Customer Reviews

Beast of Bray Road

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Ugh. Where to begin? When I watched this film I knew there would be liberties taken for dramatic effect, and as one of the researchers involved with the real-life Bray Road incidents, I had to keep an open mind. After all, the film uses savage murders as its key subject point, but in reality, there were no human deaths in the real Bray Road cases. Unfortunately even my suspension of disbelief was not strong enough to stomach this film. Had writer/director Leigh Slawner (also known as Leigh Scott) done any research into the subject matter at hand, he could have come up with a decent indie werewolf film, because mercy knows we need one. Unfortunately he follows "Hollywood Formula" to the letter. When I was watching it, I told a friend in disgust all we needed was a bar fight and a cat jumping out of a closet to make the stereotypical plot devices complete. We didn't get the cat, but midway through we did have the bar fight.

The "Beast of Bray Road" is a sloppy, lazy, and cliche-ridden farce that's completely untrue to the self-proclaimed "Based On A True Story" title, and a mockery of the situation as a whole. Absolutely nothing in the film is based on the real Beast of Bray Road aside from the name of the film, and that was probably ripped off from writer Linda Godfrey's book with the same title.

Even if we disregard the real-life events that "inspired" it, it sill fails as a film in general. With the exception of a few characters, the acting is juvenile, the camera work uninspired, and the glaring inconsistencies are so bright, you literally need sunglasses to watch it. Elkhorn, Wisconsin is a city, not a drunken shanty town. Wisconsinites do not speak with Southern accents. Walworth County sheriff patrol cars do not have California license plates. The list can go on and on and on...

The plot is predictable, most of the characters are shallow cardboard cutouts, pacing is inconsistent, and on whole I felt as if I was watching a freshmen college student's final exam project. About the only redeeming aspect was the score. While not groundbreaking, it was at least decent enough to listen to.

Overall, if you're a fan of werewolves or a fan of real-world cryptids, you'll be sorely disappointed. This film brings nothing new to the table, and it falls back on every single convention used a million times before in previous werewolf films, and it does it badly. Unless you're a werewolf film completionist, this film isn't worth a buy. It's barely even worth a rental. For those interested in the real-life mystery, your best bet is to read _The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf_ and _Hunting The American Werewolf_ both by Linda Godfrey. Unlike the film, these won't disappoint.

I was enthralled with this monster flick ! The cast: Jeff Denton(Has a James Dean-ish bent ),Sarah Lieving has a great screen prescence and will go far, Totally believable. The special effects would gross you out, But logically. Wanna talk about the beast, Joel Hebner portrays the beast and he is great; the suit by Eva Lohse and Dizzworks design is different than earlier cinematic beasts . Producers push the envelope that this is a true story,And on IMDB a fan says he has photo of REAL Beast of Bray Road. I wanna talk about ending, It was innovative and yet pissed me off, And the irony is we cant discuss without a Spoiler Warning, See you on the message boards AND WE SHALL DISCUSS !

First of all, I am not opposed to B grade films. You know what to expect from them and they don't disappoint. People watch these movies (almost always of the horror genre) to see who lives and who dies. There are characters you like and hope survive and there are complete idiots you cannot wait to see "get it" from the monster of the title. These movies pass the time late at night when insomnia creeps in or on those rainy Sundays when there is nothing else on and you have no interest in going out. Unfortunately, "The Beast of Bray Road" cannot see these B movies from the level of Hell it resides in.

Let's start at the beginning. The movie claims it is based on a True Story but this is only in terms of the title. Witnesses in a small town in Wisconsin claim to have seen some sort of mysterious creature but this is the extent of the story. There has never been reports of anyone perishing at the hands of the beast. Second, if I were from the town where this movie is supposed to take place I would be highly insulted. Everyone in town is depicted as either a drunk, and idiot, or an @$$hole (sometimes a combination of all three). As I stated before, people sometimes watches B grade films to see the villains get killed and the people we like to survive. I watched this film to the end hoping to see the entire town get slaughtered. Not one character in the film is likable or has a redeeming quality. Everyone and everything is a cliche of every other movie made and it is done poorly. People will get killed and no one seems to miss them or even find their bodies.

The story makes no attempt at professionalism. The police follow no proceedures whatsoever. An abandoned car from the first victim is found by the side of the road. There is damage and signs of struggle (not to mention large streaks of blood covering the passenger side door) and the cops just have the car towed. No crime scene integrity. Not even a search of the immediate area. At least other movies of low caliber try to make an attempt. There is even an "expert" who arrives in town to assist in the search for the beast and he delivers his lines with no conviction but plenty of contradiction.

The faults of the film are just too numerous to list. The characters are all one dimensional, the beast looks like a shag carpet with eyes and teeth, and the dialogue is a joke with no punch line. The ending of the film comes with a dedication to the people of Wisconsin. The Enthusiasm that must have come from having this movie dedicated to you would be right up there with finding out you have a venereal disease. Treat this film like it was VD and just stay away.

"The Beast of Bray Road" is based on true sightings of a "werewolf" near Bray Road in Wisconsin. A new sheriff is in town, hailing from Chicago, and he's trying to get the hang of working in a country town that has its fair share of redneck wife-beaters and troublemakers. But people soon start disappearing, only to be found mutilated by some monster out on Bray Road. What follows is your typical police investigation that leads to a showdown with the monster and the surprise realization of who it really is.

The cinimatography is very good for this type of film. The acting varies by actor, but nothing too atrocious. There's a lot of gore and body parts being eaten. The werewolf looks good, even though its face almost resembles a typical haloween mask...at least it can open its mouth and stuff, unlike in some low-budget flicks. The film's main drawback is the climax, where they cut away from certain shots that would probably require big-budget special effects to make look good. As for the plot, like I said, it's easy to guess what's coming and who's going to die.

I would say rent it first, especially if you're like me and must see every werewolf movie that doesn't get torn apart by reviews. But don't buy it without seeing it first.

Five Stars? Am I crazy? Yes, but thats an entirely different subject. Lets start off. This is a "B" movie. No, its not Gone with the Wind, (thank God) its a 5 star B movie with great entertaining characters throughout. Gore is plentiful and gratuitous sex seems normal in this back woods town where there is nothing else to do but get drunk, get laid and get mangled by the Beast of Bray Road.

Being Based on a "True" story about a werewolf running amouk in Wisconsin really adds a whole new dimension in Terror as the viewer needs to add less suspension of disbeleif where the possibility of real werewolves running around are concerned. As far as B movies go... this one is Killer! Enjoy!

Being from Wisconsin and having been to Elkhorn(the town where this film takes place), I got a chuckle out of how Wisconsinites are portrayed here. Obviously we are dealing with filmmakers who aren't from, or have probably never been to Wisconsin. Wisconsin is not full of beer swilling, redneck jerks. Sure, we have our share, but doesn't every state? Elkhorn is shown as a smaller town here than it actually is, and populated by hot women exclusively. I wish.
Anyway, this film is the typical story of a monster terrorizing a small town, cliches and all. The selling point here is the whole "Based On A True Story" nonsense. This is about as true as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was to the Wisconsin Ed Gein case, which is to say, not very. I've done a bit of reading about The Beast before, and the only thing accurate(besides the region) is that the filmmakers made an attempt to make the Beast look like the eyewitness descriptions. I think the Beast looks great. No CGI crap. It looks better and more threatening than most werewolves from straight to video releases. And by the way there are no real life reports of the creature pulling anyone's head off or tearing them to shreds.
Though it was cliched as hell, the movie was pretty enjoyable. The last act is where it really falls apart, and I had to subtract one star off the rating for this. Up until the last act, the movie has us believe via a cryptozoologist character, that the beast is some kind of undiscovered animal, possibly of canine and/or primate origin. Maybe even ancient. Actually a very zoological and non-supernatural approach, which is pretty cool. Suddenly near the end, we flip to it being strictly a werewolf. Just a plain old Hollywood werewolf, and now our cryptozoologist character is reading books of werewolf lore and the police are packing silver bullets. Then it's a question of "Which one of the townspeople is the werewolf?"
This sucked, and it completely threw the tone of the movie off. It wasn't Oscar winning to begin with, but this new supernatural turn just brought it down big time. The scientific approach was much, much more interesting, and isn't used as much. What a waste.
So, if you're in the mood for a rather by-the-numbers werewolf movie, but with an above average werewolf, you'd do okay with this one.
Just don't think we're all like these clowns in Wisconsin!!

One of the better low-budget werewolf flicks, that I've seen, and I'm a lycanthropy completist. Beats other low-budget films of this type (like WolvesBayne, Big Bad Wolf, Never Cry Werewolf, etc.) because it gives us plenty of doses of blood/gore, as well as decent B-movie acting. Throw in an original werewolf design, some hot local color, and you've got all the ingredients for some schlocky fun.

Leigh Scott's "The Beast of Bray Road," released in 2005, is a very loose telling of the legendary "dogman" of SE Wisconsin. In reality, the beast has only been sighted and has never killed anyone. In the film, however, numerous people bite the dust in extremely gorey scenes, heads getting torn off, the beast eating their innards, etc.

In the beginning it's unclear what type of beast the "dogman" is, is it a bigfoot? A werewolf? A cryptozoologist appears and helps the police pinpoint the probable nature of the creature.

POSITIVES:

- I liked the main protagonists, the police chief (Jeff Denton), the cryptozoologist, the beautiful bartender Kelly (Sarah Lieving) and the other police personnel.
- The story is generally compelling and moves right along.
- The killer creature looks excellent and you get quite a few good looks at it; no CGI.
- The story turns out to be a mystery. The beast may be a human being that transforms into the bloodthirsty creature. If so, who is it? If you've seen films like "The Howling V: The Rebirth" you know what to look for.

NEGATIVES:

- Although the story takes place near Elkhorn & Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the film was shot in friggin' California, near Los Angeles, likely to keep expenses down; they did fine, however, making sure the scenery didn't look too much like typical Southern California. It sorta passes for SE Wisconsin, I guess.
- The film is filled with gorgeous women from beginning to end but Mr. Scott fumbles the ball and doesn't truly take advantage (and I'm not talking about top nudity or sex scenes at all; the film has some of both). Scott does much better in this area in 2008's "Flu Birds" and 2009's "The Dunwich Horror."
- Until the last act the film has a we're-not-taking-this-too-seriously vibe. It wasn't so bad to ruin the horror experience, but it was there. This is a minor cavil, however; all-in-all the filmmakers did a decent job balancing camp with serious horror.
- Every Wisconsin yokel, male or female, is portrayed as a hip, dour, alcohol-guzzling sex-fiend.

BOTTOM LINE: "The Beast of Bray Road" is a worthwhile killer beast flick but contains enough negative elements to prevent it from being truly good. The non-CGI monster looks great, however, and is worth the price of admission, not to mention this is a must if you're a gorehound (I'm not; I can take gore or leave it; all I care about is that the story & cast be interesting and entertaining).

The film runs 80 minutes.

GRADE Borderline C+ or B-

Ran into this one on the Sci-Fi channel one night. Now, if you've ever been subjected to the B-horror flims that are usually offered on that particular network, then you know how horrifyingly bad they can be. Still, I'm a bit of a cryptozoology buff who is familiar with the bloodless but creepy "true story" that inspired this flick, plus I'm a huge werewolf film fanatic so I decided to give this one a try. First off, the gore is fantastic. I don't believe I've seen a horror movie with gore this convincing since Romero's "Day of the Dead" High praise indeed. Second, in spite of a cheap wolf suit that looks like the werewolf from the "Thriller" music video on steroids, the director actually gets some great, scary shots and pans that genuinely creeped me out. And believe me when I say that I've seen it all as far as horror films are concerned and do not scare easy. The characters run the small-town gamut of cliches from ignorant redneck, to beaten-down wife of a redneck, to drunk redneck, to redneck skank and so on. The main characters are likeable enough and consist of a big city cop come to enjoy the peace and quiet of small town (possibly the biggest film cliche of all time) and a sexy, spunky bar tender as his love interest. The film moves along at a nice pace and doesn't skimp on the killin'; oh yes, there will be killin'. If you can overlook the obvious small budget and the cavalcade of genre cliches, there is a damn fine werewolf flick going on here. And if you're the type who just wants to see death, gore, and breasts without much plot this might be the movie of the damn year for you (this or "Snakes on a Plane"). This film never tries to be anything but a shallow, entertaining horror flick and it accomplishes that on every level. If you're looking for another fun werewolf film to watch and you dug "Dog Soldiers", this one should be next on your list.

First of all, I know personally actor Tom Nagel, who stars in this film. We attended broadcasting school in Ohio together and he is a genuinely nice person with a great talent for acting. he is first seen coming out of the bar in the opening scene with his red-deaded girlfriend. He is the guy with the black hair and the black shirt on. That being said, THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD delivers on many levels. Tom's scenes in this movie stand out and make it work well. Jeff Denton as the new sheriff in town from Chicago makes for some interesting storytelling, too. This film is not a serious film throughout and there are some really neat, quirky characters in the story, toungue-in-cheek humor that is a homage to the genre. There's a deputy who wants to cash in with her fellow police officer on the warewolf spin with merchandising and the like, much to the dismay of the new sheriff (Denton). There is also the assistance of a zoological scientist who lends his knowledge to the hunt of the formidable beast.

The warewolf itself gets ample screen time and creates a very suspenseful feeling when you don't see it. But what works here is the creature itself. It is very realistic and at no time looks unbelievable. The twist ending involving who the warewold actually is shocked me the first time I saw this movie. If you have not seen it or would like to get a suspense/horror film with the gore, humor, and thrills, much like a classic film would, then I highly suggest you check out THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD. This is one of the BEST independent films I have ever seen. And, kudo's to my friend, Tom Nagel and Jeff Denton for their versatile acting in this movie.

I have watched this movie many times and I recommend you watch it, too.