Bad Moon



During an expedition in the jungles of Nepal, Ted Harrison, along with his girlfriend and local guides, are all attacked by a hulking werewolf that manages to take out the entire camp. Except for Ted, who miraculously manages to survive and kill the beast, but not before nearly being mauled to death himself. Of course, the unfortunate side effect of his survival means that Ted is now also infected with lycanthropy. He’s tried to find some kind of medical cure, but to no avail. In a last ditch effort to save himself, Ted goes to visit his sister Janet, and nephew Brett, hoping that their closeness and familial connection will stave off the homicidal urges he faces each night he turns into a werewolf. But — Surprise! — they don’t. Instead, several locals end up gruesomely killed and Ted comes into conflict with his sister’s dog, Thor, a 150 lb overprotective German Shepherd who can clearly tell that something very suspicious is happening with dear old uncle Ted, and like any good hound dog, he is determined to figure out exactly what it is.



Bad Moon is a Canadian/American co-production from 1996, and is based on the novel Thor by Wayne Smith. Interestingly enough, the book the movie is based on is actually written from the dog’s point of view (hence the title), though the movie is filmed in your standard 3rd-person. But I’m pretty sure the filmmakers just did that so that they had an excuse to add in Ted’s backstory (and probably that sex scene) and pad out the runtime a bit (it’s less than an hour and a half long), because the story is still primarily focused on the dog and his perspective of events. Which is fine, because Thor is the goodest of boys and deserves all the attention. Even if the increased focus on him and his sweet connection and interaction with the family sometimes clashes horribly with the gory scenes of blood and violence that the film also likes to randomly throw at you.


WTF…how did that get up so high? What’s that idiot doing, playing with his food?

Occasional conflicting tones aside, with only 80 minutes to work with (less if you cut out the credits), the movie does the viewer a solid by not beating around the bush. Before the first 5 minutes are even up the movie has already thrown sex, nudity, and a vicious bloodbath right in your face, before capping it off with an exploding head. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that some things get a little gnarly later on. But then it switches gears at light speed to a quaint little, small-town suburbia and a mom, her son, and their cute pupper, and it almost feels like you’ve switched over to a family drama. But you know it’s not because you just watched a werewolf maul a naked woman to death not 3 minutes ago, so you can already predict that by the end of the movie that some things are going to get wreaked. And really, it’s actually a nice little juxtaposition between the little family’s idyllic setting and the horror that’s about to befall them. But the conflicting tones never seem to 100% mesh well, even when the film is actively trying to mesh them. Which kinda makes me wish they’d just committed to one or the other, because the ‘family drama’ vibe keeps conflicting with the horror they’re going for, making the stakes never feel as high as they probably should.


Hey sis! Missed you terribly. Don’t let the kid go into the woods, okay? That’s where I keep all the dead, bloody bodies.

But that’s really a small nitpick, because my biggest issue with this otherwise entertaining monster movie were some of the conflicting story elements. The people in this movie just make a lot of downright odd and/or confusing decisions. Like, Ted makes it clear that his family is super important to him and that’s why he thinks being close to them will help him. Which, okay, it’s a dumb idea in and of itself, but maybe he’s a cheesy idealist or some shit. Whatever. I don’t care. But then he continues to stupidly put them in danger by chaining himself to a tree in the woods right behind their back yard, and you have to wonder, after the first couple of nights, when their closeness has proven to have zero effect, why the hell would you stick around and risk tearing your family into tiny, bloody pieces if you claim to love them so much? The dude has already eaten a couple of hikers at this point, plus some kind of tree surveyor (who was out measuring trees like a dumbass in the middle of the night, another oddity). It just never seems like his actions match his words. You know, if I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I’d be finding a nice isolated cabin out in the middle of the woods and turning myself into a furry hermit. But I guess this option never occurred to ole’ Ted. He later tries to blame his sister for “making” him stay there but, like, dude, you didn’t have to stay there. She didn’t hold a gun to your head or personally drag your camper to her back yard. She wasn’t blackmailing you. You could have just, you know, left. At any time.


If people are going to make stupid decisions, the least you could do is own them.

But it must be a family trait, because his sister pulls the same type of dumb shit. At one point she becomes suspicious, because Thor becomes suspicious, so she goes through her brother’s things, and she finds a journal where he talks about killing people. Fun. So she knows something is wrong with him. She knows Thor knows there’s something wrong with him. Does she do anything about it? Like, ask her brother to, I don’t know, leave? Maybe do something as small as tell her son to stay the hell away from him, perhaps? No. Of course not. And when Thor inevitably shows aggression towards someone who she knows is acting weird, someone she already suspects is a potential danger to her and her son, her first instinct is…to get rid of the dog! Like, okay, yeah, Thor bit Ted and that’s bad, but seriously lady, you could have avoided this whole situation if you’d just asked your creepy brother, who you know is carrying around photos of his dead, mangled girlfriend in his camper, to leave instead of just spending all your time staring at him suspiciously. I’m just saying, you’re a lawyer. You could have come up with something.


Something more than just doing shit like this, anyway.

But other than annoying, stupid stuff like that, the movie is actually kind of fun, believe it or not. It’s relatively short, so there’s very little downtime, or useless plotting, and as a result the story moves very quickly. It has a decent cast with the likes of Mariel Hemingway as Janet, and Michael Paré as Ted (looking especially well toned and buff as hell. The ladies should be pleased.) There’s also plenty of violence and blood spaced throughout the whole film. It might not be enough to satisfy the strictest of gorehounds, but for most people it should be more than sufficient. And finally, the werewolf suit/animatronic/whatever-the-hell-it-is, looks really creepy….at least in the dark. Once you see it in full light the flaws become more evident and it loses some of its effect. But for the most part it looks pretty good, as do most of the other visuals.


Yeah, that whole “chaining yourself to a tree” plan worked really well. Smart move, Teddy.

The one thing that doesn’t look good, however, is the transformation scene, which unfortunately is all done with late 90’s CGI. And let me tell you, that moment looks…special. Like, they were not subtle with it, at all. Not only is it the only instance of CGI in the film, but it just looks so weird and clashes horribly with all the otherwise decent practical effects in the rest of the movie. Considering how nice the other scenes look, it’s really the one ding the film has in the visual department.


Ugh, no. Just…no.

But questionable character motivations and that one instance of painful CGI aside, I thought Bad Moon was actually pretty entertaining. It’s not a perfect werewolf movie, but it was a pretty fun werewolf movie, all things considered. Fun enough that I could easily see it being some kind of cult film, so I’m kinda surprised it doesn’t seem to be all that well known. It looks pretty good, sounds good, has lots of violence, gore and nudity, has a snazzy werewolf monster, and it has a bonus German Shepard as a main character. To me this seems like just the type of film that you’d find on some kind of “sleeper hit” film list, but…uh, I guess not. Whatever. I found it enjoyable enough. So if you like werewolf movies and need something new to watch, then be sure to check this one out.

Bad Moon is available on a variety of streaming services.

Bad Moon is also available on DVD and Bluray.

You can also read Thor, the original book the story is based on, out there too.

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