Vet exploitation director Bud Townsend (Alice in Wonderland, Coach) took the reins for this 1972 curio, a horror comedy with the same basic conceit as the later Motel Hell. Red Wolf exists in at least two versions: a 78 minute PG-rated cut and a harder 90-minute R-rated cut. I have only seen the truncated version and therefore can’t comment on the merits of the longer one. In its shorter form, Red Wolf completely omits explicit violence, and the resulting scenes have an oddball satirical spin, as in a sequence where “down home” murderers/cannibals Evelyn and Henry Smith, their mentally retarded son Baby John, and three unsuspecting female guests savagely devour a dinner that includes ribs from a mysterious source. Townsend, however, keeps the off-center humor dry and a little too understated; maybe as a result, this never really earns the big chuckles that it needs to get aloft - the sort of laughs, for instance, that we got in the Motel picture or Paul Bartel’s terrific cannibalism comedy Eating Raoul. There are fleeting traces of lunacy - as in Evelyn’s ironic comment about a pig in mid-meal, Henry’s bizarre proclivity for addressing the flowers in his garden as people, and particularly Baby pummeling a shark that he reels in off the beach - but they never really deliver. Some of this material may crack a smile from time to time, but in general, the film comes off as inert and forced. Oddly enough, despite the absence of gore, the main feeling that one takes away from this picture is one of genuine physical discomfort (not fear or suspense) at the basic grisly thought of the three naive young women being set up for slaughter and table meat. The twist ending, which borrows from unimpeachable sources, defies all credibility and throws character development overboard. While competently directed and never egregiously awful, Red Wolf has little to actually recommend it. Film and TV buffs, however, may get a kick out of the casting, particularly Arthur Space (as Henry), who played Doc Weaver on Lassie, and Margaret Avery (as inn “guest” Edwina) who went on to earn an Oscar nomination thirteen years later for her solid work in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple.