing up to his shift at the department several hours late and absolutely knackered. This movie has every reason to have undeveloped one-dimensional characters, but it develops them anyway; Lou, the cop, is later explained to be living in the depressive shadow of his cop father who was killed under mysterious circumstances when Lou was a boy.

Lou is the worthless alcoholic cop, working with the nice and useful Tina and the gruff police chief who understandably hates him. He gets sent down to to handle a report from Willy, the crackpot conspiracy theorist who runs the hunting shop and thinks Satanists are making sacrifices in his backyard. After work, he lets off steam by drinking a beer or fourteen at the local bar run by the attractive woman he's trying to sleep with.

The town is overrun by drug dealers, and effectively run by gangs. A young guy is running for mayor on the platform of cleaning up the drug and crime problem, running against the incumbent old mayor lady who is much more popular.

Lou goes out into the conspiracy theorist's woods at night, finds the mayoral candidate hanging from a tree, and gets clubbed on the head. He wakes up at home with no memory, super senses, a pentagram carved into his chest, and a general inability to shave his beard. When he's called out to a scene, he finds the mayoral candidate with his throat yanked out. He goes to the pub to unwind. Three gang members come in to kidnap him, but arrive shortly after he transformed into a wolf – cock first – in the bathroom. He eviscerates them.

He wakes up handcuffed to Willy's bed. Willy laughs and tells him he's a werewolf, which Lou doesn't accept at first. The idea grows on him, he agrees to be locked in a cell the next night, and he wolfs out again. This time, for some reason, he retains his human knowledge and ability to speak, and insists on responding to a call even though he's in wolf form.

Lou and Willy modify the cop car into a wolf machine, and drive around town going all Robocop on every minor violator unlucky enough to be outside tonight.

They bust through the wall of the drug dealer's barn headquarters, and WolfCop runs around ripping people's limbs and faces off before blowing up the whole barn.

Still in wolf form, he has sex with the bartender. She drugs him, and shapeshifts into the old mayor lady just as he passes out. He wakes up tied to a tree, where three townspeople in evil wizard robes explain the story to him. They're shapeshifters who live off off the blood of werewolves, but they can only kill werewolves during an eclipse, so every 32 years they both create and then sacrifice a werewolf to harvest its blood.

Lou wolfs out during the eclipse, but Tina shows up just as they start harvesting his blood. A big battle occurs, and of course the police chief is the evil final boss. He turns into a lizard person when he dies.

Not content with just breaking one traditional werewolf lore rule, WolfCop even introduces a thrilling new twist on the rules of wolf transformation: he molts his human skin every time he transitions, leaving behind a him-shaped shell of wiggly flesh. His partner finds his entire former face dangling from the top of a bathroom stall after his first transition. He rips out of himself like a cicada from its shell. They probably had a standing line of credit with the local liquid latex dealer.