The first thing you notice while watching DARK MOON RISING, a would-be werewolf-themed horror film made on a very low budget, is that it's an open rip-off of TWILIGHT that favours romance over horror content. It's a trailer trash-style film that features rubbish lead actors and poor writing throughout. The horror content is virtually nil and the direction is bad with lots of close-up shots and little varying to break up the tedium. Only the virtue of various slumming-it stars keeps it watchable: in support we get THE RUNNING MAN'S Maria Conchita Alonso as the town sheriff; Max Ryan as a heavy; Billy Drago as his usual sinister character; Sid Haig in a one-scene cameo; plus a minor role for the reliable interesting Chris Mulkey, who appeared in FIRST BLOOD. A shame it's such a dud.

After a mysterious drifter arrives in town, a woman's burgeoning romance with him becomes threatened when he reveals the deadly curse he falls under and must try to protect her from more of his own kind ravaging the town.This one wasn't as bad as it could've been as it turned out quite enjoyable. One of the biggest pluses here is the fact that this one manages to really overwhelm with how brutal and vicious the werewolves really are here with this one really getting the most out of it's scenes. Attacking with ferocity and remorselessness, the way a true werewolf should attack in such situations, that leaves this with plenty of vicious and brutal attacks that have people with their faces and chests clawed to pieces, hands bitten off, flesh torn into and devoured and even claw impalings that are quite gruesome and bloody which works quite well here. This also causes many of the attacks to come off as rather chilling and suspenseful with the usage of the werewolf to really toy with his victims here and then go in for the kill so the ambush at the father's house, the police station encounter and the encounter at the car-lot all come off as quite chilling and enjoyable. The big action scene, which is the town's shootout with the werewolf in the desert which devolves into the main brawl between the two werewolves in a brutal, vicious and bloody sequence that eschews spectacle to go for pure carnal brutality as would be the case in such a fight causes this to really become a true highlight that comes off incredibly well here with the amount of action supplementing the brutality. That's really all that works here, as otherwise this one tends to come off with a couple flaws in the fact that this one mainly centers around a romance angle that's highly derivative and ripped off from plenty of other movies. Granted, it never humanizes their bestial modes and keeps them as something to be feared throughout, but the fact remains that it still rips off other movies with the inter-species romance that tends to take up the first hour or so between the two and really causing this one to grind to a halt with it's more intense happenings occurring in such brief snippets it loses it's horror tag at times. This also causes the film to go on way too long for something as simplistic as this plot is because it has to wrap the romance into the proceedings so that it can fully tell that story specifically rather than anything else so that the rest of the movie is stretched out as a result. By using the Wolf-Man style of werewolf make-up rather than the Werewolf style which basically just gives the creatures fangs and fur around the face, it makes the creatures look somewhat laughable at times by not really trying to do anything special with their make-up and just going for the weakest look in the genre. It looks great, but it's still a poor design, and joins the other flaws here to hold this down.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Nudity.

This movie was a dull mess of a movie, and the reason why might be in the opening credits. Nearly every actor in the film apparently has a "co-producer" credit. So the movie wasn't entirely clear on who the protagonist was, and thus there was no real focus to the story.The plot is that a drifter comes into town and seduces the daughter of a local rancher. Said rancher has the hots for the Sheriff played by Maria Conchita, who apparently hasn't worked on her English all that much since she was in "The Running Man". She investigating a series of murders and animal mutilations. Of course, the real villain is the drifter's father... Scooby Doo would have figured this out about half an hour before our characters would have.Sid Haig and Billy Drago. Can't have a cheap horror movie without them, regardless of how unimportant there characters are to the actual plot. Not surprisingly, they got "Co-Producer" credits, too. Just so they could have something else to put in their IMDb entries.

Dark Moon Rising / Wolf Moon is a love story... no, it's a story of a reluctant werewolf... no, it's a story of two families coming together... Well, it's a lot of things and not all of them pleasant. First and foremost it's the story of a girl with a single father who happens to fall for the bad boy werewolf drifter and could've ended happily at just that if not for the father's dislike/distrust for the new boyfriend and the fact that the boy's psychopath werewolf father is trying to track him down for a family reunion.For what it is, the film is decently acted and the story is moderately compelling. The big bad daddy wolf is a genuine monster and regales us with moderate gore, besides being a somewhat likable villain. The boy and girl are passable actors allowing their scenes to outshine their limited talent. The girl's father and the sheriff feel like something ripped out of a low budget Syfy Original (is there any other kind?) but they're not bad beyond possibly being somewhat derivative. The real flaw, through and through, are the horrendous special effects. The transformations are hokey, corny, and completely devoid of any real passion; the costumes are, well, just so obviously costumes that it ruins any thrill. Compared even to the presumably smaller budgeted Werewolf: The Devil's Hound, the special effects in DMR are flat out lousy and inexcusable especially considering the rest of the movie which is pleasant if not good. It's a shame that they decided to completely shunt the werewolf angle in a werewolf movie but, after all, this film is probably more of a teeny romance than anything else.