Project: Metalbeast (also titled Project Metalbeast: DNA Overload or just Metalbeast) is a 1995 horror/science fiction film, directed by Alessandro De Gaetano and starring Barry Bostwick, Kane Hodder, Kim Delaney, and Musetta Vander, with a screenplay by Roger Steinmann. The basic plot is about a cold-war era military project using samples taken from a werewolf resulted in the soldier who injected himself with the samples going berserk and being put on ice after being shot with silver bullets. Twenty years later another project involving metallic artificial skin for medical applications is given the a John Doe "cadaver" to test the skin on. When the doctors find the bullets lodged in his chest they remove them and unknowingly revive the corpse. Healing its wounds, the werewolf's body adapts to the artificial skin and gives it a metallic outer coating.
So basically it's a werewolf movie with an upgraded lycanthrope who's Immune to Bullets, even the silver kind. It's typical B-movie fare, though not that bad.
Provides examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Miller, the amoral scumbag of a supervisor of both projects, gets cornered by the Metalbeast and it seems to take its time killing him. While the other victims were taken out in one or two swipes or bites, here it takes the time to toss him around the room, claw up his face, bite his jaw; and then ram its hand through his chest.
- Back from the Dead: The soldier who later becomes the Metalbeast was shot in the chest several times with silver bullets when he was a normal werewolf, making him clinically and medically dead for over two decades. Soon as the bullets were out, however, he didn't take long to revive.
- Black Dude Dies First: Zig-zagged. While not the first person to die in the movie, the first of the doctors to get mauled is the only black one.
- Came Back Strong: By the time the werewolf comes back to life, he's already had metal artificial skin implanted throughout his body. The end result is a Night Invulnerable werewolf.
- Concussion Frags: Averted. Setting off an explosion indoors will result in a lot of shrapnel and building material like rebar can be deadly projectiles.
- Diabolus ex Nihilo: The original werewolf is just shown living in an old castle with no explanation of who it is or how the military found out about it.
- Evil Makes You Monstrous: Donald Butler was already a cruel and uncaring man who sacrificed a photographer to draw out the first werewolf. And then he knowingly injects himself with werewolf blood...
- Evil Versus Evil: Miller is just as bad as the Metalbeast and the monster has it out for him while also mauling anyone else it sees.
- For Science!: Miller uses this justification for things as the project gets progressively more immoral. Subverted with the actual scientists, who are uncomfortable with even working on a corpse they don't know the origin of and are flat out horrified by the realization the 'corpse' they experimented on isn't dead. They only continue due to the leverage Miller has.
- From Bad to Worse: Each step just gets worse! Trapped in a compound with a psychotic escaped patient you thought was dead? Bad. Said patient is an amoral soldier who killed and raped even as a normal man? Bad! The murder also turns out to be a werewolf? Worse. Aforementioned werewolf now has bulletproof skin? Oh God, no!
- Implacable Man: Once he wolfs out after getting the metallic skin, the Metalbeast is slowed down some, but nothing can make him stop.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: After gaining the metallic skin, the Metalbeast becomes immune to nearly everything that can be thrown at him. It takes getting shot with silver tipped LAW rockets to meaningfully damage and kill him.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Soon as any of the werewolves are offscreen they seem to show up just about anywhere, even in cases someone really should have noticed them.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Subverted in a way. We see two cases of a normal werewolf and they are pretty standard horror movie lycanthropes with typical behavior and weakness. That changes however when the second werewolf gets metal skin, making it slower but completely immune to anything save large explosions.
- Super-Soldier: The reason the government wanted werewolf blood was to create a line of these, but the project was canned when Donald Butler took it into his own hands and turned into a monster.
