|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Reporter Lexi Glass (Carrie Long) is working on a big story: a killing
spree that targets exclusively blond women and seems to have something to
do with a lupine creature - of whatever form, actually. Her boss (Lew
Ojeda) though is less impressed: For one, two murders don't make a killing
spree, and two - wolves, in the middle of the city, really? So Lexi loses
the assignment to Dirty Diane (Charlotte C.Leighton), a woman who will do
everything to get ahead, and I mean ... oh heck, why do you think she's
called "Dirty" Diane? Anyways, the more her boss tells her to
stay away from the case, the more obsessed Lexi becomes with it - also
because the killings tie in neatly with her nightmares about the man of
her dreams and a werewolf, and ... something else, that's when she usually
wakes up. Dirty Diane tries to lure the killer - who by the way really
is a werewolf - out into the open ... with disastrous effects, because she
didn't fully think through what to do with the killer once he's onto her,
and thus she bites the dust. Through some telepathic link, Lexi is
summoned to the scene of Diane's murder, where the werewolf overpowers her
... and then she wakes up with a guy who claims to be her dream guardian,
and who tells her the truth about her parents: Apparently, her dad (Andy
Ramsey) had been the survivor of a plane crash lost on a dessert island
where a Russian nuclear submarine that was attacked by a werewolf was
stranded, and now the marine wildlife got contaminated ... and mutated.
Sal ate from some fish eggs - and became Piranha-Man. on the island, he
and the werewolf soon got into a fight, but somehow dad managed to escape
to return to Lexi's mom to procreate a child - Lexi. Unfortunately, the
werewolf later caught up with Lexi's mom too and ... did not kill her but
procreate Lexi's half brother, the werewolf who's roaming the city streets
to get a lead on Lexi's dad to end their conflict once and for all - the
bloody way. Lexi tracks down her father both out of professional and
personal interest, and finds him somewhere in Indiana, chained up in a
cave and mistreated by a couple of thugs. Upon seeing her being threatened
by the thugs, Piranha-Man frees himself to protect her - and all of a
sudden, Lexi finds herself not only in the middle of a fight Piranha-Man
vs Werewolf-Man, but also finds the nightmares she's been having for years
coming true ... Now seriously, when you're watching a film
called Piranha-Man vs Werewolf-Man: Howl of the Piranha, you don't
exactly expect the next Citizen Kane, right? Rather a piece of
genre cinema that in the best case lives up to its sensationalist title -
and let's be honest, very few of films with similar titles do, mostly the
filmmakers' originality and creativity begins and ends with the title. Piranha-Man
vs Werewolf-Man: Howl of the Piranha then is pretty much the exception
to the rule: Sure, the story built around the title is pretty silly, but
while it's played totally straight, there's always a certain
tongue-in-cheek feel to it, or at least a willingness of the filmmakers to
entertain rather than hide behind a flashy title. And while other
monstermovies of late, even of the low budget variety (and Piranha-Man
vs Werewolf-Man: Howl of the Piranha was definitely made on the
cheap), try to gloss over their shortcomings with flashy yet impersonal
CGI-effects, this one goes for rubber masks and purely practical effects.
And while the masks look as cheap as they probably were, they do give the
film a certain physicality and also honesty rarely achieved in monster
cinema these days. In a nutshell, what I want to say is probably this:
This one might not be a masterpiece by anyone's standards - but it's also
lots of fun!
|