High Moon (aka. Howlers) (2019)

With the Slasher marathon wrapping up I decided to go back to some random fun. I pick a movie from one of the streaming services and watch it without having any idea what I’m getting into. I’ve been having a lot of success lately finding some gems, so I was due for a mess like High Moon. Spoilers this isn’t a good movie.

The story kicks off in the old west, specifically eighteen sixty-three, with a gunslinger coming into a small Texas town chasing after some outlaws. Of course, things are as simple as they appear because the outlaws are also werewolves. Luckily, our gunslinger is prepared with some silver bullets and guns them all down. He buries them and then a ninja shows up to kill him and bury him as well. Wait… what the hell was that? The action then moves to the present where our hero wakes up and crawls out of his coffin. See there was a flood that unearthed where he was planted in the ground. The werewolves also were washed up and woke up as well… because that is a thing that dead people do? I only ask because the movie never explains why. More stuff happens and the werewolves are re-killed, hopefully for good this time.

Time to sound like a broken record. The one thing that isn’t hampered by a low budget is your script. Write something that makes sense and that you can afford to shoot. The story here is bad. There is a gem of coolness with the concept of werewolf cowboys, especially after they steal some motorcycles. Werewolf cowboys on choppers! How do you screw that up? Well I guess it was easy. We spend a lot of time with the hero, Colt, as he wanders around town meeting the locals. Luckily, the lady who finds him takes him home and nurses him back to health. He is doubly lucky that she has a guns and most importantly silver bullets. Why? Who keeps a bunch of silver bullets around? This makes no sense.

Werewolf cowboys on motorcycles... it could have been cool

There is also a subplot that takes a chunk of time that involves the local sheriff and his wife, who is having an affair with the local big wig Bob. This sucks because Bob and the sheriff used to be partners in Houston when they were both on the police force there. Something bad happened that caused them to no longer be friends. What you might ask? Yeah because they are going to explain that to us in this well written script. That was sarcasm in case it didn’t come across as we never find out what the big deal is. We get all that drama instead of you know… werewolf cowboys.

The werewolf makeup

Let’s talk werewolf makeup. Have you ever seen those kits that they sell at Halloween that allows you to slap a hair piece on and some brown makeup to darken your skin? There you go. We do get a couple bits of gore, but it is limited and mostly happens off screen. Some of the action sequences are choreographed nicely, but then ruined by some terrible editing. Things just feel choppy and awkward. Toss in some terrible CGI bullet hits and the dreaded blood spraying on the screen gag for an overall miserable experience.

I’m not recommending High Moon. This is an absolute waste of time as it is not even bad enough to be fun to goof on with friends. This is one of those painfully mediocre movies that I run into more often than I’d like to admit. Let me take the bullet for you guys on this one and skip it.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer