After viewing a news report of the mess Woodstock festivalgoers left behind on the dairy farm, angry ol’ coot Bert (Tige Andrews, TV’s The Mod Squad) leaves his house in a huff to go looking for “those lousy hippies!” Too bad he chooses to do so on a night of historic thunderstorms.
As he climbs metal scaffolding and hurls planks while screaming, “Freaks! Freaks!” he gets a few giant electrical shocks that soon turn him into a werewolf. (This is all part of established werewolf lore, correct?) Meanwhile, a groovy band that missed out on Woodstock is headed to the farm to take pictures on the stage, in hopes of fooling a record company into a contract. Unwittingly, the two parties hop the Marrakesh Express to the same destination: disaster.
The thing about The Werewolf of Woodstock: Crazy as it is, it fails to meet the bar set by its perfectly outrageous title, even though the lycanthrope steals a dune buggy at the end. Reminiscent of the weird, live-action videotaped program that would show up on an odd Saturday morning, it’s as toothless as a meth addict, which shouldn’t be a surprise since Dick Clark produced. Although it’s directed by eventual Not Necessarily the News creator John Moffitt, this 66-minute made-for-TV movie is played straight.
The Werewolf of Woodstock features Andrews in a bad mask, Belinda Balaski (The Howling) and Andrew Stevens (The Terror Within II) among the band members and, at the local police station, Meredith MacRae (Bikini Beach), Michael Parks (Tusk), Robert Dix (Horror of the Blood Monsters) and a pot of spaghetti sauce (needs more oregano). —Rod Lott