Maneater is set in a small rural peaceful US town where ex-FBI profiler Harry Bailey (executive producer Dean Cain) is the Sheriff, one morning the peace is shattered when a badly burnt body of a man is found & just chunks of ripped apart flesh of what used to be his girlfriend. Harry is on the case but the coroner (Conrad Janis) says that a sample taken from the crime scene has him puzzled as it's not human but not animal either, in fact he describes it as almost human. Various towns people go missing as panic spreads, then Harry's daughter Pearl's (Lacy Phillips) slutty best friend Kay (Nicole Moore) goes missing & Pearl decides to look for whatever took her which causes Harry all sorts of problems as he can't control the towns people who want answers & he can't quite believe what the evidence suggests as ancient legends of shape-shifting monsters seem to be the only thing that makes sense...
Co-written, co-produced & directed by Michael Emanuel this is yet another Sci-Fi Channel style 'Creature Feature' that is maybe a touch better then the average example, at the time of writing this comment there are no other comments or external reviews on the IMDb so maybe this has not been widely released yet & in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the Sci-Fi Channel snapped it up & aired it as it's right up their street. Right, where to start? Well firstly a lot of the running time of Maneater is spent on domestic dramas as Harry & his daughter Pearl have the usual parent child arguments going on & then there's Harry's missing wife, Pearl's new boyfriend & her best friend going missing & as such at times Maneater relegates it's creature feature elements to merely a side issue which is not good since the only reason anyone is likely to want to watch this is because of the monsters. The plot is alright, there's not a whole lot of explanation behind the creatures except for the dull Native American Indian legend cliché & there's a reasonable twist ending that while not exactly Earth shattering show's a little more effort than the usual 'Creature Feature'. Of course Maneater does have it's problems like there not being enough monster action & Harry manages to solve the entire case by doing an internet search from which he finds out everything about the Maneater he needs to & is a lazy way for the writers to wrap the film up.
The one thing that stands out about Maneater is that it has quite a lot of nudity & sex in it, the first half an hour or so has two sex scenes & four pairs of exposed breast's which is pretty good going. Unfortunately the gore factor isn't as high, there's a ripped off head, a ripped off arm, a badly burned man, a chunk of flesh & some blood splatter but little else although the actual monsters here look pretty good & the make-up effects are good too. Shot in full 2:35:1 widescreen not many horror films are so it's nice to see & it's filmed with a very natural colour scheme as the majority of scenes seem to be lit by the sun with shafts of light coming in log cabins through windows & the like. Maneater looks pretty good & doesn't look as low budget as it might have.
The production values are good although forgettable, the acting is alright if not exactly great with Dean Cain the only name in the cast of any interest.
Maneater isn't a bad little 'Creature Feature' style horror film although it's not any sort of masterpiece, there's some gore, some nudity & the odd twist which should keep most happy for an hour & a half if they know what they are going in to. Not to be confused with Maneater (2007) the made-for-telly 'Creature Feature' with Gary Busey about a killer tiger.
Co-written, co-produced & directed by Michael Emanuel this is yet another Sci-Fi Channel style 'Creature Feature' that is maybe a touch better then the average example, at the time of writing this comment there are no other comments or external reviews on the IMDb so maybe this has not been widely released yet & in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the Sci-Fi Channel snapped it up & aired it as it's right up their street. Right, where to start? Well firstly a lot of the running time of Maneater is spent on domestic dramas as Harry & his daughter Pearl have the usual parent child arguments going on & then there's Harry's missing wife, Pearl's new boyfriend & her best friend going missing & as such at times Maneater relegates it's creature feature elements to merely a side issue which is not good since the only reason anyone is likely to want to watch this is because of the monsters. The plot is alright, there's not a whole lot of explanation behind the creatures except for the dull Native American Indian legend cliché & there's a reasonable twist ending that while not exactly Earth shattering show's a little more effort than the usual 'Creature Feature'. Of course Maneater does have it's problems like there not being enough monster action & Harry manages to solve the entire case by doing an internet search from which he finds out everything about the Maneater he needs to & is a lazy way for the writers to wrap the film up.
The one thing that stands out about Maneater is that it has quite a lot of nudity & sex in it, the first half an hour or so has two sex scenes & four pairs of exposed breast's which is pretty good going. Unfortunately the gore factor isn't as high, there's a ripped off head, a ripped off arm, a badly burned man, a chunk of flesh & some blood splatter but little else although the actual monsters here look pretty good & the make-up effects are good too. Shot in full 2:35:1 widescreen not many horror films are so it's nice to see & it's filmed with a very natural colour scheme as the majority of scenes seem to be lit by the sun with shafts of light coming in log cabins through windows & the like. Maneater looks pretty good & doesn't look as low budget as it might have.
The production values are good although forgettable, the acting is alright if not exactly great with Dean Cain the only name in the cast of any interest.
Maneater isn't a bad little 'Creature Feature' style horror film although it's not any sort of masterpiece, there's some gore, some nudity & the odd twist which should keep most happy for an hour & a half if they know what they are going in to. Not to be confused with Maneater (2007) the made-for-telly 'Creature Feature' with Gary Busey about a killer tiger.