Starring: Chad Michael Collins, Sean Patrick Flanery, Chelsea Edmundson, Matthew Tompkins, Tom Zembrod

Director: Josh Ridgway
Released: 2019

Mood: If you want to do nothing more with your evening than smoke some weed and laugh your ass off at an utterly preposterous movie.

I knew High Moon was going to be at least a bit ridiculous when I put it on.

I mean, come on. Time-traveling gunfighter versus werewolf motorcycle gang? It sounds like the teams I’d pick for a game of Smash Up, not an actual movie that people paid to make in 2019. Unless those people were Rob Zombie’s people, and it was going to be a campy Grindhouse gorefest.

But stupid-ridiculous is EXACTLY what I wanted. I’d just watched The Burrowers, and I needed to calm my nerves before bedtime.

High Moon is laugh-out-loud bad in every way possible. I have NO idea how they got Sean Patrick Flanery of the iconic Boondock Saints on board. Yet I don’t regret watching it at all. There’s a special place in cinema for this level of stupidity. I say this with love, as someone who still watches Pauly Shore movies.

High Moon, also known on IMDb as Howlers, starts off in 1863 Texas. A distractingly modern-looking gunslinger known as Colt (Chad Michael Collins) seems to have been hunting some bad guys for awhile, and they square off outside a saloon.

But these are no ordinary bad guys – they turn into werewolves! Which, unfortunately, don’t look anything like proper werewolves. You can throw a rock and hit ten ‘80s movies that did werewolf transformation and prosthetics better, like An American Werewolf in London or Monster Squad.

Then Colt goes into a field and talks to a… Chinese warlord from the Ming Dynasty? Sure.

Next thing you know, we’re in modern Texas. A text overlay tells us this, possibly because the creators predicted the inebriated state of the audience. Sheriff Ethan Hardy (Matthew Tompkins) has a cheating wife. But we can’t worry too much because suddenly an attractive young widow (Chelsea Edmundson as Lucy) is jogging, and she sees a random coffin that pops open as soon as she approaches to reveal… Colt!

Colt has somehow come through time, and Lucy happens to have her husband’s vintage guns and silver bullets. Convenient! He needs to finish what he started with outlaw Willie Price (Tom Zembrod) and his posse, but first he has to learn what a ‘truck’ is.

While all this is happening, Willie and his men have also arrived in this exact year and place! They come upon a biker gang, and take a shine to the gang’s shiny new ‘horses’. So naturally they all learn to ride motorcycles IN TIME TO DUEL BEFORE MIDNIGHT. The same day.

You can probably guess the rest.

I’m not going to fully rip into High Moon because like I said, it cracked me up. But I do have a journalistic obligation to give y’all a high-level breakdown of the best of the worst.

• The dialogue is really bad
• The action is not much better
• Most of the main and supporting performances are weak
• In the opening scene Colt looks like he was spray-tanned with dirt while wearing protective eyewear
• All of the sets and costumes are incredibly pristine, nothing feels authentic
• The story is more predictable than enjoyably cheesy

With that said, I loved everything about the werewolf gang. Their facial hair is on point. They ham it up every chance they get. And the actors all seem in on the joke, like they’re just having a good time.

Sean Patrick Flanery also gives you a flamboyant, frenzied, corrupt mayor with hints of other sociopathic Western villains we’ve known and loved.

I don’t smoke the green stuff, but I felt like High Moon was somehow written by people who were high, for people who are high. And possibly also made by people who were high – there’s no way anybody involved was thinking “Yeah, this is going to be a huge box office hit. This is going to be my big break.”

If you want a proper horror Western, this isn’t it. It’s hard to be scared when you’re giggling. I’d HIGHLY (pun intended) recommend reading David Gallaher’s brilliant werewolf Western graphic novel, High Moon, instead. The art is outstanding, and the story is great.

But if you just want to shut off your brain with something guaranteed to make you roll your eyes and throw popcorn at the screen, something you can laugh at and trash with your friends, this could be for you. Meanwhile, I’ll hold out for the Rob Zombie version of this premise, because it would be outstanding.