Wolf Guy (full title- Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope) is a fun 1975 Japanese B-movie from Toei that piles on the sleaze and the exploitation, and stars none other than The Street Fighter himself, Sonny Chiba. Unlike on those movies, Chiba plays a suave, very moral character here - part of the joke being that he, an actual animal person, is more civilized than the degenerates who live in the city.
Yes, Chiba plays a werewolf, the last of his kind, as his town/family home was wiped out when he was a child by an armed mob. It's not your typical werewolf, though; he doesn't transform or even get a little hairier, like the one other werewolf we'll see later; it's just that under the full moon, he becomes super strong and immune to bullets (just like real wolves, I think - just checked Wikipedia and it doesn't say anywhere wolves are vulnerable to bullets.)
He also has beautiful women basically immediately rip their clothes off and throw themselves at his feet or fall in love with him, but I think that's a Sonny Chiba thing, not a Wolf Guy thing. The dude exudes charisma.
Things kick off with a guy running across downtown Tokyo, screaming something about a curse, a girl called Miki, and that there's a tiger out to get him. Wolf Guy happens to be nearby and tries to help him, but the dude is cut open by invisible claws in a pretty cool, grisly scene. It might even have been scary, except that the funky soundtrack kicks in just then, all squealing guitars and electric piano.
Wolf Guy is the only person to see him die, which comes complete (I'm guessing because of his wolf guy senses) with a very cheesy tiger hallucination:
The police take Wolf in, and are obviously familiar with him because they give him shit about always making a mess of things. At first I thought Chiba was a private eye, but later he says he's a journalist.
In any case the autopsy report comes in and Wolf is exonerated because, I kid you not, the cause of death is determined to be demons. Ladies and gentlemen, this movie is officially awesome.
Wolf starts poking into the case, and finds out that he victim was the member of a rock group called The Mobs, and that other members have died a similar way. During the investigation he finds that they gang raped a singer called Miki (Etsuko Nami), gave her syphilis and basically ruined her life; she's now a total heroin junkie. That's... yeah, that's a pretty good reason to unleash a deadly curse, I guess. There's a conspiracy behind it that goes all the way to an important Conservative party politician so Wolf has multiple confrontations with yakuza thugs as he starts working things out.
So yeah, it's pretty sleazy and goes to some dark places. Also: boobs, squibs and a lot of fights, shot in pretty shaky handheld, but still legible and fun. Because Wolf is a very sincere, stand-up guy, it kind of dilutes the ugliness of the movie; as soon as he finds Miki, for example, he resolves to stand by her no matter what. Very empathetic, though the way he goes about it is kind of laughable.
The movie lays the groundwork for a very satisfying revenge/bringing powerful people to justice kind of thing, but it's completely derailed when the government steps in. They've been observing Wolf and Miki, you see, and want to harness their powers for their use. They Brainwash Miki and use her to eliminate political targets, while Wolf is tortured (in a scene where they splice in real surgical footage; not cool).
He bides his time, knowing that when the moon is full he'll get his chance - a Firestarter situation, done half a decade before King published the book.
There's a really fun setup for a random maze of death and a superpowered opponent for Wolf Guy, but the resolution to both is perfunctory and anticlimactic. That's because instead of ending things there, the film launches into a third act that follows yet another tangent.
I mean, what happens next makes sense for the character, but it comes out of nowhere and kills the momentum the movie had been gathering for the second fucking time.
Some loose ends do get tied up in the end, rather clumsily, but by then what I thought would be a classic ended up as more of a fun disappointment. Oh well. Two thirds of it are great, and it's got Chiba at the height of his powers; that's always fun to watch.
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