Scarecrow-88 Review of Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf

Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf (2010 TV Movie)

Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf

[6/10 · 23 June 2013]

A psychopath dressed in an ironworks werewolf costume (while brief glimpses are often all we get, it is quite a really menacing metal wolf creation, with claws of steel even) killed a little girl. Her brother grew up to be a cop, and he is responsible (or so he, and everyone else thinks) for the arrest of the killer (but not before the killer murdered his partner, played by John Rhys-Davies (looking might gaunt)). The killer (or the one we are led to believe is the killer) is sent to the asylum of Dr. Robert Parker (William B Davis, who practically has "sinister" stamped on his forehead), who puts shock collars around the necks of the criminally insane! During a night of hell, the asylum suffers a "power outage", the cells become unlocked, and the loonies are free to roam. Our hero cop (the morose Andrew Cymek, who directed this film), his estranged doc wife (Brigitte Kinglesy), a fellow cop (WWE wrestler Christian), an attorney (Mercedes McNab), and the staff at the asylum (along with a little girl) are trapped in the asylum with the violent patients, with lots of mayhem ensuing. Not bad little low budget asylum horror flick has lots of human monsters on the rampage, including a giant behemoth that actually crushes a security guard's head in his hands, a woman named Mabel who likes to massacre bodies before chopping them up and cooking them (one of the cast gets his throat sliced, then mutilated as Mabel goes through how to cook him up as if a gourmet meal!), and the Wolf serial killer. The surprise regarding who the metal werewolf costume killer is will probably not surprise anyone because the film has a hard time disguising how guilty a particular character looks. The claws on the metalworks arms of the costume resemble Wolverine's adamantine ones and they do some serious damage, penetrating right through a victim who discovers too much when investigating Parker's files. The asylum is darkly lit for obvious foreboding, and the criminals of the film are appropriately ferocious/disturbing/unpleasant. William B Davis (Cigarette Smoking Man of The X Files) just has a hard time escaping typecasting in these kinds of movies; he rarely knows how to not look suspicious. He smirks at one scene when he purposely shocks a patient seemingly for kicks. Cymek casting himself as the hero is a bit much, but he's stoic and of few words, and there's no showboating (he even takes his licks when engaged in fights with nutty patients) involved. Mercedes and Brigitte are babes...Brigitte has a session with Mabel that reminded me of Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct (the way Brigitte crosses her legs in her really short skirt).