By Jerry Roberts
October 9, 2002

I am not one of those people who complains about government spending. If they want to spend money on a bigger, better, faster warship to insure national security then they won't see me marching on the capitol. If, however, I find out that the government has put down my tax dollars to make a bulletproof werewolf then I may be making some phone calls.

Project: Metalbeast boldly assumes that our government will try anything to create The Perfect Killing Machine as it does in every movie beginning with the word "Project".
The movie begins in 1974 as a military faction is sent to the Carpathian mountains to gather (now get this) werewolf blood for a project called Operation: Lycanthropus.

Back in here in the good old US of A a doctor decides to inject himself with the juice (how do these guys get to be doctors from being so stupid?) He turns into the dreaded Lycantropus-Erectus, smashes a lot of test tubes, kills one or two nameless extras and is cryogenically frozen until the government can figure out how to control it.

Herein lies the first miscalculation in their brilliant plan: How can the werewolf be the perfect killing machine if there is a way to control it? By definition, if it can be contained it isn't perfect. That sentence breaths with far more thought then the screenwriters put into this entire movie.

Like an even hairier version of Austin Powers, the creature sits dormant for decades until it is freed for some glib reason that the movie glosses over.

Now shoot to 1994 where cutie scientist Kim Delaney is working on a project to make skin bulletproof. None of us need be John Forbes Nash to calculate that our fur-bearing ice cube will get hold of her experiments and continue his relentless pursuit of the supporting cast.

In the midst of this, Delaney gets hold of the photographs of the werewolf attacking a day player. Now, the photos that we are shown are suppose to be of a creature killing a scientist but the two seem to be doing anything but fighting. I think I even detected a slight afterglow . . . *shudder* Not going there!!

Anyway, the government operative overseeing the project and making sure that the heroes don't get out alive is Barry Bostwick sporting a quart of oil in his hair. He spout such old reliables as "You're a serious threat to this mission" and "This is a matter of national security and I WILL NOT see it jeopardized!"

This movie doesn't miss a single cliché and subsequently never makes an attempt to create new ones. My favorite is the shushing door, you know where all the doors make that "Shhhhhh" sound and the computer screens predate Windows 95.

The computers are not half as anchient as the moth-eaten werewolf suit pulled off the rack. The mouth doesn't move very well and there are bald patches where the hair needs to be restitched. This is the first movie where I was more interested in the creatures tayloring then his motives.