The Werewolf of Woodstock (1975)

     It's almost Halloween so let's get into the spirit of my favorite holiday by taking a look at a rare miss from Dick Clark who produced this steaming pile that is worse than the bad batch of brown acid passed around the same historical festival in 1969.  Shot on video, this soap opera about a cranky lycanthrope's hatred of hippies and loud noises is so awful — and I mean awful in a "Why was this even made and who is the poor fucker I'm going to have to kill to stop this from ever happening again?" way — that I'm shocked Dick Clark didn't have every copy of this abomination bundled into a rocket ship and shot into the sun.
 

     Woodstock has ended and Bert is still pissed off that all the rock-and-roll shenanigans took place in his back yard.  He does what any rational individual would do to prove that his personal values are superior to these free-lovin', drug addled youngsters by demolishing an empty stage during a severe lightning storm:

"I AM THE EPITOME OF SANITY!!!"

Not surprisingly, this does not turn out well.  Bert is struck by a lightning bolt just as an employee of the electric company warns him about the dangerous storm.  Fast forward an unspecified amount of time and Bert is bandaged from head to toe and is now in bed rest — in his own home!  You would think with the severe burns he suffered that it would be more beneficial for him to stay in a hospital, but then again, Werewolf of The Burn Center doesn't really roll off the tongue smoothly.  Inexplicably this charge of electricity causes him to become a werewolf.  Unless he's some new form of goddamn Pokemon, I don't get the correlation between lightning strikes and lycanthropy — otherwise Lee Trevino would have been ripping the throats out of livestock years ago.  Anyway, this movie goes through some serious mental gymnastics in an attempt to explain his transformation.
     Thrown into the mix is a beatnik rock band (starring a young Andrew Stevens) looking to record an album in an abandoned Woodstock shack in hopes of landing a record contract.  How they think this will somehow transpire is never really hashed out.  Signing talent is...like...so bourgeois man!  On their first night, Dave (Stevens) chases off Beckie's dog who quickly becomes Bert's first victim when he emerges from his bed:

Bert transforms into the next door neighbor from Goof Troop.

Thus begins Bert's reign of terror.  Well, actually I would consider it more a brief period of mild annoyance.  

     Filling out the cast is Lt. Martino who is a caricature of every eye-talian cop, even going as far as including and absurd scenario where he's making homemade spaghetti sauce in the middle of the fucking police department.  If only this was made a few years later you could have him scream "It's-a-me, Mario!" in every scene.  Joining him are two "special youth" officers from Los Angeles, Kendy (which always sounds like "Candy") and Moody (Michael Parks - Planet Terror and Deathproof) which is quite a coincidence considering the exterior shots of Woodstock look exactly like Southern California.  

     Beckie, because she was born without a penis, is captured by Bert and held captive in an abandoned shack by a bridge that Bert used to retreat to when he was younger.  This seems rather odd considering he didn't hesitate to kill her dog and issue this fatal beatdown of the local doctor:

"How's this for out of pocket!"

Time is limited and so, apparently, was the budget.  A plan is devised by Moody and Kendy along with a reluctant Martino to lure the werewolf into a trap by having the band play loud music while the police "hide":

Nope, can't see 'em.

     The ruse fails and Bert gets away — by carjacking a man's dune buggy!

Another stereotype perpetuated on the Werewolf-American community.

Bet you didn't think there would be a car chase in a werewolf movie, didja!  The movie comes to its anticlimax when Martino, who must have been a sniper, shoots Bert from the top of a power plant tower causing him to fall to his death. 

He died how he lived.  With Adam Curry's hair.

     I usually like to add a video to my reviews just so that the reader can get an idea of the film I'm describing.  For some fucking reason I couldn't pull anything off this copy.  You didn't miss anything besides some truly wretched storytelling.  What makes this fucker such a humorless bore is the fact that it's played straighter than a NPR news report.  You would think with a silly premise like this that they would have more fun with the subject matter but no chance.  I'm sure that as soon as the final cut was in the can the director rented a motel room and hung himself.  Nothing redeemable about this movie.  You either get rocks in your trick-or-treat bag like Charlie Brown or a copy of this candy corn filled shit log.   Come to think of it, either one is still better than the killjoys that would roll ten pennies in plastic wrap and hand those out for Halloween.  Fuck those assholes.