Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Another Wolfcop: Lupine Lou Garou is Back

You can tell a lot about a country by the anxieties that surface in their genre films. For instance, Canada is gravely worried someone might be tampering with their beer. In the 1980s, Bob and Doug Mackenzie foiled an attempt to contaminate Elsinore Beer with mind-controlling drugs. This time, officer Lou Garou will challenge a villainous mastermind’s scheme to control humanity through the newly launched Chicken Milk Stout. Fortunately, Garou is not just a cop—he’s Wolfcop. He is also no stranger to alcoholic beverages in Lowell Dean’s looney sequel Another Wolfcop (trailer here), which opens in select U.S. cities this Friday and in Cineplex theaters across its native Canada on December 5th.

Do not let the title scare you. This is not like Teen Wolf Too, with a never previously mentioned cousin discovering he too is a werewolf. This is true blue Lou Garou. He hasn’t changed much. He still guzzles beer, scarfs on donuts, and turns into a wolf each full moon. He also still carries a torch for his colleague (now boss) Tina Walsh, but her contemptuous disinterest has evolved into Tracy-Hepburn-esque ambiguity.

While wolfed up, Garou stumbled across a mysterious shipment intended for Sydney Swallows, who is supposedly the town’s new benefactor. He reopened the mouth-balled brewery to churn out Chicken Milk, but it causes some nasty side-effects. Garou’s lowlife buddy Willie Higgins knows all about it. He was kidnapped and forced to serve as their guinea pig, so now he has what you might call an odd growth coming out of his stomach.

Another Wolfcop has all the lunkheaded attitude of the first film, but there is at least ten times more gore—all in good fun, of course. As Garou, Leo Fafard is just as endearing as ever, in a degenerate, shaggy dog kind of way. Amy Matysio’s Walsh gets considerably less screen-time this go-round, but she scores some of the biggest laughs with her acidic one-liners. Jonathan Cherry’s shtick as Higgins gets a bit tiresome, but Serena Miller steals numerous scenes as his lycanthropic sister, Kat. Yes indeed, there is more red-hot wolf loving in Another Wolfcop.

If only the DC Universe were as consistent as the Wolfcop franchise. It is not hard to see why Lou Garou is the pride of Saskatchewan. These films have heart—and also blood and intestines. But wait there’s more, including Kevin Smith playing the drunken mayor, at no extra cost to you the consumer. Wildly entertaining, Another Wolfcop is one of the rare sequels that darn near equals the first film. Very highly recommended, Another Wolfcop opens today in select U.S. cities and next Tuesday (12/5) in Canada.

(Poster: Tom “The Dude” Hodge)