A Year of Bad Movies # 26 — “The Feral Man”
The Feral Man (2002)
IMDB Score: 3.1 out of 10
Just when I thought Clive Turner was the only man with enough balls to write, direct and star in a shamelessly terrible werewolf movie … along comes Brett Kelly whose movie “The Feral Man” may not be as bad as “Howling: New Moon Rising” but comes pretty darn close.
Brett Kelly has directed 13 films since 2002. Who's willing to bet they are all terrible.
One of the only things positive I can say about “The Feral Man” is that at 65 minutes, the movie is pretty short and the pain all too brief.
Heck, almost 10 of those 65 minutes are spent on the closing credits.
If you’re looking for a way to kill an hour that is slightly better then chewing on tin foil, go ahead and pop in “The Feral Man.”
The biggest letdown in a “werewolf” movie since “She-Wolf of London,” “The Feral Man” stars Kelly as Danny, a down-on-his luck loser who is attacked after attending his father’s funeral. When he recovers, Danny begins to suspect he may have been the victim of a lycanthropy-related hoedown when he begins to exhibit increased aggression and spontaneous appearances of murder-scene paraphernalia on his person.
Spoiler alert: Unfortunately for the audience, Danny is not a werewolf — just a dick who hit his head on a rock.
A Canadian movie shot on a shoestring budget, “The Feral Man” makes up for its lack of man-wolf violence with an overabundance of cute Canadian girls and a gratuitous use of fake blood being splattered against trees.
Watching “The Feral Man,” I began to think about why I love werewolf movies so much. Even though it turned out to not actually be a werewolf movie, “The Feral Man” would have been the third lycanthropic film I’ve seen so far on my year of bad movies.
And it won’t be the last — probably not even the last of the week.
I’ve always been fascinated by werewolves.
From “An American Werewolf in London” to The Howling” to “Ginger Snaps,” I’ve gone out of my way to see the classics. I’ve even gone out of my way to see the really terrible ones.
I think the reason I enjoy werewolf movies so much has to do with the fact that I’ve always been a little weary of loosing control — and werewolves are the epitome of control loss.
When they are done right, werewolves are the ultimate in tragic monsters.
Cursed by no fault of their own to turn into savage beasts that ravage the countryside killing innocents, werewolves represent the devolution of all that humanity represents. When they turn into werewolves, lycanthropes loose all ability to reason, to think, to love.
They fall feet first into an uncontrollable stupor and give into their animal aggression. They are the alcoholics of the late-night monster movie world.
“The Feral Man” may not be a movie featuring an honest-to-god man-to-wolf transformation, but it does feature the themes of a quality werewolf movie. Danny, through no fault of his own, experiences head trauma and starts to revert to his animalistic side.
Unfortunately, the themes are the only thing of quality “The Feral Man” takes from the werewolf movie classics.
Ultimately hampered by stiff acting and a truly terrible script, “The Feral Man” proves that you can take the wolf out of the werewolf movie but you can’t take the bad out of a bad movie.
