31 days of Horror: Day Nineteen: Urufu gai: Moero okami-otoko

Urufu gai: Moero okami-otoko (Wolf Guy) (1975)

Directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

Every year when I do one of these lists I try to touch on a lot of different types of films. Sometimes that means I might drift right off the edge of what some people would consider a Horror Movie. Here's a case like that. Wolf Guy isn't a Horror Film. It's a 70's Action Film right down to the funky soundtrack. However, the main character (Sonny Chiba) is the last surviving member of a clan of werewolves, who now works as a reporter in a major metropolitan city, and in this movie he must fight an evil spy organization, and a woman with the psychic power to summon a magic invisible tiger to kill her enemies. I think those plot points push this into that grey zone inhabited by things like The X-Files.

This movie begins with Sonny Chiba witnessing a mans death on the street. They crazy thing is that wounds open up on his body from out of nowhere, and he claims he's being killed by a tiger. It turns out that the dead man was the former member of a rock band called The Mobs. Two other former members have also died claiming they were being attacked by a tiger. The more Sonny learns about the case, the more he's drawn into a web of corrupt politicians, drug gangs, and eventually a shadowy organization called JCIA that wants to steal his werewolf powered blood. 

Sonny never changes form, but as it gets closer to the full moon his super powers become stronger. Eventually bullets don't give him much trouble at all. This isn't a particularly good movie, but it moves along at a good clip, and so you never get bored, or have time to question what's going on. It seems to have been based on a manga, though I don't think it ever got a translation. The movie has also never been given a dvd release, so the version I watched was a pan and scan TV broadcast from Japan, commercials and all. It's possible that a wide screen DVD or Blueray release would reveal a better looking film than the one I watched, but regardless this was an entertaining Japanese B Movie.