Hyenas (2011) Online

Hilariously bad take on the werewolf myth involving a clan of shape- shifting hyenas who hunt humans for food. Despite my one star rating, this is one of the most entertaining films I've seen in ages, albeit for all the wrong reasons! The worst acting and dialogue this side of Ed Wood and CGI hyenas that make Tony the Tiger from the Frosties commercials look like a real tiger in comparison, this production is incompetent on every level! The lame characters, cheap "Star Trek"-style underground cavern set and pant-wettingly funny plot twists combine to provide a perfect Friday night entertainment with a crate of beer and some like-minded mates. Highly recommended for fans of bad cinema,Elvira would have a field day with this one!

It looks good on paper. Eric Weston directed it, well, in 1981 he made the cult flick and video nasty "Evilspeak" so I thought, this is going to be good. Sadly, only one minute into the movie and I knew it, this is going to be bad. But I gave it a chance. Costas Mandylor from the Saw franchise was in it but just face it, from a blockbuster to a no-buster. The idea was okay, changing the theme from werewolves into hyenas. But a lot of things broke this flick down. The killings are all of screen. I admit, you do see some victims but it's never that frightening or gory. Secondly, they used CGI for the hyenas, no prob wasn't it for the fact that it was badly used. And the gang of hyenas were based on Lost Boys. Even the acting for almost everybody was wooden. It's sad, I really am sure that it could be done much better. Of course a horror wouldn't be anything without nudity (?)so they gave us Christa fully naked but if you take a close you can see that she hasn't got any nipples. I have said it before, if you agree to do nudity than show it and don't hide your breasts after CGI. Really, what I thought would be a well done came out as a dreg. Now I understand the laughing of the hyenas...

I saw this movie tonight. I was expecting it to be a bad but NOT this bad film! The CGI effects are awful, the acting was even worse. The lines are bad. Guess the director wanted to "change" a bit the all werewolf scenarios and instead.. he replaced them with "hyenas", humans who transform in to these animals at night and hunt for some human meat. The story cant get serious since the acting is super bad. It has some good points like the woods in the dark are well directed but thats it. If u want to have a good laugh with your mates then this is the movie to see. I gave this film a 3/10 because of the laughs I had and also for Christa Campbell who is gorgeous.. although without nipples (!) Pass this crappy film and if you don't have anything better to do then go to bed.

Well, at least they tried.

One of the better aspects of "Hyenas" was the fact that they took the traditional werewolf cast mold, broke it and replaced it with hyenas. A bold move, and it might actually have worked, had they the CGI on their side. This approach was a much needed one, just a shame it failed.

The story told in "Hyenas", well there were two stories actually, was pretty simple and easy to follow. The main story was the one with Gannon losing his family to the flesh-eating shape-shifting hyenas, then being sought out by Crazy Briggs, trained and then seeking revenge. That part of the story was actually decent enough. The other half of the story, the one with the two rivaling street gangs, well that was just unnecessary and very strained to look at. Those thugs came off nothing more than muppets trying to behave like street urchins. That part of the story should have stayed in the cutting room.

As for the CGI effects, well I am not much of a fan of cheesy effects, and "Hyenas" was one big cheese effect fest. From the glowing red eyes on the hyenas (as well as their hybrid and human forms) to the downright eyesore CGI animated hyenas running around. The movie truly did not have the effects on its side. And I think, if they actually had a bigger budget for the effects, the movie might actually just have proved much more cool and would have raised itself up from below mediocre value. And the actual shape-shifting scenes, well, you have to see that to believe it, and seriously, try not to laugh when you do.

The cast was a sorted bunch to say the least. I was a bit surprised to see Costas Mandylor (playing Gannon) in this movie. He went from the "SAW" movies to this? Alrighty then. But he did a good enough job in this movie, though he was better in "SAW". Joshua Alba (playing Marco) was actually one of the guys putting on one of the better performances. I am not much of a fan of Christa Campbell, but wow, this performance was bad.

"Hyenas" truly had potential, but it was hindered by its budget. The CGI effects really brought down the overall enjoyment of the movie. Plus some of the acting and dialogue also helped tripping the movie along the way. It is a shame, because it was refreshing to see hyenas take it on to the scene, trying to kick the werewolves from their pedestal. This movie could have worked out so well, but it wasn't just meant to be. I am rating this movie 3/10 because of the story and because it had potential, it was just hindered in its wake.

Every now and then, it feels like the bad movie gods are smiling at me. Sure, bad movies come and go, with many making me legitimately angry. I can't say that about "Hyenas." Directed by Eric Weston (who gave the world the cult fave "Evilspeak") and distributed by Lionsgate, "Hyenas" is a movie that's bad in so many ways, and terrible on so many levels, that it ends up leaving me cackling with laughter at the sheer ineptitude. It's the kind of movie that, if "Mystery Science Theater" was still around, they'd have a field day with it.

The plot goes a little something like this: Gannon (Costas Mandylor of the "Saw" franchise) is grieving the death of his family. Well, it turns out that a pack of were-hyenas (yes, really) is responsible for this, and he's gunning after them with the help of a man named "Crazy Briggs" (Meshach Taylor from "Designing Women.") Meanwhile, there seems to be rumblings in the were-hyena pack about who will be the new alpha leader, with the curvaceous and often naked Wilda (Christa Campbell) taking a lot of interest in this role. Then there's a girl named Valerie (Amanda Aardsma) who Gannon saves and falls for, who-now get this-might not be all she seems (oh no!) and the whole "West Side Story" subplot revolving around a Caucasian gang and a Hispanic one. How that has any real meaning in this movie is beyond me.

Oh, where do I begin with this movie? Well, for starters, it really says a lot when Costas Mandylor of all people delivers one of the better performances in your movie. Every one else (with the exception of Taylor, who at least seems to be having fun with his role, even though his character seems to exist mostly to deliver narration by a campfire or explain everything that's going on) is bad beyond any possible belief. Campbell delivers all of her lines in this completely terrible accent, whilst everyone else is either over-emoting or unenthusiastic about the whole enterprise.

Also, remember what I said about the character of Wilda getting naked a lot? Well, she looks great, but you don't really see anything, as her breasts are usually covered by unconvincing CGI fog, and when they aren't she seems to be missing her nipples. Apparently, hyenas don't have nipples-you learn something new every day I guess. You also don't get much gore outside of some light blood splatter and a few mutilated corpses, the intended comic relief is terrible, the most basic logic is thrown out of the window (Aardsma is naked one minute, then completely clothed the next), a stereotypical Hispanic store owner who could have come from the imagination of Rush Limbaugh shows up, and so much more. Oh, and it leaves the door open for a sequel that will most likely never happen, so don't expect "Hyenas: The Last Laugh" or "Hyenas: Laugh at the Moon" any time in the future.

So yes, "Hyenas" is the pits. However, I doubt most of it will make you angry, as it's so poorly put together that it's nearly impossible to hate. I swear, it will leave you laughing like...well, you know. It's only every now and then that a bad movie like this comes around.

The movie starts out with a woman and child being killed and eaten by shape-shifting hyenas. The first thing you will notice is that the faces of the hyenas move about as much as a rubber mask with red lights in the eye sockets. There is a first person narration by Briggs (Maxie J. Santillan Jr.) sitting by a camp fire talking in the past tense to fill in plot points they didn't have time to film. His narration seems to have been written for Tony Todd, which they most likely couldn't afford. Crazy Briggs is able to convince Gannon (the man's who family was killed) that it was shape-shifting hyenas who did it. (In this movie we find out snipes don't really exist.) The sound track was awful as it seems to have been taken from a TV movie.

Within a few movie time minutes they have become seasoned veterans who are now being hunted by the hyenas and they have a partner who has a BMW that won't start. (My friend had one like that. Hit the starter with a hammer, the bendix is stuck.). It seems the "alpha female" is dying which is why they are coming after the hunters, a connection I didn't grasp.

"B" movie queen and silicon lover Christa Campbell plays a shape-shifter. She is the one that has to remove her skimpy top before changing.

There is a subplot of townies vs. Mexicans, involving a blond girl and her brother. They manage to bark out dialouge and acting usually reserved for an Asylum film production.

Amanda Aardsma with a gaunt Susan Dey face plays Valerie, a woman saved by Briggs and Gannon who parades around in undies and a tank top, thanks.

The movie has its predictable twist and ending.

No f-bombs that I recall. The nudity which the box claims exists, looks more like body suits designed to make one look naked, i.e. CG nudity. The movie was poorly written and directed thanks to Eric Weston.

This is a take off on the old werewolf theme except I guess the bite of one doesn't turn the bitee. Plus they can be killed by regular bullets not needing silver ones. Everything is pretty lame, the acting is borderline, the plot actually is not bad just poorly executed. There are two gangs, one white and one Mexican, that are fighting for dominance. One hyena bitch is unknowingly saved by the good guy's when the pack tries to kill her. Gannon is man who lost his wife and one year old to the hyenas and now hunts them along with Meschach Taylor. Taylor has hunted the packs for years. The two gang leaders meet inside a mine to settle their differences once and for all. The pack also shows up for the show down between the two bitches who fight for the clan lead. Gee guess what? so do the good guys. Going deep in to the mine and followed by the pack Gannon sets off a huge amount of dynamite. Killing the pack and himself. Taylor survives and the two gang leaders plus a girlfriend join him after seeing the entire thing. Not that bad but could have been a lot better.

Some moments had okay acting, other moments were just awful. The hyenas were awful, the computer animations made them look like they were from the 60's. The story line wasn't that bad, if they actually tried a little harder and had a bigger budget, they could have made it a 6/10 or 7/10 film. The gas station scene was terrible, terrible acting, and just terrible all around. The cheesiest lines of the movie were over played time and time again. The transition from human to hyena was awful every time ! Just your average crappy horror-wanna be movie , not something id watch twice in a row without putting some time between viewings.

Both pretty good movies for their time and Hyenas was possibly just as cheesy but was not impressed with the CGI of Hyenas which actually looked and acted more like werewolves. I was disappointed when I found out there were no actual Hyenas in the movie at all.... some scenes of the "Hyenas" were shot so far off that you could tell they were just some German Shepards running around or so up close and choppy that you couldn't make out quite what it was...

Towards the end of the film it was finally verified that in fact the "Hyenas" were actually humans that transform in to first a werewolf looking thing and then at the end a full fledged CGI Hyena, not a real Hyena a Hyena on steroids, kind of like the wolves from Twilight.. in fact they may have been the wolves from twilight with stripes on them.

Another humorous element in this movie was the totally corny "Hyena laugh" that some of the actors were forced to do. I must say I was completely embarrassed for them as it was anything but scary.

I gave this movie 2 stars for claiming to be a movie about Hyenas and ending up being an illogical werewolf movie.

Now I am all for a B movie, C and D as well. I think they help us appreciate the greats. The title and plot pulled me in but this went real wrong, real fast. First real problem was the way they killed Gannon's guy. So, what you DO is investigate and report uncommon phenomena, yet you don't find the actions of this suicide girl, in a dead town and a quiet garage the least bit rousing or suspicious? The best part of that scene though, is the door he 'tried' opening, w/the lock on HIS side of the door.... classic. Second issue I had was the fact that every car in it was either a classic or a beater. I get the budgetary issues, but damn. I guess the final straw as I watch the rest is the fact that I had to watch dude from 'Designing Women' as my last line of defense against Supernatural Apex predators. I guess that means we're all going to die.... Seriously?

I first saw the trailer of this movie and then I decided to see this. But I was disappointed to see this wanna be werewolf movie. Ya I hated it. Story was not great enough to arise some kind of horror or excitement. All it had are some Hyenas want to hunt Humans that's it. The Alfa of the group or I should say leader of the group shedding clothes and hunting humans that's it. This entire movie had nothing else. This movie had some potential but failed to deliver. It tried to give some twists but not good enough as I figured it out very early. Special effects were awful and not up to the mark. Transformation scenes were very bad. Some of characters that were displayed is this movie I can't figure it out why they were in this movie further there was not any relation between some of the scenes. Acting was not good enough to arise some kind of thrill. Screenplay was not great enough to arise some interest. All this movie did is just replaced Hyenas instead of wolves and tried to create a movie that had nothing in it. Total waste of time.

My Rating 3 out 10...

Hyenas starts as a woman is forced off the road with a punctured tyre while driving along an isolated backwoods road, while trying to repair the puncture a car pulls up & two people get out who then transform into flesh eating Hyenas & slaughter the women & her young baby. The woman's husband Gannon (Costas Mandylor) is informed & is devastated by the news, a guy named Crazy Briggs (Meshach Taylor) contacts Gannon & claims to know who killed his wife & baby. After some convincing Gannon finally believes Briggs & sets out to kill as many Hyena creatures as possible along with Bruggs who is himself a seasoned Hyena hunter, meanwhile in the Hyena clan itself a power struggle has broken out between two Alpha females who want to take complete control of the clan. Both Briggs & Gannon become involved as the circle of lies & betrayal leads to shocking revelations...

Edited, written & directed by Eric Weston this has quite a nice video cover as seen on the IMDb but is a lousy film, basically a Werewolf film but with Hyenas instead of Wolves this is pretty bad. At 90 odd minutes Hyenas is too long, there simply isn't enough meaningful story here to pad this thing out for an hour & a half. The script is pretty flimsy, the existence of the Hyena creatures is never gone into besides some nonsense about the slave trade or something, we never find out why Briggs became a Hyena hunter or even what the advantages of turning into a Hyena actually is. I mean Hyenas can't really do anything other than run & bite, being a human has far more positive aspects, right? Hyenas is pretty dull with minimal story, minimal character development & a twist that feels like an afterthought it has such little impact. Wholly predictable & throughly bland throughout there really is nothing about Hyenas I could recommend to anyone, there are quite simply so many better films out there that you shouldn't even be considering watching this forgettable 'Creature Feature'.

Shot mainly in some wood somewhere & a mine at the end Hyenas is visually bland with nothing going for it, some of the special make-up & CGI computer effects are very bad. There are a couple of dead mutilated bodies & a bit of blood splatter but nothing much in the way of gore & all the attacks occur off screen, the opening attack for instance happens off screen while we see a shot of a car door. Less than inspiring. There's a little nudity but not much. The high pitched sounds the Hyenas make sound more like Chimps than anything else & it goes into the realms of unintentionally funny when humans with glowing red eyes are making these high pitched monkey type sounds to each other.

Probably shot on a really low budget the opening sequence set at night was obviously filmed during the day & the image darkened along with terrible looking CGI headlights added to the cars. The acting isn't great although the threadbare script doesn't give anyone anything to work with, does it?

Hyenas has been doing the round on British cable television for a while & while there doesn't seem to be any DVD out yet I can understand why as it's pretty bad all round. Watcha decent Werewolf film instead.

How do you say something good about a film that has been universally panned?

Well, Christa Campbell (The Wicker Man, Day of the Dead) is in it. That is always a positive comment. There was definitely more than one skintastic moment before she changed into a hyena.

For the ladies, there is Costas Mandylor (SAW IV, V, VI).

Remember Meshach Taylor from Designing Women? He does a good crazy person who knows all about the creatures.

If nothing else, Amanda Aardsma will make you want to find out about Frisians. Her brother David is a Yankee pitcher, by the way.

A few surprises at the end as Crazy Briggs replaces his recruits.

All in all, it kept my interest and is worth another watch.

For creating a movie so Godawful that it truly defies description! I first discovered this movie's title when I was browsing through John Carl Beuchler's list of credits here on IMDb, naturally seeing such a title listed captured my imagination and why wouldn't it.

Now I did harbour ideas of purchasing the movie, based upon Buechler's participation and of course that of Eric Weston as director, although it had been many a year since I had last sat down to watch Evilspeak, favourable memories of that movie still lingered in my mind! Trying to find a release date or even a website that was selling the movie proved impossible, but luckily for me(however dread was to follow) here in the U.K. we have the horror channel, who from time to time do show the odd decent little horror movie, so without hesitation I sat down to watch it.

From the opening beats of the movie, my initial thoughts of yeah turned quickly to Holy crap! You would think that the presence of headline star Costas Mandylor would at least elevate the movie, but having witnessed Mandylor sacrifice his dignity in the movie Dr Chopper I should have known better, if it wasn't for the Saw franchise the man wouldn't have a career! As for Eric Weston, what happened in the intervening years between Evilspeak and Hyenas? did he forget how to be creative? In this instance the artwork for the movie offers more than the actual movie delivers! 1/10

Visionary director Eric Weston, working from his own script, brings this powerful story of human survival to the screen with stunning style and haunting imagery. The cinematography is incredibly striking and the special effects absolutely breath taking. A fine cast is aided immensely by the wonderful Meshach Taylor in the role of Crazy Briggs. It is a magnificent performance by Taylor and a suiting epitaph to a truly great actor as this would be his last film. The suspense builds to the point that it all becomes almost more than one can bear, with one intense scene following another. Unrelenting horror and overwhelming terror makes for one of the more rewarding cinematic experiences in some time.

The one thing I can say for this movie is that the quality of the cinematography is fantastic. Being a Costas Mandylor fan, it was awesome to see great closeup shots of him with those sparkling blue eyes. The plot itself was alright, nothing to rave about. The subplot involving rival teens seemed pointless to me at first, but after watching the movie in it's entirety I can see why they put it in the film. The downfalls of this film were the CGI/special effects. The transitions from humans to hyenas were so blatantly obvious and unbelievable. Also the "hyenas" themselves were basically computer animation. The acting was fairly decent. There was a lot of predictability in the writing. I would watch this movie again sometime.

Following a series of grisly murders, a hunter and his protégée team up together to find the culprit terrorizing their small town and set out to stop the vicious shape-shifting creatures responsible from continuing their rampage.

This turned out to be quite an enjoyable effort. One of the better elements is the new and somewhat original take on werewolves provided here where they're not portrayed as typical humans but more like rabid animals with the unique ability to shape-shift rather than be afflicted with a curse or other such condition. That, combined with their obvious pack-like attitude, creative back-story and absolutely cruel viciousness makes for an absolutely appealing creature that gets a lot right here, including times where it really drives up the tension as they stalk their prey or simply engage in stealth tactics to force their victims into a deadly situation. As well, there's a lot of rather fun confrontations here with the creatures including the opening encounter at the highway trap, the forest shoot-out that initially encourages belief in their existence for the skeptical aide and the garage encounter that really serves as the film's biggest and most chilling sequence as the trapped victim slowly realizes his doom in the darkened garage and slowly goes insane with their tormenting before springing the final trap. It's repeated to nice success during the woodland encounter but just doesn't have the same impact as earlier, and thankfully the final encounter at the house is where it gets to the highest mark with a spectacular assault on both sides from the creatures and the hunters' defenses coming into solid showings. There's still a few flaws here, including the absolutely inane CGI for the creatures in their animal form which looks inherently fake and quite laughable due to the rather distracting nature it implies throughout the scene. As well, the fact that it tends to employ a few extra plot lines that aren't needed is a little confusing which spreads the film out a little longer than it really should be, but overall there's a lot to like here if the flaws aren't too damaging.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Full Nudity and minor drug use.

only i like the cover which seems like an horror movie cover but the movie is just awful, worse movie. I waste my time on watching this. very bad acting, no emotion on actors face, bad effects, complete non sense nude scenes from bad lady with crap acting, i was in the mood to see some horror movie but i really frustrate after see the non sense piece of horror.

It is horror to torture someone :)

i agree with this review by stratovarius_1996 "The story cant get serious since the acting is super bad. It has some good points like the woods in the dark are well directed but thats it. If u want to have a good laugh with your mates then this is the movie to see. I gave this film a 3/10 because of the laughs I had and also for Christa Campbell who is gorgeous.. although without nipples (!) Pass this crappy film and if you don't have anything better to do then go to bed."