Rocker Alice Cooper may well be known for his love
of horror movies, but it's hard to imagine his first appearance in an actual horror film was this rather lacklustre werewolf
Italian/Spanish co production from 1984.
Alice plays a rock star named Vince Raven, who is returning to his old family home out in the countryside, as he thinks it will be the ideal setting for his latest music video. Accompanying him is his girlfriend Sandra (Victoria Vera) and the film crew from the record company, who seem more interested in getting drunk and stuffing their faces with food than anything else.
On route however, they are confronted by a police roadblock and are warned that there have been a number of attacks by packs of wild dogs in the area and to mind how they go. They think nothing of this until their van is subsequently stopped by a stereotypical "Crazy Ralph" type character, who stops to warn them "They're all doomed" before staggering off into the night.
Finally arriving at the old house they're surprised to find there's no sign of the old caretaker who's supposed to be looking after the place, then as the group settles in, all sorts of typical creepy stuff starts to happen. Strange noises outside, some of the group go missing, one of them has all sorts of strange nightmares. Then when they finally try to shoot the music video, the production is marred by the discovery of the caretaker's corpse, which looks like it was attacked by dogs.
If all that wasn't enough, a group of rednecks with shotguns then turn up (the modern day equivalent of villagers with burning torches) to sort out Vince, as they think he's the werewolf. Leading to a pretty bizarre end battle, between Vince, the rednecks and the wild dogs. Not to mention the titular monster dog/werewolf, who finally puts in an appearance at the end.
Directed by infamous Italian director/producer Claudio Fagrasso, the guy who gave us "Troll 2" and worked with Bruno Mattei on "Zombie Creeping Flesh" (so you know what you're in for), the film is, unfortunately, a bit on the slow side, with not much happening until the last 20 mins or so. If you're a lover of tacky 80s European horror films you may enjoy watching this, but aside from that its only interesting feature is that Alice Cooper is in it, who also provides a couple of relatively obscure tracks for the film's soundtrack.
