Lunar Pack (2004) — Triskaidekafiles

LUNAR PACK

WRITER: Jason L. Liquori

DIRECTOR: Jason L. Liquori

STARRING: Debbie Rochon as Mistress Misty
Melissa Morse as Rose LeNoire
Colleen Kavanaugh as Vampire
Chanel Bagwell as Gina Arrucci
Jason L. Liquori as P.I. Jim Stewart
Brewier Welch as Minister Harrison
Kevin White as Bobby Arrucci
Jonathan Shane Ferrell as Billy Joe
Annie L. Maleski as Tracy
Kevin White as The Sheriff

QUICK CUT: A bunch of stories about puppy love.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Summer is creeping towards its unofficial close, September is almost here, and that means its time for our yearly anthology movie review. And this year, I decided to take it easy, with The Lunar Pack, a collection of three short SHORT werewolf stories, all by Jason Liquori. The shorts are so short that the whole anthology is a short, coming in just short of an hour.

Also, I skipped the character breakdowns in The Morgue this week, just because a lot of these stories are so short, you don’t get much of a feel for most of the characters, and because there’s a buncha them.

The movie starts with setting up the wraparound sequence of horror host Mistress Misty, who does the usual duties of introing the movies and making silly jokes in a vaguely seductive, horror manner. In fact, the setup is so centered around this, the horror show title is the closest this movie gets to a title card.

Misty does the expected bit of talking for a bit, and says how full moons always keep her UP...and you sense they were THIS close to doing a play on Rhonda Shear's UP...all night, but they, probably wisely, do not pull that trigger.

Pay no attention to the green screen curtain behind the woman.

She starts the first movie, and it's called Dark Rose: The 700 Year Itch. And lemme tell ya, it takes almost longer to read that title than the short to do its thing.

It's the story of Rose, whose family was killed by vampires 700 years ago, and she's been hunting them down all this time. She's finally found the vampire responsible, and here we are.

Unfortunately, Rose has read the time wrong, and the vampire wakes up before she can be killed. I know this is a trope of vampire fiction, but for the lovea Pete, vampire hunters, go in the morning!

Anyways, the two women toss each other around a bit, and the vampire is confident in her power, slowly chasing Rose outside. And OOPS SURPRISE to anyone who hasn't read the gimmick of this collection of stories; she's a werewoof!

So the women roll around and fight some more, until eventually Rose rips out the vampire's heart. It's pretty basic, but it's short, gets to the point, and gets out. It's done with enough energy and craft that I don't mind it being pretty straightforward.

This, more than the other two, feel like part of a much larger movie, and it does indeed seem to be that way. I genuinely would like to see the full Dark Rose movie someday.

But, it's back to Misty, as she plays with a creepy baby puppet, and feeds it some blood to calm it down.

She starts the next story, Sheep's Clothing, about a PI, played by Jason himself, who is chasing down a wife whom the husband suspects is cheating on him. Detective Jason finds her with a priest, but knows he's too good for what's being suspected, and...look, you probably know where this is going.

Surprise! The wife is a werewoof, and she sneaks off, to have the priest tie her down, not for kinky sex stuff, but so she doesn't hurt anyone she cares about. I mean, to be fair, there may be kinky sex stuff too, I ain't judging.

I do wanna at least point out that the wife's last name is Arrucci, and you can probably guess how that's pronounced. I do appreciate a good werewoof pun.

Drinking some director’s juice before the shoot.

The husband takes things into his own hands, shows up to the love nest slash werewolf sanctuary, and gets out a gun. Bullets fly, leaving the husband and minister dead, and the wife going for walkies..

Detective Jason wraps things up with some narration along the lines of, "Oh so that's what's going on! Ah well, there's always next month!"

So, we're halfway done, and there's only one more story left, so the good news is, that one is the longest, so we spend a bit more time with stuff.

Mistress Misty comes back to talk about her affair with the creature from the Black Lagoon, before starting that final film, Crying Wolf.

This one opens up with Tracy out for a ride with her boyfriend Billy Joe. He's the local bad boy, who has refused to grow out of that role, while everyone else has moved on with their life. She still loves him, and knows he could make something of himself, if he just took things more seriously.

Unfortunately, things get too serious when they get into an argument on this subject, clearly not their first, and Billy storms off into the woods to cool off. Tracy calls after him, but hangs back by the truck, and ends up attacked by a creature.

Can’t even leave the movie, he took the keys with him!

Billy rushes back at the sound of Tracy's screams, but it's too late. He gets attacked as well, but manages to survive the mauling.

We cut to a month later, and Sheriff Arrucci, yes same actor as the husband in the last short, gets paid a visit by Billy Joe.

Billy is there to see if anyone's found anything about the creature, and the sheriff is in disbelief. He tells Billy they both know the thing that killed Tracy is on that porch, because ven if there WAS a monster, it was Billy's fault for, well, being Billy.

There's a lotta talk about how Billy is a coward, he claims he was attacked, but no one saw any wounds...and Billy responds to that by yanking up his shirt and revealing nasty gashes down his chest.

Got these after a nasty run in with a short, grumpy Canadian.

Of course, the sheriff doesn't believe the wounds magically disappeared, and reappeared this morning, and still thinks Billy is trying to cover something up.

Which is when the werewoof word gets dropped, and Billy Joe is sure he's about to turn into one. He asks the sheriff to lock him up, but he can't just do that! And I beg to differ, surely if the sheriff REALLY wanted to, he could put him in a cell for the night.

Billy Joe tries to force the issue, by being a pain in the ass, so the sheriff handcuffs him to a water pipe, which I guess is better than nothing.

Which is when the sheriff's hand becomes a massive paw, and gasp, HE is the other werewoof! So he was right, the thing that killed Tracy WAS on the porch!

Billy tears the whole pipe lose and frees himself, and we get a dogfight for a bit. The pair fling each other out into the yard, under the full light of the moon, and they thrash and transform for a bit.

And that just leads to more fighting as they slap paws around each other. Probably because it's hard to see where your opponent is in their silly masks and in the dark.

Fortunately, Billy's cousin, who works in animal control, shows up and shoots the sheriff dead. Well, that was quick.

We wrap things up with a bit more of Misty as she spits silly string at a fake rat being dragged around, so she can get a snack for herself and Junior.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Typical for these Pendulum 50 packs. It’s fine, could be worse, but it could be much better, too, I suspect. At least everything is lit well enough.

Audio: On par with the video, it’s fine.

Body Count: No time for too much death, but a fair amount for a trio of short films.

1 - After about seven minutes, the werewolf finally rips out the vampire's heart.
2 - The minister gets shot.
3 - And then the husband
4 - Tracy gets killed by a wolf
5 - The sheriff gets put down by animal control.

Best Corpse: Tracy probably has the best looking corpse. We don’t get much of a look at the rest, and the sheriff is the most satisfying, but almost an afterthought. We get to see Tracy, and sit with the tragedy of it for a second.

Blood Type - C: Some decent wolf makeup, and some dodgier ones, and some bits and blobs of blood. Nothing terribly noteworthy, outside of Bobby’s gashes.

Sex Appeal: I mean, Debbie Rochon is here, at least?

Drink Up! Every time Mistress Misty talks about her kids.

Movie Review: At the end of the day, this is pretty forgettable. The stories are short to REALLY short, and don’t do much. But, they’re well made enough, that you can at least see the craft and talent, and each one is a little better than the last, showing Liquori’s progression. And I am gassing up this under an hour anthology way more than anyone ever has, I wager! But the acting is solid enough in each, and there’s enough fun dabbled through. It’s an easy breezy watch, but doesn’t leave much of an impression. On the upside, it could have left a BAD impression, so there’s that. The first short has some solid stuff, but it ultimately just a climactic fight scene. The middle short isn’t bad either, and has a fun ‘twist’ for the characters. And the last is the most polished and thought out piece, helped by being half this movie’s runtime. You understand Bobby, the twist was truly something outta nowhere, and even if it’s just a short story, it’s effective enough. I’m actually a fan of Jason Liquori’s other work, so was surprised to find he did this as well, and if this tickles your fancy, I definitely recommend checking out his other stuff, which might make an appearance here, or on the podcast, at some point. It was nice to see some of his earlier work. Two out of five claw marks.

Entertainment Value: I don’t have a whole lot more to add here, it’s a solid little collection of scenes, even if some of them aren’t quite whole stories. I had a good time here, and it got better as it goes along, so it’s worth watching once, just for fun. Liquori’s work is always more fun when he gives himself more room to breath, and just have fun with it. These shorts lack a lot of the humour I associate with him, but therfe are flashes of it here and there. Three out of five vampire hearts.