ANOTHER WOLFCOP (2017)

Studio:       Image Entertainment
Director:    Lowell Dean
Writer:       Lowell Dean
Producer:  Deborah Marks, Hugh Patterson, Bernie Hernando
Stars:     Leo Fafard, Yannick Bisson, Amy Matysio, Sara Miller, Devery Jacobs, Kris “The Raven” Blackwell, Warren Bates, Jonathan Cherry

Review Score:

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Summary:

WolfCop teams with new and familiar allies to destroy shapeshifters after uncovering a plot to take over Woodhaven through a peculiar new beer.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Billionaire businessman Sydney Swallows, who secretly leads a cabal of interdimensional shapeshifters, films a commercial for his new Chicken Milk stout beer, which is actually brewed using Darkstar technology enabling him to impregnate humans with shapeshifters. Swallows orders his henchwoman Number Two to execute a boom operator who accidentally hits his head with a microphone during filming.

WolfCop pursues four henchmen transporting a mysterious package in a van. The henchmen blow up WolfCop’s car, but WolfCop makes it to the van and viciously dismembers everyone inside. Tina Walsh, who is Woodhaven’s new police chief, pursues the van with rookie officer Scott.

When Tina and Scott make it to the van, WolfCop is gone. Scott’s fellow rookie Daisy discovers the severed heads inside.

Tina angrily confronts WolfCop at his hideout in the Fortress Animal Shelter for breaking his promise to remain locked away during the full moon. WolfCop calms Tina by showing her a gift tag with the shapeshifter’s occult symbol that he found on the package inside the van. Tina says until they know who can be trusted, WolfCop’s hideout will be their new home base.

The town of Woodhaven excitedly prepares for the opening of Sydney Swallows’ new Darkstar Brewery and Hockey Arena. Corrupt interim mayor Bubba Rich, who brokered the deal with Swallows, publicly promotes his agenda to Tina and Daisy while voicing his suspicion that Lou Garou is also WolfCop.

While disposing of the decapitated bodies, Lou, now reverted to human form, opens the large gift box from the van. Lou is shocked to see his friend Willie Higgins emerge from green goo inside the box.

Willie explains that he only remembers being prodded by reptilian shapeshifters. He and Lou conclude that the Willie previously killed by Tina was actually a shapeshifter impersonating him while the real Willie was in captivity.

Swallows oversees as Dr. Brundel brings to life a Terminator-like creature named Frank. Frank is dispatched to the Club Phoque strip club where he ends up murdering several patrons.

After a stop at the liquor store, Lou races back to the shelter where Tina locks him up before that evening’s full moon. Secured in his hideout, Lou transforms into WolfCop.

Meanwhile, Willie becomes terrified when he grows a strange, sentient lower body appendage that he nicknames ‘Bad Willie.’ Suspicious about his unexpected resurrection, Tina approaches Willie cautiously. Willie shows her the attached creature.

Daisy and Scott are summoned to the crime scene at Club Phoque where they confront Frank. Frank kills Scott. Daisy radios Tina for backup.

Tina rushes to the strip club. Having heard the call over Tina’s walkie-talkie, WolfCop also arrives with Willie as his escort. Despite Tina’s objections over having Lou there in wolf form, she and WolfCop go inside to face Frank.

Following a brutal battle, Frank badly beats down WolfCop. After emptying two handguns into him, Tina finally fells Frank by setting him on fire with a Molotov cocktail.

Tina gets WolfCop outside and instructs Willie to take him to safety. During an unconscious fantasy involving Tina, WolfCop reverts to Lou in badly beaten human form. Willie rushes Lou to see his sister Kat, who practices occult magic.

Number Two steals Frank’s corpse and returns it to Swallows along with security camera footage of WolfCop from inside the club. Swallows orders WolfCop’s death.

Recognizing Lou as a lycan, Kat has Lou inhale crushed moon rock dust that revives and heals him. Kat, Willie, and Lou go to a metal music bar where Bad Willie acts up while Lou and Kat take a mutual interest in one another, despite Willie’s objection over his friend hooking up with his sister.

While examining clues and processing evidence with Daisy, Tina realizes that Swallows’ plan involves transforming the residents of Woodhaven through his Chicken Milk beer. Tina and Daisy infiltrate the Darkstar arena and brewery building.

Lou and Kat return to Kat’s place with Willie. Kat snorts moon dust and transforms, revealing she is also a she-wolf. Kat and Lou have sex, although Lou remains in his human form.

In the other room, Willie turns up the TV volume to drown out the sounds of sex. Sydney Swallows’ commercial plays, which causes Bad Willie to mutate and break away from Willie’s body.

Mayor Rich goes to see Swallows at the arena to collect his payment. Swallows has Rich drink a Chicken Milk beer. Afterward, Swallows activates a device that summons a reptilian creature from inside the mayor’s stomach. When Tina splits off to investigate the commotion, a henchman captures Daisy.

Willie rallies Lou and Kat to help him find Bad Willie. Kat hears the creature hiss and identifies its sound as belonging to a shapeshifter. Bad Willie attacks Lou. Kat shoots the creature off of him. Kat realizes that the shifters found a way to impregnate humans to get around the fact that Earth’s atmosphere prevents them from naturally reproducing. Tina calls Lou to come to the arena.

The stadium begins filling with locals for a big game between the Woodhaven Darkstars and the Regina Potashers. Lou and Willie regroup there with Tina and arm up to rescue Daisy and take out the shapeshifters.

Lou uses moon rock dust to transform into WolfCop and pose as a Regina hockey player. Willie disguises himself as the referee while Tina investigates the arena as a maintenance worker.

Swallows comes out onto the ice for a pregame presentation during which he has all of the fans drink a celebratory Chicken Milk beer. Shapeshifter organist Organo then plays the Canadian national anthem, causing numerous people to violently die while birthing baby reptilian shapeshifters.

Tina discovers that the Darkstar players aren’t human. Willie still drops the puck to start the game before leaving the rink to confront Organo. WolfCop prevents a Darkstars goal, then unmasks himself on the ice as panic continues in the stands.

After taking out Organo, Willie makes an announcement over the loudspeakers. Tina helps survivors escape the fray.

WolfCop chugs from his flask to regenerate strength and continue killing Darkstar players. Willie also gives WolfCop more moon rock dust to maintain his viciousness.

Tina faces off against Number Two. Willie shoots Number Two off of Tina, enabling Tina to pursue Swallows when he escapes the rink with Daisy held hostage.

Number Two recovers. With WolfCop downed on the ice following several violent fights, Number Two prepares to crush him under Zamboni tank treads.

Tina rescues Daisy. The two of them then confront Swallows at gunpoint, but are forced to let him flee when he threatens to explode bombs planted all over the building.

In werewolf form, Kat arrives to take down Number Two and rescue WolfCop before he can be crushed. Willie combines the remaining moon rock dust with moonshine so that WolfCop can regenerate his strength one final time. Three Regina cheerleaders finish off Number Two by kicking her to death.

Tina and Daisy return to warn everyone that the arena is about to explode. Lou, Willie, Kat, Tina, and Daisy make it outside just as the building blows up. In the morning, the five of them are still in the parking lot drinking beer and watching the flames before finally driving away.

At Sisters of Mercy Hospital, a nun nurse wheels a disfigured patient outside and says goodbye as he walks into the street to leave. The nun is horrified when WolfCop’s speeding car suddenly splatters the man, drenching the nun’s robes in blood.

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Review:

If “Another WolfCop” weren’t a sequel, there’s a chance I might get on its case for being too crass, too crude, too campy, and too cartoonish with its over-the-top absurdity.  Since it is a sequel, such statements would make me a hypocrite considering I accused the original “WolfCop” (review here) of not making its crazy concept even crazier with balls-through-the-wall outrageousness.

Be careful what you wish for, because writer/director Lowell Dean turned the tables by daring me right back to put a wet tongue on a cold flagpole of midnight movie madness.  Just as superhero movies such as “Superman II,” “Batman Returns,” or “Captain America: Winter Soldier” improve on their predecessors when no longer burdened by origin story obligations, “Another WolfCop” unleashes its momentum to flow freely in raging rapids of energetically irreverent insanity.  And its wild raft loads up on everything from human-on-werewolf sex montages to sentient mutant appendages that may or may not be male sex organs too.

The shapeshifting villains of “WolfCop” have progressed from backwoods cult to an interdimensional Legion of Doom organizing a conspiracy of Conal Cochran proportions.  Billionaire businessman Sydney Swallows sold interim mayor Bubba Rich on a plan to revitalize the hick burg of Woodhaven by reopening the brewery and bringing in a new hockey team to boot.  That’s all well and good until it comes out that Swallows’ new Chicken Milk stout actually impregnates residents with reptilian creatures.

Luckily, WolfCop is on the case and unleashing more fur-and-fang fury than ever before.  WolfCop has help in the form of old allies like Tina, who is now the acting Chief of Police, and Willie, who doesn’t let something as minor as being murdered in the first film keep him from making a creative comeback here.  Forced to face a Frankenstein beast and a Terminator henchwoman in addition to their usual enemies, the team recruits two rookie deputies and Willie’s sexy sister Kat, who hides an occult-related secret of her own, as reinforcements.

Like “It’s a Wonderful Life” is to Christmas, “Another WolfCop” makes an unimpeachable argument for becoming the go-to movie of choice at any annual Canada Day celebration.  “Another WolfCop” has to be the most overtly Canuck comedy that doesn’t include a McKenzie brother, sending up stereotypical great white north staples like hockey, beer drinking, the national anthem, even a cameo from honorary citizen Kevin Smith as a corrupt politician.  Only Justin Trudeau in a mountie hat riding a moose could take the good-humored satire further, and no one should be surprised to see Lowell Dean take things there on the next go.

“Another WolfCop” gets away with such nuttiness because sincere style makes up for much of the story’s slimness.  No matter how silly a setup is, the cinematic side of things takes each scene seriously, which was also true of the first film.  Small jokes make their way into background scenery.  Lighting drips with comic book colors.  The camera carefully considers angles and editing cuts shots with a mind for careful timing.  These WolfCop movies wouldn’t work if they were sloppy, and they definitely do not take technical execution lightly.

That said, the low-budget rears its ugly head in instances like an awful arena sign made with CGI or the obvious lack of extras filling that supposedly packed arena with what look likes two dozen people tops.  “Another WolfCop’s” issues are mostly confined to how sparse it seems in certain places, with the overall stitching showing some of those holes.  Although a lot of material is packed inside, the film only runs 70 minutes without credits.  That rush is felt in a clunky ending that comes with a realization that several characters, WolfCop included, don’t get as much attention as they deserve.

One could argue that coming away wanting more might be what the cast and crew intends.  A counterpoint would contend that “Another WolfCop” cuts more corners than feels right for a complete film, hampering its sense of lasting satisfaction.

But the freedom to have more flippant fun still translates into a goofy and gory good time.  Returning actors are clearly more comfortable in their characters, which comes from an increased understanding for the precise type of tone director Lowell Dean means for them to tune into.  After “WolfCop,” I had only a passively amused interest in this sequel.  But if Dean and company continue turning up the heat on this brand of charming comedic carnage, count me in for part three and beyond.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score:  75

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