After finding, killing and extracting a blood sample from a werewolf in Europe, a soldier injects himself with it's DNA, turning himself into a werewolf in an American military base, where he's captured and cryogenically frozen. Flash foreword 10 years, where scientists are given the man's body for an experiment involving a metal-based, organic, self-restoring skin. Upon giving the soldier the skin graph, he awakens and turns into a werewolf, but this time faster, meaner, shinier and bullet proof. I picked this movie up the other day from my local video store for $2, as they are going out of business and need to sell all their videos. I grabbed as many as I could carry home, "Project: Metalbeast" being one of them. Despite the terrible title and having heard nothing of it before, "Metalbeast" turned out to be an okay way to kill 90 minutes in my book. It's got a script that's more intelligent than your usual straight-to-video horror flick, a decent score, some likable characters, a couple of gory bits (the highlight being the death of the creature at the end), and even John Carl Buechler's creature effects weren't bad, though the Metalbeast itself looks more like a Hedgehog on crack than a werewolf. Granted, the film never steps very far out of genre territory, and the portrayal of both the scientists and the military are as clichéd as can be but in the end, "Project: Metalbeast" offered a fine dose of gore, monster action, and a interesting concept that puts a nice spin on the werewolf myth.

$2 well spent, I say.

6/10.

Here's an original concept; T.V. actor, John Marzill is an ego-maniacal special forces type that injects himself with werewolf blood in order to transform into a keen, immortal creature at will. Barry Boswick is an evil government colonel that stops him with silver bullets, freezes the corpse, and hires B-movie beauty, Kim Delaney as an experimental skin doctor to develop metal armor skin tissue in order to create a "controllable", indestructible killing machine. Of course, the plan goes haywire, and after removing the silver bullets (during a full moon no less), Marzill awakens as the super-werewolf (which is Kane Hodder in an excellent costume).

Its a surprisingly good blend of sci-fi genetic mutating monster mayhem, and writer/director, Alessandro De Gaetano avoids most of the clichés and contrivances while crafting this rip-roaring action piece. Kim Delaney delivers an above-average performance, Barry Boswick is good as an emotionless bad-guy, and Kane Hodder is unrecognizable as the menacing metalbeast. It's a cut above once the monster gets loose and goes on a murderous rampage in the facility, while poor Delaney and co-workers must get away from both the beast and Boswick. This also has one of the best B-movie werewolf creatures ever, especially for a direct-to-video release. Its a howl!!

Acquiring a new corpse for her project, a doctor finds they used the specimen of a soldier bitten by a werewolf and now infused with metal skin and hunting them down, forcing them to fight off the ravenous creature.

Overall this one turned out to be quite an enjoyable and entertaining offering. One of the many positive points here is the fact of this one featuring a pretty novel idea of the werewolf here being infused with a metallic armor underneath his skin as part of a shady military experiment, all of which is composed of the first half here. The secretive nature of their assignment coupled with the given nature of the material comes off rather nicely with the whole affair coming off well to set the stage for the fun later on. That comes in the form of this one's rather impressive series of stalking scenes throughout the facility where there's plenty of scenes from the wolf's POV down the corridors and throughout the facility. From the brutal attacks on the security guards on the front of the building, to the rather gory and graphic attacks in the operating rooms there's some good stuff here that mixes the action and suspense rather well before getting involved in the film's best part which is the finale. Using the multi-tiered facility to its' best by staging the action throughout the various levels, including an amazing stalking chase through an endless corridor of pipes and letting the werewolf get center-stage with several showpiece kills drawing a lot of impressive blood and gore, this one is quite fun and matches the opening hunt for an overall enjoyable bookend to the film. As well, the look of the titular werewolf is one of the best in the genre with its fearsome snout, imposing muscular frame, huge claws and metal skin all leave a viable impression here which all manage to help this one overcome the minor plot-points plaguing this one. The biggest problem here is their complete lack of questioning his instructions on their ranking here which seems to exist for completely arbitrary means here in forcing along the plot that makes no sense. Stumbling upon the corpse accidentally would've been a far better use here, yet this one decides on the course that makes him out to be a prick and the group into clueless bystanders that dominate the first half and drags this to a halt at times. That's apart from the other implausibilities of the film. One of the main ones is that no reinforcements are called in when the Metalbeast escapes, which goes against military policy yet there's also the fact that it would've boosted the kill count, which no film should be against. That is as damning to the film as anything, except for the nonsensical plot. Otherwise, this one was rather enjoyable.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.