The Lucky 13: Week Eight: Werewolves

Having already covered vampires as part of the The Lucky 13, this week here in the Vault--and over at Brutal as Hell--we turn our attentions to that other tried-and-true monster of horror cinema, the lycanthrope. Another creature of ancient folklore, the werewolf has existed in our shared consciousness long before movies ever existed, yet it's transitioned nicely onto the silver screen, becoming the source of many of the genre's finest efforts.

While it's true that werewolf films are fewer and farther between than vampire films, there are still quite a few gems to be found. In fact, given the lesser amount, one could argue that there are more high-quality werewolf flicks out there "per capita" than those of their bloodsucking brethren. And so, in our eighth installment of The Lucky 13, we select our all-time favorites...

B-Sol on Werewolf of London

The year is 1935, and Universal, the studio which has made a name for itself producing films about Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and The Mummy, has turned its attentions at last to the legend of the werewolf. The movie is Werewolf of London, and for some connoisseurs of vintage horror (including this one,) it remains the high watermark of lycanthrope cinema.

Henry Hull stars as Dr. Glendon, and English botanist who falls under the curse of the werewolf after being bitten on an expedition in the Himalayas. The vast bulk of cinema's take on the werewolf legend is already established in this one film: the transmission through biting, the transformation under the full moon, the beast's desire to destroy that which its human half loves most. The makeup created by Jack Pierce is striking, and Hull's humanoid, intelligent portrayal of the creature is quite unique, giving us one of the only talking werewolves of the silver screen. The film also puts the transformation scene front and center, a tradition that would continue throughout the history of the sub-genre. Werewolf of London remains one of the most influential, and yet also one of the most underrated horror films of the Universal canon.

For whatever reason, in its own day, Werewolf of London did not resonate with audiences to the same degree that previous Universal efforts had. But for my money, it's superior to the much better-known Lon Chaney Jr. film The Wolfman, which came along six years later. This was Universal's first crack at lycanthropy. Excellent Pierce makeup and a fine performance from Hull certify this one as required viewing for anyone who thinks werewolf flicks begin and end with AWIL.



Fascinations with Fear's Christine Hadden on Dog Soldiers

Dog Soldiers is the kind of movie that surprises you. At first glance, you immediately know from the DVD cover that it's going to be a werewolf movie, but then about five minutes in, you have to wonder if you've stumbled upon some random war movie by mistake. A group of soldiers are on a training mission in the Scottish highlands, which in itself is rather creepy. The woods are steeped in thick atmosphere, and you can sense something bad is about to happen.

What you don't expect, however, is the level of tension that the film unloads after the men come across what is apparently the only survivor of some sort of ravaging attack on a special ops unit. They take the remaining fallen soldier with them and without warning are overwhelmed and pursued by unseen predators. A thrilling chase ensues and the squaddies are luckily picked up by a woman traveling alone on a sparsely populated road. She takes them to a nearby farmhouse, where they regroup and try to come to terms with the realization that the creatures hunting them are, in fact, huge carnivorous wolves. Werewolves. And they're hungry.

By and far, Dog Soldiers is a film that lives and dies by the atmosphere it has created. The dark, foreboding woods, being stranded with no recourse in a seemingly abandoned farmhouse, and of course there's this whole man-eating predator thing going on as well. It's a quick paced, well-acted, unexpected romp into the world of werewolves. The action doesn't stop once, the wolves are hulking, brutal examples of lycanthropes, and the gore.... there's a considerable amount, and combined with a moment or two of literal gut-ripping nastiness, it makes for a thoroughly enjoyable film. Tension abounds, and I was on the edge of my seat for most of the time. It's only fitting that director Neil Marshall's next film was also one of my favorites, The Descent. Face it, the man knows how to scare an audience.

I can count on one hand the really good werewolf movies I've seen, and Dog Soldiers has to sit very high on that list. From start to finish, it's a rock and roll kind of horror movie, amping up the action and shock content at every turn, and giving us a reason to believe the werewolf sub-genre didn't take a silver bullet after all.



From Beyond Depraved's Joe Monster on An American Werewolf in London

I have an unconditional love for werewolves. From the earliest bipedals slinking through towering castles to the computer-generated hell hounds that currently rip and rend flesh in modern cinema, shape-shifters hold the power to entrance me with their hoary adventures. So it goes without saying that this week of The Lucky 13 came as somewhat of a challenge for me. No matter what film I chose, I felt there was a legion of other lycanthropic pictures that I was betraying my love for. After much deliberation and plenty cloves of wolfsbane, I was able to narrow my decision down to An American Werewolf in London. Even as my lupine heart ached to include other countless classics, a re-viewing of John Landis’ film proved to me that this was the one to go with.

What brings me to this conclusion, you ask? I think it’s the fact that AWIL remains in my mind as probably one of the most well-constructed horror films I’ve ever seen. It is a smooth viewing experience from start to finish, the quietest and most intimate of moments capturing your attention as much as the werewolf mayhem takes hold of your imagination. Landis’ hand at writing and direction creates a film that is pure cinematic magic. The suspense never deadens; he throws us right into the mix with the foreboding visit to The Slaughtered Lamb, and the anxiety never lets up as it leads to the bloody confrontation on the moors. And after that, we don’t see so much as wolf saliva till the hour mark. The entire time we’re wringing our hands, wondering what’s going to happen to David Naughton on the night of the full moon. Even when the tension is released momentarily with the reveal of the monster, we’re in a constant state of anticipation as to when the beast will strike next all the way up to the thrilling climax.

One of the most important factors in any werewolf story is having a palpable sense of sympathy for the tragic hero. With David Naughton as the leading man, the audience is guaranteed to fall in love with his likable personality. Even as David senses the impending danger of his curse, he cracks jokes and mugs his way through his troubles in a completely endearing manner. He plays a down-to-earth, easy-going fella who’s just trying to deal with this tremendous weight on his shoulders. He never loses his grip on humor and his constant jabs at the rotting remains of his friend Jack seem like what any one of us would do in his situation. The end of his painful journey can’t help but sadden us and touch us, bringing the characterization of his afflicted hero full circle.

This film is what kick started the werewolf renaissance in the '80s, no doubt due to Rick Baker’s innovative and game-changing makeup design. The man worked with the touch of a twisted artisan and created one of the most iconic and memorable transformations/monsters Hollywood has ever seen. For the first time we were explicitly shown just how damn painful it was to morph into a full-grown wolf. The twisting and snapping of David’s ligaments as his body stretches and hair pierces his flesh created a stark, clear picture of the agony of lycanthropy. Baker’s full wolf monster is impressive as well, the bloodsoaked jaws and hellfire eyes imbued with genuine rage and hunger as it rampages through Piccadilly Circus. Baker’s effects are elevated above and beyond the standard gruesome fare and almost become high art in their genius.

An American Werewolf in London really is one of the genre’s highlights for a reason. Its brilliant blend of terror and comedy, dynamite acting, spectacular makeup and powerful story brew into an intoxicating mix that’ll keep your claws glued to the screen. Seek this film out, appreciate it, and just be thankful that the horror community has been given such a gift as this. It’s enough to make you want to let out a hearty howl and run through the moon-streaked wood.




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Head over to Brutal as Hell to see what Marc Patterson and his crew have come up with. And if you're interested in taking part in the future, just give Marc or myself a holler.

Week 1: Grindhouse & Exploitation
Week 2: Creature Features & Monster Movies
Week 3: Demons, Witches & The Devil
Week 4: Gore!
Week 5: Horror Comedies
Week 6: Vampires
Week 7: Psychological Horror

Join us next week, when it's all about those wacky serial killers!

"Bad Moon Rising": A History of Werewolf Movies, Part 2

Following Hammer's one and only attempt at the werewolf subgenre, 1961's The Curse of the Werewolf, it seemed that the cinematic lycanthrope was finally ready to go into hibernation. From Henry Hull to Lon Chaney to Oliver Reed, it appeared that one of the movie's classic monsters had run its course.

But there were much brighter days ahead. And meanwhile, as the werewolf ducked out of sight in the English-speaking world, there would be one man who would keep the creature alive during the dark days of the 1960s and 1970s. That man was the Spanish film jack-of-all-trades, Paul Naschy. As the Spanish horror industry waxed during the '60s, Naschy was there to represent for the wolfman, mainly in the role of screenwriter.

Beginning with The Night of the Wolf Man (1968), Naschy was responsible for a total of ten Spanish werewolf films, eight of which were put out during a time when the U.S. was decidedly mum on the subject. Yes, they were cheesy and garish, but Naschy's exploits as wolfman Waldemar Daninsky are nevertheless cherished by werewolf aficionados the world over.

Meanwhile, States-side, it had been ages since a major werewolf film had truly rocked horror fans to their foundations. That would all change at the beginning of the 1980s, when what was old was made fresh and new in not only one of the most revolutionary werewolf films, but one of the most revolutionary horror films of all time, John Landis' An American Werewolf in London (1981).

A scathing horror satire, AWIL was almost single-handedly responsible for rejuvenating what many had written off as a tired vestige of the bygone Universal days. But Landis' film refused to accept such a pronouncement, paying homage to earlier movies while also boldly charting new territory. The makeup effects of Rick Baker gave us a movie werewolf unlike any we had seen before, decidedly less human and much more animalistic, resembling much more a wolf than a man.

And the transformation effects would become the stuff of legend, landing Baker an easy Oscar and raising the bar for any filmed metamorphoses since. More visceral, more graphic, and more realistic than any werewolf film seen before, An American Werewolf in London raised the entire subgenre from out of oblivion for the first time in two decades.

All of a sudden, lycanthropes were cool again. And a renaissance of werewolf cinema ensued. In fact, with all due respect to the 1940s, it would definitely not be an exaggeration to call it a "golden age" of sorts. Certainly no other period before or since the 1980s gave us such a plethora of quality werewolf movies, one after the other.

In actual fact, it is somewhat unfair to credit it all to AWIL. Although it was the most influential, the summer of 1981 saw two other modern werewolf classics hit the screen. The first was Joe Dante's The Howling, another effective horror comedy that paid homage to the established mythos, with a star-studded cast of genre faves such as Patrick MacNee, John Carradine and Kevin McCarthy. Then there was Wolfen, based on the Whitley Streiber novel--a much more serious and straight-ahead horror story than the other two.

Among the three of them, AWIL, The Howling and Wolfen packed a serious punch, delivering on the gore, and on special effects that seemed light years away from the days of time-lapse closeups on Lon Chaney Jr.'s face. In fact, The Howling would produce six (generally reviled) sequels over the next 14 years. And in many ways, it could be said that the werewolf subgenre is still reacting to the summer of 1981...

Three years later, visionary director Neil Jordan gave us The Company of Wolves, an excellent horror/fantasy that blended the werewolf mythos with traditional fairy tale elements, resulting in a bizarre Brothers-Grimm style take on the subject that brought something truly new to the table. Clearly, the creative imagination of many had been sparked thanks to the werewolf rebirth.

The decade would see Stephen King's novella Cycle of the Werewolf get adapted into Silver Bullet (1985), starring '80s icons Gary Busey and Corey Haim. There would also be Waxwork (1988), a decent take on the old wax-museum subgenre which incorporated a werewolf into its cornucopia of movie monsters.

So successful was the werewolf boom that, by the latter half of the '80s, the signs had begun to show that it was crossing over into that one area that, while always entertaining, also usually signals the beginning of the end: parody.

Breakout TV star Michael J. Fox, fresh off his crossover smash Back to the Future, starred in Teen Wolf (1985), a throwback to the old I Was a Teenage Werewolf concept of the 1950s, played for laughs. This gave rise to the inevitable Teen Wolf Too (1987), a lame retread which lacked even the quaint appeal of its predecessor. And of course, that very same year gave us the nostalgically-beloved The Monster Squad--a slavish tribute to the Universal era if ever there was one--which saw a Chaney-esque Wolf Man team up with his fellow old-school Universal baddies to take on a team of kids. Think Ghostbusters meets The Goonies...

Just like that, the werewolf had returned to its more Wolf-Man-like earlier incarnation, abandoning the work established by Landis and Dante in favor of a less-threatening approach that took itself far less seriously. Once again, it seemed like the werewolf had returned to the realm of the hokey and the decidedly unscary. Funny how that cycle swings back and forth, isn't it?

With the exception of those endless Howling sequels, werewolf movies would return to the void for the most part once again. They had enjoyed a true golden age, one which has yet to be equalled. But that doesn't mean the story is over. Because just like any movie monster worth its salt, the werewolf--or should I say lycan?--would eventually rise again.

Soon to Come: Part 3 - "Rise of the Lycans"

Part 1: "...And the Moon Is Full and Bright"

An exploration of fear, what disturbs me.

Greetings once again Vault dwellers, it is Karl Hungus of karlhungus.com here, so do not adjust your set, I am now in control of the transmission. It's amazing how much excitement can be derived from exploring our own anxieties in this way, with a good Horror film, we come face to face with so many negative emotions, and come out thrilled at the end. The genre itself is a multi-headed beast, and there are so many different feelings it can stir, many films have to many different ways to scare, disturb, unsettle, sicken, repulse or otherwise tap in to our subconscious. I'd like to talk to you about my own fears and what strikes a nerve with me when I'm deep in the experience. For me, it's not always the things that go bump in the night.

One thing that's always sure to creep the bejesus out of me is Body Horror. Films like The Fly or Tetsuo will always unsettle me deeply, no matter how many times I've seen them, the physical transformation that the main characters go through set my skin crawling every single time. I don't quite know why, perhaps it's an innate or subconscious fear of disease, of something malignant that's going on beneath the surface, the notion of helplessness that our own bodies could betray us. Whatever it is, this frightens and sickens me very deeply.

Maybe it's not something innate though, maybe this is a fear that was set in early? In which case, Ron Howard has a lot to answer for, because the scene in Willow where the evil Bavmorda turned everyone into pigs was pretty horrific for a kid's film. Or it could be earlier than that, I remember watching re-runs of The Incredible Hulk as a child and hiding behind the couch whenever Dr. Banner turned into a green Lou Ferrigno.

I suppose that also has to do with why I find there are very few good Werewolf movies. An American Werewolf in London was the pinnacle merely because of the chilling and amazing shapeshifting scene, and I've never seen another that has effected me so much. I feel kind of cheated sometimes when a film depicts someone turning into a werewolf as a quick change, or where it will happen offscreen. AAWiL set the standard, and if it's not a horrifying change, it just isn't a proper Werewolf movie.

Now, I don't really believe in desensitization, at least not to a huge degree. What's scared me for many years before still scares me now. I don't mean that I'd watch Willow and be as freaked out as I was when I was just a wee nipper, but that Body Horror still effects me as it always has. British Sci-Fi series Doctor Who has had some pretty creepy moments, the episode Blink was one of the most genuinely terrifying things I've seen on TV in a long time ("Don't blink, blink and you're dead!"), it was creepy stuff. But it wasn't that episode that freaked me out the most, it was a later episode called Planet of the Ood, and towards the end, one of the characters was turned into a grotesque cthulhu-like alien lifeform. True to form, I was utterly creeped out and the scene left me with a knot in my stomach. I'd say the old fears just don't leave us.

One film that certainly left it's mark on me was Stephen King's Pet Sematary, it effected me two-fold. First of all, the scene with Rachel's sister Zelda, just looking at her had my senses screaming, it was horrific. I later found out that the character of Zelda was played by a man, because they couldn't find a woman skinny enough for it, and that made a lot of sense. I'd say it's because a man has a broader frame, this made the character look that bit more emaciated, the bony shoulders and elbows that bit more exaggerated than if it had been a woman playing the role. A recent horror film pulled the same trick (I won't mention which as it's a bit of a spoiler, but if you've seen it you'll know the film I mean) of having an extremely thin man playing a female character, and it still had the same unedging effect on my senses.

The other thing in Pet Sematary that effected me was the scene where Jud Crandall gets his achilles tendon cut. The very thought of it makes me wince, it really unsettles me, and no matter how many times I see a scene of tendon-trauma in various films, it's something that I have never gotten used to. That's another reason that I don't truly believe in the idea of desensitization, I just can't see myself ever getting used to violence to that particular area, it cuts through me and sets my teeth on edge. There's a scene in Hostel where one character's achilles tendons are cut, and we don't even see it happen, we see is a reaction shot and the aftermath, but to me that was by a vast margin the most disturbing scene of the entire film.

That's not to say that any old scene of body horror or scene of physical violence against the ankle area will make a good horror for me. I would say that to make a truly great horror film, it can't just contain something that will scare or unsettle you. Pet Sematary is a great film in its own right, even without the scenes I've mentioned, and I've seen elements of what scares me in other films and they've fallen completely flat. I think a film has to engage you first and foremost, and that's why The Fly or An American Werewolf in London are absolute classics. If it doesn't have interesting characters that you care what happens to, then the film will fail.

I know it's not exactly a popular choice, but Hostel: Part II was an absolute triumph for me, and I think Eli Roth is a far better director than people give him credit for. The whole bloodbath scene was something that left me absolutely shaken, it was one of the most downright horrific things I've seen in a film in recent years, and it worked so well because Roth starts off with the characters. It was because he wrote Lorna (played so sympathetically by Heather Matarazzo, who was by far the best actor in the film) to be someone we empathised with, not some cut-out cheerleader that nobody cared about. When the above scene finally comes, it has all the more impact because we're emotionally invested in the character. The gore itself was very disturbing, and just thinking about the sound of the blade against her skin sets my teeth on edge, but it's not why the scene has such impact, and seeing it again it doesn't get any less disturbing, simply because of the character of Lorna.

Violence and gore certainly isn't everyone's bag, but I think in the right context it can be extremely effective and provide for a truly powerful film experience. That's not to say I don't love the more traditional ghost story, because the likes of Don't Look Now and Ringu count as some of my all time favourites. There's simply nothing like a good horror that piles on the atmosphere and doesn't really on cheap shock-tactics to scare the audience. The Others and The Blair Witch Project were two films that built up the tension slowly, and they were truly fantastic horror films.

Atmosphere is one of the hardest things to put your finger on. David Lynch is one of my favorite directors by far, and you couldn't really call any of his film Horror exactly, yet some of them can be so wholly unnerving and disturbing, more so than many Horrors. Lost Highway (above) is a perfect example, so much of it can be greatly unsettling, and watching it can really set me on edge. A lot of the time I can easily see why something disturbs me, I can point it out and say it's that, but here I don't know quite what it is, whatever magic Lynch works just gets to me. It was the same with Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire, something just had me on edge. Roman Polanski's The Tenant is another film that had me very unsettled throughout, much in the same way that Lost Highway did, something I can't quite explain, but very potent none the less.

I hope this has been an interesting read. It's been fun for me trying to lay out my fears, to relate what disturbs me, and what makes a powerful Horror experience for me. I'm sure that just as everyone has their own preferences when it comes to the genre, we've all got different things that will scare and disturb us, things that we've never gotten used to in films and things that can still freak us out. I'd love to hear from you, what is it that effects you most in a Horror?

What scares you?