Brotherhood of the Wolf: The Director's Cut – DVD Review

Film, Reviews

Available at Amazon.com

Some may wonder whether such a finely detailed, decently budgeted, epic-length French film like Brotherhood of the Wolf should count as a Cult movie. Well, there’s a scene early on in Christopher Gans’ flick where a voluptuous woman is apparently eaten by a giant monster, and in the very next sequence, six men in drag beat up a witch and are thwarted in their assault by a well-dressed Native American who happens to know Kung Fu. Ladies and gentlemen, not only is this is a Cult movie, this is absolute Cult heaven.

For those that never got the chance to see Gans’ picture at the theater or on DVD, Universal is now presenting Brotherhood of the Wolf: The Director’s Cut featuring a version of the film now 8 minutes longer than the theatrical version, which was already approaching 2 ½ hours. Now, if you already own the original DVD, the new footage inserted into the movie doesn’t dramatically change the movie, but does add some extra character development. Again, this isn’t a revolutionary change to the movie, but on the other hand you can also see that the new footage flows so well with the theatrical version that it probably shouldn’t have been excised in the first place.

Now back to the movie itself, imagine the best Hammer Horror film ever made. We’re talking a picture equal parts Last of the Mohicans, Jaws, Billy Jack, Sleepy Hollow, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, A Fistful of Dollars, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, and throw in whatever exploitation film about prostitutes you can think of. That’s about the amount of fun you’re likely to have as this picture unfolds in front of you. The movie is dressed up Pulp, but with a film trying this hard to entertain you, who can argue with that.

What most will not realize, is that the movie is actually based loosely on the events surrounding the Beast of Gévaudan, a monster said to have roamed the mountains of south France from 1764 to 1767, who was reported to have been involved in over 200 attacks on the locals in the area. The film depicts two agents sent by the King of France in order to investigate the situation and assess any political damage the beast could be causing due to unrest amongst the common folk. What they find is much more than they bargained for, and probably the less said the better, just be prepared for a lot of debauchery and spin kicks.

What I can say, is that leads Samuel Le Bihan and Mark Dacascos make a great screen duo, with Le Bihan doing the heavy lifting when it comes to the dramatic work and Dacascos doing the heavy punching, kicking, and flipping when it comes to the fight scenes. This is a terrific pair and I wish Gans could get them together again soon, perhaps in a prequel of some sort, depicting their struggles in the French and Indian War. Each bring humor and grace to these roles, completely fitting into this 18th century setting, despite having modern fight choreography. As for that, both are also completely legitimate when it comes the film’s action, giving this duo more reason to team up soon.

The movie goes to weird places, and some may find fault with the openly erotic nature of the film, especially when it comes to the odd love triangle between Le Bihan’s Grégoire de Fronsac, the incredibly sensual Sylvia (Monica Bellucci) and the lovely Marianne (Émilie Dequenne), but that’s all just fuel for Gans genre-busting fire. Not caring where this movie fits in, it kind of sits in a class reserved for cross-cultural funfests like Big Trouble in Little China and Kill Bill. Historically, this movie may be absolute hogwash, but you shouldn’t let that stop your fun.

I‘m not sure that Brotherhood of the Wolf: The Director’s Cut is worth the upgrade for the film alone if you already own the previous version of the DVD, but for those that have never seen the movie, this would be the way you want to go. For fans that go for Cult pictures and bawdy tales, this film is packed with 151 minutes of not so guilty pleasure. Not caring whether it’s a horror, action, or dramatic film, Brotherhood is the rare film that succeeds on all of those levels.

The print on this disc is quite good, just as the previous edition was when it came out. The colors are a little muted at times, but that seems to go with the color pallet chosen for the movie. The audio also is quite good, with all the musket blasts and animal attacks all blending in nicely to the movie’s sound design.

Deleted Scenes – With introductions, this section of deleted footage goes about 40 minutes. The best scene is an alternate version of the opening fight scene with our heroes where Grégoire de Fronsac also gets in on the ruckus and we get to see his fighting prowess displayed much earlier than we do in the original cut. This is pretty good stuff, but you can see why these scenes were cut.

The Guts of the Beast – A documentary broken up into several parts, this is a terrifically in-depth look at the making of this film, including the initial development of this project, the work done on the fights in the movie, the special effects work done, as well as others. Christopher Gans is just so passionate about this project, and you can see just how involved he was in the movie’s production. An interesting tidbit comes in the section discussing the film’s art direction when apparently it is revealed that a lot of the light set up and shots were taken from Guillermo Del Toro’s Mimic, a film from another genre-bending film maker. I wish Gans would get a similar opportunity in America as Del Toro has had and maybe we’d get some awesome new films out of him as well.

Documentary – Not really given a title per se, this is yet another 80 minutes devoted to the production of this film, but this is really more about showing actual footage from the set. We get to see actors and crew dealing with the harsh weather and locations as well as putting together fight scenes.

Legend – This is a fascinating 16 minute interview with Naturalist and Historian Michel Louis who goes into depth about his theories about the actual events that took place and who was responsible for the Beast of Gévaudan. Louis is apparently the foremost expert on the beast and his findings are quite interesting.

Storyboards

Overall, fans of Brotherhood of the Wolf should be ecstatic about this DVD. While the Director’s Cut doesn’t divert much from the theatrical cut of the film, the DVD itself is a vast improvement over the previous release. With hours of extras to get through, this is a wonderful addition to any fan of this movie’s collection.

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Universal presents Brotherhood of the Wolf: The Director‘s Cut. Directed by Christopher Gans. Starring Samuel Le Bihan, Mark Dacascos, and Monica Bellucci. Written by Stéphane Cabel and Christophe Gans. Running time: 151 minutes. Rated R. Released on DVD: Aug 26, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.

Robert Sutton feels the most at home when he's watching some movie scumbag getting blown up, punched in the face, or kung fu'd to death, especially in that order. He's a founding writer for the movies section of Insidepulse.com, featured in his weekly column R0BTRAIN's Badass Cinema as well as a frequent reviewer of DVDs and Blu-rays. Also, he's a proud Sony fanboy, loves everything Star Wars and Superman related and hopes to someday be taken seriously by his friends and family.