Ten Days of Terror!: Bad Moon

Films: Bad Moon
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

I know it’s possible for there to be good werewolf movies, because I’ve seen them. Beyond the originals that created the subgenre, movies like An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Dog Soldiers, and especially Ginger Snaps demonstrate that it’s possible to create a cool film about a werewolf. Bad Moon would really like to be among that number, and it does do some things right. It’s problem is that if there’s a trope that exists in any werewolf movie that comes before it, you’re going to see it here.

We start in Nepal, where a photojournalist named Ted Harrison (Michael Pare) and his girlfriend Marjorie (Johanna Marlowe) are doing the nasty in their tent one evening. They are caught rather terribly in flagrante by a werewolf that kills Marjorie and wounds Ted. This means, of course, that according to werewolf lore, Ted is cursed to become a werewolf.

Pieced to Meet You

Film: Body Parts
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on the new portable.

Sometimes, the premise sells the movie. Sometimes, the premise is something that combines a tried and true idea with a twist that makes it feel like it’s new in a lot of ways. And, sometimes that premise gets taken to a particular extreme and falls apart. A movie like Sorry to Bother You, brilliant as I think it is, has that problem; it just loses control in the third act. The same is absolutely true of Body Parts. This is a movie with a premise that will not be a surprise, taken in a slightly new direction that is a surprise, and that culminates with a third act that is bat shit crazy.

Bill Chrushank (Jeff Fahey, and that oddly-cobbled together last name is pronounced “CRU-shank) is a psychologist who both teaches and deals with clinical patients. One day, while driving on the highway, a car near him loses a wheel, and we get a near-accident. This turns into a spectacular real accident when Bill’s car, now stopped on the highway, gets rear-ended by a semi and he goes a-sailin’ through his windshield. While there are a few visual highlights in the film, this is very much a high point.