Tonight’s horror is another from the “Werewolf list”. That is the movies I decided to track down and watch after my disappointment with “Wolf Man” (2025). Eight movies in and I finally had the bad taste out of my mouth. But the list was longer than that, so I saved the rest up for this October challenge. This is perhaps the trashiest of the lot, but it looked like fun. Project Metalbeast is a direct to VHS horror directed by Alessandro De Gaetano. It scores a 4.5/10 on IMDb, but is still De Gaetano’s highest rated horror. That probably doesn’t bode well. The movie stars Barry Bostwick and Kim Delaney. Most notably though for horror fans is that Kane Hodder plays the werewolf. Kane of course is most famous for playing Jason Voorheese four times.
In 1974 a special ops solider manages to kill a werewolf and take it’s blood. The blood is taken back to Washington DC and investigated by a team lead by Colonel Miller (Bostwick), with the aim of creating super soldiers. Being ambitious and determined to benefit from the serum, the soldier takes it himself and is turned into a Werewolf. He is killed by Miller, but his body preserved cryogenically. Twenty years later, another team is investigating investigate a new technology synthesizing prosthetic skin with a metal alloy as a base. Miller takes control of the project and uses it to restore his frozen super solider, thinking he can now control him. But can he?
Because it Sounds Cool
This actually wasn’t as a bad as I was expecting. There’s not much to it however. Well, technically there is quite a lot to the set up. But the motivation behind creating an unstoppable werewolf seems to be… uh… because it’s cool? I don’t know. I guess Miller thought he could control it, but he never actually seems to present any method to do so. Instead he seems to just want to irritate the beast while also making him dangerous and indestructible. To me, this seems like a bad plan. This is an excellent example of a B-movie horror where the writers haven’t thought about anything beyond a premise they thought would be cool.
Now to be fair, taking a Werewolf and giving it metal skin is a pretty cool idea. Even if it sounds a little bit like they just read some Wolverine comics for inspiration. Actually, that the grafting was done against the man’s will really did make me think “Project X” (The project that grafted adamantium to Wolverines skeleton). The problem here is that the entire movie is an origin story. Actually getting the Metalbeast out and on the rampage is just the final act, as a result, there’s not really much of a story.
Conclusion
I don’t know what this movies production budget was, but as a direct to video horror we’re talking minimal. Given that, it doesn’t actually look that bad. The beast looks fine and the sets work well enough. The budget obviously stretched to bringing in Barry Bostwick. Not the best actor in the world, but he has charisma and a recognizable name. Delaney is a reasonable TV actor and of course Kane Hodder is a horror legend. But outside these three the cast is pretty weak and the cracks show through often. Some of the camera work is actually quite effective, but most of the time there isn’t much to show.
Overall…. Well, yeah. This is a bad horror movie. It’s conceptually a lot more interesting than it is in execution. It’s not the worst direct to video horror movie out there and the final act is quite fun. But that’s not enough to bump this up to even a conditional recommendation. Even if you like werewolf movies, you probably won’t get much out of this. This is a 4.5/10. Maybe a high 4.5, but it still doesn’t crack the 5. Give this one a miss, but maybe smile a little at the fact it exists. Oh and it’s still better than Wolf Man (2025).