A friend lent me this DVD, which he got from the director at a festival, I think. I went in warned that some of the technical aspects of the movie were a bit shaky and that the writing was good but not great. So maybe that colored my judgment but I have to admit that I liked this movie.
The standouts where the actors. Youssef Kerkor was really good as Ernie, the main character, kind of pathetic in a likable way. Adam Jones (who also directed) and Justin Lane were excellent as the roommates who drive Ernie mad. The Bill character (Justin Lane), who spends a lot of the film dressed like a panda, was by far my favorite; he seemed the least one-dimensional, and reminded me of an old college roommate so much I called the guy after watching the DVD. Really kind of lovable, and very funny. Some of the other acting was good, some was so-so, but none of it was bad. I also really liked the vigilante duo. Ridiculous and funny.
I'm giving this one high marks, even though it has some issues, because you can tell when you watch it that these people cared, and decided to make their movie their way. Well done to Adam Jones and crew.

It's like this ... you put in the DVD and the most professional-looking thing you see over the next ninety minutes is the logo of the distribution company. And at this point, you know you've just been jerked around.
People are generally trusting enough to assume that if something has been put on DVD, it's going to be of a certain level -- at least financially if not creatively. But sadly this isn't the case. Distribution companies are perfectly happy to throw together DVDs of amateur movies and ship them right out into the stores to await the unsuspecting buyer who is drawn in by the well-designed DVD cover. The weight behind this particular project is most likely independent horror movie pioneer Kevin J Lindenmuth, whose name may be known amongst genre fans since he's responsible for various other low-budget werewolf movies -- "Rage of the Werewolf", "Werewolf Tales" and so on.
"Blood of the Werewolf" is made up of three short independent werewolf stories with no real connection other than the fact that they deal with hereditary shapeshifters. The first segment, "Blood Reunion", pretty much sets the tone for the whole thing ... a man returns to his home town to look up a girl who had a crush on, only to find that her domineering grandmother refuses to let her have relationships with men, and for reasons which are somehow related to a dark family secret. This instalment is poorly directed, poorly directed, and basically nothing superior to what you could throw together yourself with a few friends and a home video camera.
The second story, "Old Blood", is probably the strongest out of the three and is directed by Lindenmuth himself. It tells the story of a lesbian couple, one of whom is a shapeshifter and the other wishes to be given this power. Her wish is granted, but she doesn't become the creature that she envisioned. This short movie shows that Lindemuth has more talent and experience than the other filmmakers who worked on this project, but still not enough to raise it above the level of an amateur movie.
And finally we have "Manbeast", in which some army guy runs through the woods while being chased by two other fellas. They wish to kill him as he has been bitten by the beast and is believed to be dangerous, but all might not be as it seems. This one has an interesting concept, but it's stretched out to be far too long, and if you don't guess what the "twist" is in the first ten minutes then you probably ain't too bright. This pretty much sums up the problem with this whole DVD ... a few good ideas just aren't enough to justify spending money on something like this. After all, would you pay for a picture you could have painted yourself?