I've said it many times in the past but I really don't rate the werewolf much as a movie monster. Something about people transforming into goofy looking wolves never feels exciting to me. The Robert Conway written and directed Hellhounds didn't do much to change my mind when it came to that particular monster, while it also seemed to have some editing issues that made scenes more confusing than they needed to be.
Mia (Dana Kippel - Reflect) is a bounty hunter trying to track down a sadistic killer (Daniel Link). Her search for him has led her to the home of biker Alias (Nathaniel Burns), realising they share the same goals they decide to team up. They learn that the man is hiding out at a remote criminal hideout known as 'The Scrapyard' and so form a plan to infiltrate it. Unknown to them however is that a centuries old werewolf with links to Alias' past called Lucella (Eva Hamilton - Blood Harvest) is there, and that she has recently turned a young man named Kevin (Cameron Kotecki) into a werewolf also.
The film begins in such a dizzying manner that I initially assumed it to instead be a trailer. A scene of a woman running while being chased by a man was broken down into so many tiny shots that it became really hard to work out what was going on. Thankfully when Hellhounds gets past this prologue things calm down a bit. The editing and directing often became an issue especially in the more action heavy scenes. This unfortunately reared its head in the finale that had so much happening off screen that it became hard to keep up. The werewolf transformation scenes rarely looked great, with CG often used to instantly transform people into werewolves in a way that looked a bit silly. Even this is removed for that finale, with people turning into werewolves and werewolves turning back into people off screen at a baffling rate, so it was never clear what was going on. This even led to the antagonist leaving that scene entirely without me having noticed until a good minute or two later.
Mia and Alias were fine, but there was nothing that special to either of them. Alias' secret was so obvious that when it was revealed I was confused as to why such a big deal was being made of it, I had figured that it must have been shown earlier such was the lack of surprise. Their journey is only part of the plot, with Lucella and her new recruit having a lengthy subplot that only met up with the main story right towards the end. An even slighter subplot was some kidnapped people of the killer Mia was after, trying their best to survive. When it comes to character names there were some bad ones here, at least it is referenced in film that 'Kevin' isn't a fitting name for a werewolf, then there is the killer himself who has the imposing name of 'Dave'.
The setting is at least one part of this done right, this had a real American desert vibe to it, with a film full of drinking, bikers, scantily clad women and a stereotypical soundtrack 'hard-rock' Americana feel to it.
I'm never that keen on werewolf movies, so Hellhounds was never going to be something particularly exciting to me. While shot traditionally there was a grindhouse vibe to this at times, with plenty of blood and unneeded titillation. It is certainly watchable, but it was never designed to be anything deeper than some mindless entertainment to kill an hour or so.
SCORE:
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