A pack of werewolves, a pair of Pennsatucky brothers, and a film crew scouting locations; these groups find themselves interacting violently in Mark Cantu’s Wolf Hollow. A hyper-violent adrenaline rush, this horror picture is an excellent example of the lack of survival skills city folk possess when they find themselves in the rural backwoods. Set a year after a traumatic attack of the wolves on a biker gang’s bonfire party, the plot presents us with a wolf pack even more alarming than the one we met in The Howling.
As we see in the opening minutes, the Neuries – the family at the heart of this story – are in a lot of trouble. The mayhem that ensued on their property between the werewolf pack and the bikers resulted in many lawsuits and a tremendous pot of damages the town of Wolf Hollow, Pennsylvania, had to pay out. Consequently, the Neuries find themselves saddled with an eighty thousand dollar tax bill to make up for the hole left in the town’s finances. Things look grim for our unfortunate family. Most of their equipment is defunct, and they have had a lean year of business.
And then a movie crew arrives. Bart Neuri (Brian Ceponis) is delighted to learn his baby brother Ray (Noah J. Welter) is part of the crew, along with his friend Alex (Cristina Krakowski), who is the producer in charge. The filmmakers have brought star Marla Taylor (played with stoned aplomb by Lynn Lowry) to help with the location scouting and take some test footage. While Bart welcomes the money, he fully expects Ray to stay and resume being a functioning part of the family. When Ray rejects Bart’s appeal, all hell breaks loose.
“When Ray rejects Bart’s appeal, all hell breaks loose.”
Wolf Hollow is a fast-paced thrill ride. While firmly in the genre of werewolf horror, this film is both funny and action-packed. Every character commits glorious mayhem once the werewolves reveal themselves and start disemboweling and biting people. I especially enjoyed the side story involving a man nicknamed Lucky Steve (Brandom Krum). Lucky Steve is a visual effects artist, and he is really great at it. However, he’s a hazard to others on account of his pyromania. Throughout the movie, Lucky Steve will be savaged with such brutality you aren’t certain his name should include the word “Lucky.”
The werewolves are in varying stages of transformation throughout the second half. I found that delightful. Indeed, there were several very large, fully furred lycanthropes ready to claw you to death. Many werewolves displayed protruding fangs, long claws in place of fingernails, and glowing green eyes. The makeup and special effects were practical (a nice touch) and pretty good.
Wolf Hollow is a really enjoyable genre offering. Truly, this is the sort of campy fun you want to watch while gorging on a massive tub of buttered popcorn. At only 80 minutes, it zips by swiftly, faster than many shorter films. Seek this out if you want a good time at the movies and like werewolves, particularly the backwoods variety.
"…campy fun..."
