‘Operation Blood Hunt’ VOD Review
Stars: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Louis Mandylor, Tofan Pirani, Melody Prapassorn, Chante Evans, Myles Clohessy, Gary Cairns, Peter Dobson, Elliot Allison | Written by Brandon Slagle | Directed by Louis Mandylor
Operation Blood Hunt is the film we wanted after Dog Soldiers showed us all that werewolves and soldiers could be a great combination. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the way of followup at the time, the promised sequel never happened and anyone who saw Werewolves of the Third Reich would probably rather forget it. So we’ve had to wait until now for Brandon Slagle (The Black Mass, House of Manson) to take the standard war movie plot of an odd assortment of fighters sent on a mission behind enemy lines and some werewolves to serve as the villains. And when it works, Operation Blood Hunt is a lot of fun, unfortunately, it doesn’t always work.
It’s 1945 and in a bar somewhere in London, Murphy (Jonathan Rhys Meyers; The 12th Man, American Night), the bar’s owner, and The Reverend (Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson; Never Back Down: No Surrender, Snow White and the Seven Samurai) have to deal with an annoying Nazi vampire played by Louis Mandylor (Skeletons in the Closet, Day Labor) who was also Operation Blood Hunt’s director.
As if that wasn’t enough, a pair of US intelligence officers show up looking for The Reverend, and since he describes himself as a man of the cloth and of the whisky, they figured they would find him here. He’s also an expert on the supernatural, which is why they want him to join a mission to look for a marine unit that has gone missing, and it may be the work of something other than the Japanese Army.
He’s not interested until they offer to let him see classified files concerning his missing father. That changes everything and soon he, along with Rico (Tofan Pirani; The Ghost, Art of Eight Limbs), Torque (Melody Prapassorn), Eklund (Chante Evans; Bigly, Foolproof), Billy the Kid (Myles Clohessy; Classified, Disciples in the Moonlight), Blackjack (Gary Cairns; The Channel, Malignant), Foley (Peter Dobson; Hotel of the Damned, 3 Days in Malay) and Sikes (Elliot Allison) are jumping out of a plane over Kota Island.
The question you all want answering first is, of course, how do Operation Blood Hunt’s werewolves look? They actually look damn good. Rather than CGI, the film uses full-body costumes whose masks, while a little stiff looking, have moving mouths. They’re impressive, especially for what looks to have been a mid-budget film. The filmmakers weren’t afraid to put the gore on the screen, either. We get quite a few shots of the werewolves tearing into their victims. Again, the filmmakers relied on practical effects for these shots and those of the aftermath of their attacks. Those who like their films bloody will not be disappointed.
Despite Operation Blood Hunt’s World War II setting, there isn’t much in the way of combat footage. The Japanese are eliminated quickly, so the film can concentrate on the werewolves. Our heroes’ one battle with them is nicely staged, though.
What really doesn’t work are most of the scenes back at Murphy’s bar, especially those involving Richter. He’s a pretty pathetic figure, and while I’m all for mocking Nazis, he really needed to be more sinister and feel like a threat rather than an annoyance to the characters and annoying to viewers. Another problem, both with scenes in the bar and on the battlefield, is that the film’s dialogue sounds much too modern and never sounds like it’s from the 1940s. Combined with the constant use of modern music, including at least one song, in the score. It makes it hard to accept more than one scene as taking place in 1945.
Overall, though, Operation Blood Hunt is a fairly good action horror film as long as it keeps its focus on the lycanthropes. And it does give us enough of them, compounded with a few plot twists, that it is a fun film. The ending hints at a possible sequel which, if the filmmakers fix this film’s flaws, could be even more fun.
*** 3/5
Quiver Distribution has released Operation Blood Hunt on VOD and Digital Platforms.
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