Wolfhound (2002) from Tuna

Wolfhound ended up as a straight-to-vid softcore, but I don't know if that was always the intention. The film was shot on location in Ireland, features lots of animal actors, and even has some special effects. I think it may originally have been intended as a sexy horror/thriller.

Allen Scotti returns with his wife and two children from New York to his ancestral home in Ireland to write a book, and also to learn about the childhood and parents that he has no recollection of. We slowly learn along with him that it is a village of shape shifters. Although there is the off crow who doubles as the town clerk, many of the locals spend their time as Irish Wolfhounds. Not only that, but when the local women are not in dog form, they are still more or less bitches in heat. One in particular, played by 1995 Heffer of the year Julie Cialini, seems to have a history with our hero. Scotti has hot sex several times with Cialini, which leads to his inevitable confrontation with the alpha male. Mrs. Scotti isn't sure what is going on, but knows enough to know that she doesn't like it and is going back to the Big Apple with or without her husband.

I guessing that their plans for a horror/thriller had to be abandoned as soon as they realized that they had too much nudity and sex for the genre. With that basic storyline, however, they did not have enough T&A for a softcore, so they brought in genre veterans Regina Russell and Julie K. Smith to do a gratuitous three way sex scene, thus upping the breast count.

The IMDb comments are brutal, and not always justified.

• Some people were furious that it was not even a werewolf film. They must read as badly as they write, because the film is called Wolfhound, not Werewolf.

• Others complained about the acting. I will concede that the acting was not up to the standards of grade-B horror/thrillers, but it was within the norm for soft core, except that Cialini has the studied Irish brogue of a Rochester cheerleader.

• The one intelligent criticism was on the photography. The cinematographer had no end of trouble pulling focus, especially on two-shots. Badly botched attempts at backlighting and ambient light through doors and windows resulted in a very high percentage of shots with blown highlights. They also overdid the pesky smoke machine.

Of course this is not a good thriller, but if one were to correct the lighting and photography mistakes and work on an accent for Cialini, it would be an exceptionally good softcore film. Unfortunately, in its current condition it barely meets the expectations for that genre.