Movie Russian Roulette: Strippers vs. Werewolves (2012)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex finally gets fed up with "bad on purpose" modern films.

the Breast Council would like to remind you that breasts exist

Overview: This movie's trailer would have you believe this is a sexy, action-packed film where gun-toting strippers fight "werewolves" who just gain gross sideburns when they transform. Well, only about half of that is true.

Unfortunately, it's the sideburns part

The film opens with a bumping strip club in the 80s, tantalizing us with thoughts of "Oh boy, tits already!" because come on, this film's audience is 100% lonely men or lesbians. Just as we're about to go inside... the place blows up. A wolf howl is heard in the distance. The significance of this is left unexplained for most of the movie and turns out to not really matter that much in the end.

We soon meet our stripper hero, Justice, who's wearing a schoolgirl outfit complete with short skirt for a private dance for a sharp-dressed man in a different strip club a number of years later. Yes, the time skip: just like Sleepaway Camp or a number of shitty fanfictions, it uses a poorly set up "mystery" and then a time jump to attempt to get us interested. It fails spectacularly.

However, the movie quickly picks up as Justice's customer goes werewolf and looms towards her. She stabs him in the eye with a silver fountain pen she has for some fucking reason.

The movie attempts to write this off as a present from her dad for passing her GSEs, which I believe are British standardized exams taken in high school. (What, you expect research from this blog?)

In any case, the movie drags on for an agonizing fifteen minutes or so as the owner of the club and Justice dispose of the body. Meanwhile, the movie makes around a joke a minute about the corpse still having an erection thanks to rigor mortis.

We then start getting introduced to the rest of the werewolf pack, who have a two-way mirror into a women's changing room because reasons. They're pissed over their friend getting killed and swear revenge. However, a clunky attempt at drama arises when we see that Justice is unknowingly dating one of the werewolves! What tension will arise from this? ...Very little, actually.

Through the power of plot devices, Justice becomes a werewolf, and she and the strippers face off against the wolves in a striptease/gun battle that makes most of the movie (which does things like faff about for 20 minutes on a budding romance between a bouncer who dies shortly after and a bland stripper) worth it, because it finally reaches the heights of ridiculousness a concept like this deserves.

Notable moments/quotes:
Hapless bystander who watched the werewolf pack kill mobsters who were torturing him: "You have to save me. You're werewolves who protect the innocent. Werewolves on a quest to destroy evil. You're hero werewolves!"
Head Werewolf: "Sorry but... we're just regular werewolves, I'm afraid."

Stripper with oddly Russian accent, to her hipster-looking, whiny, male Buffy stand-in: "You can speak 17 languages, including Fox."

At one point, Justice has a nightmare about the werewolves finding her. She wakes up sweaty and disturbed, so her boyfriend decides to cheer her up... with abrupt sex after asking about her bad dream.

Punk rocker furfag: "Little pig, little pig. Let me come in. So I can fuck you in the face!"

Right at the end of the movie, we're shown the strippers, who have now all gone werewolf, saving a woman from some vampires. Buffy's stand-in, the men's rights activist, responds to a question of who they are: "These are werewolves who protect the innocent. Werewolves on a quest to destroy evil. They're hero werewolves!"

My thoughts: Let me get this out of the way: yes, the movie takes advantage of its premise to show boobs. Lots and lots of boobs. That alone makes it a better werewolf flick than that piece of shit Howling II, because this movie understands we want to see human tits, not wolfgirl tits.

it leaves the wolf tits to WoW

As I alluded to above, this movie wastes a lot of its running time. There's an ongoing subplot about the mystery of the strip club from the beginning exploding, which the current club owner and its 80-something barkeep seem to know something about, and this is used as the cheese in the movie's trap to get you through its boring second act, which slogs through attempting to establish character for the strippers. It fails, instead wasting our time with a bunch of relationships and interactions that I doubt even Benedict Cumberbatch could make interesting.

Oh, who am I kidding?

Luckily, the movie has a backup plan for arousing interest, and that backup plan is tits. Lots of tits. Nice tits, often on women who are about to get killed by werewolves, which leads to some uncomfortable moments of thinking about unsexy things to wash away the feelings of revulsion over the tits abruptly being replaced by werewolf fangs.

luckily this guy isn't there

There's also a character I like to call "Oh my god, you guys, we're finally making an R-rated film!" This character, a punk rocker werewolf, has no personality beyond screaming "fuck" once per sentence. There is literally no reason for this guy to exist beyond being another lycanthropic baddie and the filmmakers taking glee in being able to swear, like edgy seventh-graders not around their parents.

In any event, this movie has convinced me that the U.K. just can't make shitty movies the way we can on this side of the Atlantic. Anyone with counter-evidence, please do point me in its direction.