Movie Review: Cursed (2005)

 

What exactly is it about the werewolf subgenre that makes me so weary? Maybe it's because I have seen so few werewolf movies, and even less that I was really impressed with. But why is that? Was I ruined on them after watching seven Howling sequels in close succession? What is so hard about making a good werewolf movie? We'll have to discuss that more in depth at a later time, because right now I want to talk a little bit about Cursed, a movie that I thought I had seen a long time ago and probably did but just forgot about...

Anyway. Cursed is about a brother and sister who are attacked by a werewolf one night after a car accident. They must soon figure out who the werewolf is that bit them in order to save each other and the cursed line that the wolf has created.

Though Cursed was helmed by my much beloved Wes Craven, along with his previous screenwriting collaborator Kevin Williamson, I can't really say that I loved the movie all that much. Craven does indeed have a distinct style where many of his later movies are quick, snazzy affairs with a cheeky sense of humor and a camera eye that doesn't shy away from the action. This makes Cursed at least a fun movie to watch for an evening, but nothing that groundbreaking in the werewolf genre. I did like how the mythology of the wolves in this one was a bit closer to The Wolf Man from 1941 with the gypsy girl and the marks on the palms of those bitten. Everything else in the movie was pretty standard fare that's been seen before.

The characters are nice enough, if not a bit cliché. Brother and sister pair Jimmy and Ellie are played by Jesse Eisenberg and Christina Ricci. Eisenberg acts basically the same as he does in everything else I've ever seen him in, so no surprise there. He's your typical high school reject who gets picked on for no reason by the school jock and has a crush on a girl who is out of his league. It's again no surprise when he's able to use his new werewolf abilities to fight back at the bullies in a not-as-exciting-as-they-want-it-to-be wrestling scene in the gym. Ho-hum.

Ricci has always been a favorite of mine (not to mention a serious girl crush) so I immediately liked her. The only backstory given on her is that she's obviously the older sibling and is all stressed out from her job and from having to take care of herself and Jimmy after the death of their parents. She finds hope in boyfriend Jake (Joshua Jackson), but he's a former playboy and not to be trusted. He's one of the red herrings for the werewolf that has killed two girls and is now after Jimmy and Ellie - but I sort of had that situation all figured out anyway. The whole cast is actually pretty good, with all recognizable names and faces - Portia deRossi, Judy Greer, Shannon Elizabeth, Mya, Michael Rosenbaum, etc. Oh, and Scott Baio, for some reason, playing himself.

The werewolf scenes are not amazing, but workable. The one transformation we get to see is pretty horrible - all CGI and just plain bad when compared to the greatest transformation ever from An American Werewolf in London. Shannon Elizabeth is offed first when Ellie rams her car off a cliff and then a werewolf pulls her out and kills her. I always see online a picture of the aftermath of her death with just half a body, but either I wasn't paying attention or Netflix has some edited version of the movie because I didn't see it this time. Mya is killed next in a parking garage after a pretty nice chase sequence where we actually get to see the full-bodied werewolf, which is surprising because you don't usually see that this early on in the film. There is also one kind of ridiculous but hilarious scene where Jimmy's dog Zipper has become this weird werewolf-Labrador mix. It looks totally silly but is obviously supposed to be, and it's something new so I was actually okay with it.

Things get more interesting and fun when the action moves to the main set piece - a club designed by Jake called Tinsel, which is pretty much like a wax museum, complete of course with a scene of Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man. There's a nicely effective scene in the Hall of Mirrors and some nice fighting sequences with the werewolf, despite the horrible transformation. The werewolf's death has a little nod to Scream, which made me chuckle. There's a double ending to the film overall, though, and I was happy that this one was at least a little more violent and exciting than the rest of the movie. A decapitation and fire - not bad. Not all the way good, either, but not bad.

A small part of me has to like Cursed because of Craven, but I don't really have any problem saying that it's not one I'll be watching all the time. I like the kitschy sense of humor - it has a werewolf flipping people off, for crying out loud - and the fun that the actors seem to be having with the movie, but there's definitely something missing. I guess it's just that this isn't really how I like my werewolf movies. I need them more bloody and serious, maybe, and not so silly.

Project Terrible: Battledogs (2013)

Oh, right. Because I really needed to watch another bad werewolf movie. There are some things that I can give Battledogs props for - making "Battledogs" one word is not one of them - but it's still not that good, and the fact that it is a SyFy Original Movie should help you believe that. Battledogs comes courtesy of Bob from Gaming Creatively.

A wildlife photographer traveling to JFK is carrying the dangerous "lupine virus" and soon spreads it to hundreds of other people at the airport. The infected are quarantined on a island in New York, and while some try to quickly work to find a cure for the virus, one Army general decides that these creatures would be perfect for combat situations and tries to stop anyone who gets in his way.

The lineup of actors for Battledogs is pretty good though there are only two well known names. Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson has a small role as the head of security at JFK and then freaking Dennis Haysbert plays the evil Army general. He's also got some facial hair going on here, which I really didn't like. It was funny to me to see him in this because in one early scene they show the movie's bald, black President of the United States - and then the next scene is Dennis Haysbert, a.k.a. the greatest fake President EVER from "24." And now he's General Monning, the guy with the genius idea to have an army of werewolves to fight our enemies. Oh, Dennis, why???

Cute little Ariana Richards is also here as Donna Voorhees, the Patient Zero for the lupine virus because she got bitten by a wolf while photograhing them. The funniest part of the movie is when our other main character Major Hoffman (Craig Sheffer, a.k.a. David Boreanaz's long lost brother) actually asks Donna, "Why did that wolf bite you?" Why did a wolf bite somebody? Maybe because it's a wolf, just sayin'. There's not much to know or care about any of these people as the movie is all plot driven, and most of it is just a long chase sequence of Donna, Hoffman, and the doctor trying to save them all from Monning. It's pretty ridiculous how a high ranking Army general makes a decision in about 2.5 seconds to go against his entire moral code and kill innocent civilians and fellow Army buddies for the stupid idea of training werewolves to fight for the United States. Like, does he think that would actually turn out well?

Treating werewofism (I don't think that's the right word) as a virus is a good idea, I gotta say. The moon has nothing to do with when the infected transform. They get bitten and they change almost right afterward. They also change when their heartbeat rises above 150 beats per minute. Though the werewolves themselves are all CGI, I didn't hate the look at them as much as I thought I would. They look good, which is something I can't always give SyFy credit for - Piranhaconda, anyone?

I can't give the movie too much credit for the characters or the plot, but I was surprised to find that Battledogs was not as laughably ridiculous as every other original movie from SyFy. It's watchable, nothing groundbreaking or memorable, but definitely watchable. I've gotten worse movies so I'm pretty pleased with this one!

Franchise Review: The Howling: Reborn (2011)

Ah, we have reached the end, kiddies. I have made it through eight - count 'em, eight - Howling sequels and come out relatively clean on the other side. There have good times and there have been bad times throughout this little adventure, wherein we have traveled to Australia, Budapest, and little dumpy towns like Drago and Pioneer Town. But now we've come to the conclusion with a straight-to-video sequel that came out 16 years after the last sequel. The Howling: Reborn is definitely light-years ahead of all the other films in terms of production value, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's any better.

Will Kidman is your typical teenager who is about to graduate high school without a clue as to what he is supposed to be in his life. He only has one good friend, his father is distant, and he has trouble expressing his feelings to a girl he's liked for years. All that changes after an attack by a creature causes him to realize the unbelievable changes in himself - that he is, in fact, a werewolf. Now he has to decide what to do with his new life, as a pack of powerful werewolves have moved in to take over. The credits claim that this one is based on the book "The Howling II" but I seriously doubt that the book could have been more than just a basic inspiration for the story based on the outcome here.

The whole movie is really about as generic, formulaic, and cliched as they come, mostly when it comes to the characters. Will, although quite well-played by Landon Liboiron, is not nearly as sympathetic as they try to make him - he needed something more to his character to make him different than every other loser-turned-awesome-person-of-circumstance. His goofy friend Sachin has made his own horror movie, and therefore is Will's go-to person when he wants to know all about werewolves (and they always seem to be right about that particular movie's werewolf lore as opposed to the others, you know?). Eliana is the outgoing, wild, but still vulnerable girl that seduces Will through the whole movie even though they make it seem like the two have never talked until a couple of days ago.

The high school portrayed in this movie is just atrocious. The comparison of high school to a prison is entirely appropriate in this instance because this place is some kind of very high tech Fort Knox. It is ridiculously unbelievable. Maybe in 20 or 30 years high schools will be able to be this secure (why, though, is still my question) but it doesn't even seem necessary where these kids are. Get this: they are actually able to completely lock down the entire school - with like metal gates over all the windows and such. Seriously, they're a bunch of middle class, snotty white kids. I'm not seeing the immediate danger to make this worthwhile of the taxpayer's money. The lockdown thing does end up making for a good plot point when Will and Eliana get trapped inside with all the werewolves at the end, but still. Come on.

The werewolves? They're actually pretty good once they (again) finally show up at the end. They're super-strong with weird acrobatic abilities, and they're probably the best looking werewolves of the series. A lot like the Dog Soldiers werewolves. Will's mom is the alpha wolf of her little pack and there's lots of crap talk about her wanting Will to give into his animal side and join the family, blah blah blah. Then Will finds out that he "accidentally" made Eliana into a werewolf (which is actually good because she saves him) so then they have to do another kind of emotional scene where he, like, talks her back into being a human because they love each other so much. Ugh, too much emotional stuff going on. Will's voiceover by the end gets a mite cheesy when he's getting all philosophical about basically the whole meaning of life, as well. It's nice writing but it's the same kind of stuff you've always heard about the dual nature of man and what it means to be human, BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Despite any overall lack of ingenuity here, I must say that this movie is still a hell of a lot easier to watch than any of the previous Howling movies. It's updated and snazzy looking, with a younger cast and a lot more in the action department which is something this series was seriously lacking. Not a terrible movie, really. Just kinda... meh. The ending is similar to the original's - Will broadcasts his transformation to warn people of the werewolf threat - and I only hope that it is some kind of ambiguous ending and not the beginning of yet another Howling movie. This Howling adventure has been fun, friends, but there's only so much I can take.

Franchise Review: The Howling [7]: New Moon Rising (1995)

Given the general, overall suckiness of all these Howling movies, I wasn't in the least bit fazed when everybody tried to tell me that The Howling: New Moon Rising was the absolute worst of the series. They're all bad! Why should this one be any different, you know? Well, it turns out that this one is possibly a new kind of bad.

Long-haired Australian biker boy Ted Smith rides into tiny Pioneer Town and gets a job at the local bar. He's related in some way to three previous Howling movies, but I didn't really remember how until they told me. Anyway, the usual starts to happen - disappearances and murders start to occur and seems to be the work of a "large animal," and as the new kid in town, townspeople start to suspect Ted as the culprit. Meanwhile, a priest and an inspector are hot on the trail of missing werewolf Marylou (from Howling 5) and it leads them right into Pioneer Town.

The movie actually sets itself up for the audience quite nicely. The opening scene is three guys standing around a skeleton found in the desert, and they all say, respectively, the best-slash-worst first lines of any movie I've ever heard - "Jesus Christ!" "Holy shit!" "Mother of God!" So appropriate for the reactions everyone will probably have while watching this movie. It doesn't get any better after this first scene, it just gets more stupid and boring.

The bar that Ted gets a job at - Pappy and Harriet's Pioneer Town Palace - is where everybody in town hangs out all the time. And this where a good chunk of the movie takes place, with some very uninteresting, inane, and unfunny scenes that have no relevance or importance whatsoever. This includes the most unenthusiastic line dancing I have ever seen, lots of drinking by the menfolk at all times of the day, lots of bad joke-telling, and far too many musical interludes for me to be comfortable with. My goodness, all those shitty montages with that shitty country music playing over them? All the random scenes of Harriet and Pappy singing with the band at the bar? Singing around the campfire? Ugh, stop it! Stop it now! This movie is certainly a first because it seems to be the first werewolf country western musical movie. And that's a horrible thing to be. Also, fuck George Jones and the number of times they mention him.

New Moon Rising infamously strings together its own flimsy plot by saying that it's all connected to the three previous Howling films, and actually includes scenes from all of them. I never would have guessed that Ted was the same guy who survived the castle in Howling 5 but apparently he is. Shows how memorable that movie was. Ted was also a guy in Drago that Marie Adams (who actually has a few scenes in this movie, too) supposedly killed in Howling 4, and they totally made that shit up. Anyway, by the end, the plot gets twisted up so much that it gets really ridiculous. The priest and inspector are talking the situation out and they bring up things that the audience never saw happen so it's incredibly confusing. Three dead guys all lead to Ted, but apparently it was the work of Marylou the werewolf who was somehow able to assume the form of another person (not possible, by the way!) in the town, this chick named Cheryl. It's anybody's guess as to why she was trying to frame this guy in the first place or what her ultimate plan was. Whatever it was, she failed miserably.

Here we are with the seventh Howling movie, and while there is plenty of werewolf talk throughout, we again don't actually see any werewolves until the very end. Very briefly. Like about 15 seconds. The red filter werewolf POV shots were more exciting than Cheryl's lame transformation and her equally lame demise that occurs off screen when she's shot by the townspeople after bursting through the door. The end.

And not a moment too soon. The Howling: New Moon Rising is simply a pointless movie. It sucks, and it's pointless and irritating with how horrible it is. All the actors, including writer-producer-director-actor Clive Turner, are terribly lifeless and boring, much like the rest of the movie. It's not even funny though it tries very hard to be and those attempts just turn out to be really pathetic. Ugh, bad movie. Do yourself a big favor and avoid this one at all costs.

Franchise Review: Howling 6: The Freaks (1991)

In the palindrome year of 1991, somebody decided that after four bad Howling movies, they might be able do it right for once. And surprisingly, they kind of do. Don't get me wrong. I will probably never watch any of these movies willingly again (except maybe for Howling 2 because that one was a freaking hoot), but Howling 6: The Freaks is strangely okay, if your standards are fairly low like mine usually are.

Ian Richards is a quiet drifter who comes to the dying town of Canton Bluff looking for work. Local man Dewey man gives him a job helping to fix up the church, while Ian makes nice with the man's pretty daughter Lizzy, and tries to hide the fact that he is a werewolf. However, the owner of a traveling circus, Harker, learns Ian's secret and kidnaps him to make him a part of the rest of his freaks.

What's missing from Howling 6 - and not in a bad way - the comedic element that sometimes very prominent in the previous films. The sixth entry takes its idea very seriously with hardly a hint at anything funny, even when it comes to the freaks in Harker's World of Wonders. That doesn't mean that the movie is magically any better than first four sequels, but heck, I have to give them an A for effort for not making this a total shitfest like it very well could have become.

Speaking of Harker's World of Wonders... that was interesting. When Lizzy and Ian go through the unusually large space where the main freaks are held, Harker gives them a personal tour while they view the half man-half woman, the midget with a third arm, the newbie freak Alligator Boy, and a clown that... bites the head off a chicken? Whuh? How is that supposed to be an "oddity"? Well yes, it's odd and very disturbing, but not your normal freak fair at these things. Harker is very good at running the show. He is very creepy in his looks and demeanor, but also seems strangely respectful of all his freaks. So he can't be all bad, right? The Funhouse and now this movie keep making me wonder whether or not it would be cool if they still had shady sideshow circuses like this anymore. There would be outrage from the community, for sure, but who doesn't want to see a mutated pig fetus or something?

The special effects, while well done, are just not to my liking aesthetically for the particular monsters they are trying to portray. Ian's transformation into a werewolf is one of those typical, really painful-looking transformations where we see fingernails growing, feet lengthening, etc. until they do the full shot at the end. I hate the look of this werewolf, mostly because he has no snout and his face is mostly hairless. How can you call something that looks like that a "wolf" of any kind? The rest of the body is good (even if the hair on top of his head was way too long) but doesn't make up for that awful face. One of the worst werewolves out there. There's also a bit of a change with the werewolf lore in that not only can the full moon change Ian, but he can also transform by use of an amulet and certain magic words that Harker recites.

The big reveal - oh no! a spoiler! - near the conclusion of the film is that Harker is a vampire. Kind of. Actually, he's a bald, purple vampire with no nose and pointy, chewed-up ears. WTF. And the first thing that came to my mind when I saw him was that Buffy, the Vampire Slayer of all people ripped off his look for the ubervamps in season seven of that show.

The ubervamp look didn't bother me there, but the fact that Harker was a weird purplish, blue color really threw me off. I wouldn't have even known that Harker was supposed to be a vampire if it weren't for the coffin full of dirt (disguised as a couch) in his trailer or the fact that Ian staked him at the end and ultimately killed him by exposing him to sunlight.

I didn't love any of the actors, but I didn't hate any of them either. The girl playing Lizzy had a really annoying voice and no awareness of her physicality, and other than that, these guys did an okay job for the caliber of movie they were in. Nobody stands out except maybe for Bruce Payne as Harker, and that freak who played the half man-half woman. He/she could have had a real career at that. The lead actor playing Ian is easily forgettable, even after his semi-sweet moments of not eating the kitty and walking off into the sunset at the end with Alligator Boy (they became buds).

All in all, really not a bad flick. It's not blatantly retarded like some of the earlier Howling films were and that gives it some major points in my book. The plot could have used a bit more work and there could have been more character development - but then the film could have been a bit too serious for its own good. Strangely I didn't miss the lack of werewolf attacks in Howling 6. The fight scene at the end between Ian and Harker made up for it and then the movie ends quickly after that, as it should have.

Oh my gosh, you guys, I am so freaking close. Only two Howling movies left. I think I might actually make it through okay.

Franchise Review: Howling 5: The Rebirth (1989)

Aye-yi-yi. I keep torturing myself over and over again with these wacky Howling movies. So most of these are (loosely) based on The Howling series of books, right? My question is: Where is the connection? Are the books all this disjointed from each other, too, because it's really starting to annoy me a little bit. Aside from the first two movies, all of these Howling movies are just shitty 80s things that have werewolves in them sometimes. Howling 5: The Rebirth is no exception.

In Budapest, a group of people visit an old castle that no one has set foot in for the last 500 years. The castle has a bloody history, as the last people who lived there were massacred, and once members of the new group start disappearing - found later with their throats ripped out - some begin to wonder if they were brought there for a reason.

So I don't get to say this too often, but I love castles. Whenever I see an honest-to-goodness castle in a movie, I can't help but wonder how awesome it would be to live in one. Candlelight and torches, big doors, and maybe a secret passage or two. Love that shit. It was good for the Howling movies to make a leap like this and do things a little different, maybe attempting to go back to the werewolf origins or something. The castle set here is used fairly well, and the overall production value of the movie actually looks good and maybe a bit more professional than some of the other Howling films. The direction is merely average, with nothing all that inventive with camerawork or lighting.

A few nitpicks about the castle, though: Any outside shots of the castle in the blizzard just looks like very thick television snow (how appropriate) playing over a still shot of the building so we never really get that great a view of what this one looks like. On the inside, it seems to have aged well in 500 years, with hardly a cobweb to be seen, especially in the main areas - considering what we are told before that this is the first time the castle has ever been opened since the massacre in the 1400s.

One thing that becomes very fun to look forward to in Howling 5 is the song of death, as I came to call it. Whenever a character finds him or herself all alone in the castle, you know that a werewolf is going to come along soon to gobble them up or whatever. Once that happens, the scene cuts with the same repeated Omen-type scary religious music. The creepy chorus is shouting something like "SANCTUS!" and it made me laugh and sing along every single time it happened.

The characters are quite stupid. I mean, the whole setup for the movie is a little hard to swallow to begin with. All of these random people - a ditzy girl, a Scandinavian actress, a photographer, a tennis player, etc. - have all been invited to the same castle opening with no real reason as to why they were even picked in the first place, as far as I could tell. And they never question that until things start going bad. Then once they get there, the "opening" consists of all of them just sitting around drinking and eating.

The actors are not completely terrible, but they definitely could have done a better job. A lot of the dialogue is stilted and doesn't sound natural at all. Elizabeth She is of course the highlight of the piece, playing stupid and naive Marylou probably a little bit too well. Every word out of her mouth screams "Valley Girl." Such a hoot. She really should have just been running every scene to make it that much easier for the audience to watch this thing. The blonde actress says it best when she tells Marylou that she has a, uh, "way with words."

I'm actually not really saying that Howling 5: The Rebirth is a bad movie - it's not good, but it's not complete dreck, either - I think I'm just frustrated that they still hide the werewolves for so long. This is the fifth Howling movie. We know there are probably going to be werewolves in here at some point, and yet these movies and especially this one, make it seem like some big mystery ("Oh, maybe it's big dogs!") until the wolves are finally revealed in the last fifteen minutes or so. I'm also frustrated that all of the movies have been so boring so far. There's a fairly nice attempt at a whodunnit mystery with this one, but most of it is dull. I had it figured out who the werewolf would turn out to be early on, so the reveal is not as cool as it should have been. There isn't even a big reveal sequence, just that last shot of the movie. They could have made that a lot more interesting.

Ugh, still three more Howling movies to go. Wish me luck.

Franchise Review: Howling 3: The Marsupials (1987)

What have I gotten myself into with these Howling sequels? So far, they are beyond words bad. All I can say is that Howling 2 is damn near Gone With the Wind next to this ungodly ridiculous sequel, Howling 3: The Marsupials. I'm actually quite flabbergasted at the suckiness of this movie, but it is most definitely one of those movies that if you're in the right mood when you watch it, you can have a most interesting time.

I don't even know how to synopsize the movie like I usually try to do. Let me give it a go: Okay, there's a professor named Beckmeyer whose grandfather got footage of apparently a real werewolf being killed in Australia in 1905. Wanting real proof, Beckmeyer travels to Australia and it surprisingly doesn't take him that long to find a bunch of werewolves just all over the fucking place. He studies them with some other eggheads. We also meet the young, beautiful werewolf Jerboa, who escapes her werewolf tribe and falls in love with an American, and they have a little marsupial rat baby together. A lot of other insane stuff happens too but I don't have the brain power to work it all out right now.

Similar to its predecessor, Howling 3 is a movie that makes no sense from one scene to the next, and instead of having an actual, you know, plot or something insane like that, the "filmmakers" instead choose to just throw into the movie every bad or crazy idea they could come up with. Then they apparently just edited the scenes together - probably while drunk - hoping that everything turns out all right in the end. It doesn't. There are a lot of different subplots going on and they never mesh together right. There is a serious lack of exposition for pretty much all of these subplots, and instead the audience is expected to just jump right in and immediately know what the hell is going on and who these characters are. In a way, the movie at times does seem to take itself rather seriously, and other times it seems to revel in its own absurdity. So many things are going on with Howling 3: confusion, hilarity, bewilderment. I was laughing hysterically by the end credits making me wonder if I was going crazy or not.

Again, I'm stuck on where to begin with the specifics. The dialogue? The schizophrenic plot? The three werewolf chicks dressed as nuns? Let's start with a few things that weren't all that terrible. I liked the actress playing Jerboa, even though she was really bad at playing an actress for the "Shape Shifters Part 8" movie within the movie. I loved the little clips of the movie that Jerboa and Donny go to see at the theater because that was HILARIOUS. I kind of loved all the cheesy camera angles they used where the people's faces were too close to the camera because you don't see that very often. For good reason, too, it looks really amateur. The movie also did actually have one good action scene when the military guys (that came from... somewhere? to hunt down... someone?) are attacked by a werewolf in the woods. Another good thing? The ending! Yes, the ending to Howling 3 comes completely out of nowhere from where the movie started out, and yet it still manages to be strangely satisfying, at least it was for me.

The werewolf related stuff is surprisingly not that bad, though definitely not the best either. With the exception of the weird, hairless little things that the nuns turn into, many of the special effects are well done. Jerboa's birthing scene when she has her little rat baby thing is incredibly strange and made me feel a little bit sleazy, but the effects don't suck that much. Jerboa's got a nice... pouch. Gosh, that's so weird. It's weird for me to think of a werewolf having a freaking pouch, being a freaking marsupial, when I thought those were completely different things! They might have explained the whole reasoning behind that hogwash somewhere in the movie but I must have gotten lost in the sea of the choppy plot. It was also very unbelievable when Jerboa shows the father Donny the baby thing in her pouch. Donny is not the least bit freaked out by the fact that a) he has a baby with someone he just had sex with a couple of days ago or something, b) the baby is barely humanoid, or c) that the mother is carrying the baby around in a POUCH.

Again, there are almost too many bad things about this movie to talk about them all in one review. All the crap with Beckmeyer and his experiments. Thylo. My goodness, I could write a novel about Thylo, my pervy little bald-headed werewolf. So Howling 3: The Marsupials is a bad movie. There is almost nothing remotely redeemable about it except for the fact that it is so shitty. And if you're in the kind of slap-happy mood I was in when I watched it (after being awake for nearly 20 hours), you can appreciate the hilarity of the badness. Can't wait to see what Howling 4 has in store for me, although now I am more than a little worried...

Classic Monster Movie Marathon: The Wolf Man (1941)

None of these classic monster movies are turning out like I thought they would. Shamefully, I was actually looking forward to a lot more camp with less story, but again, The Wolf Man surprised me as being a movie where the story itself was a lot more interesting than any of the werewolf activity. Although not the first werewolf movie to be made, The Wolf Man is the one that plunged the classic monster into popularity. The lore and mythology has changed from movie to movie over the years, but here we have one of the originals, as only Universal could present it.

Lon Chaney, Jr. plays Larry Talbot, a man who returns home to his estranged father after the death of his brother. He meets up with a local girl named Gwen who works in an antique store, and they and her friend Jenny go to get their fortunes told by a traveling gypsy camp one night. Jenny is attacked in the woods by a wolf and Larry manages to kill it, but he is bitten on the chest. An old gypsy woman tells him that the wolf was actually Bela, the fortune teller, and that he was a werewolf. Larry starts to transform at night and roam the woods as a wolf, terrified of what he's become and what he's going to do, especially now that the police are out hunting him.

I loves me some Lon Chaney Jr. here. I first saw him in the incredible cult classic Spider Baby but he wasn't as much of a standout in that movie. In The Wolf Man, Chaney really gets to shine as a charming, if not emotionally distant, sort-of playboy who suddenly has to deal with the horrible situation of his transformation into a monster. Chaney shows the character's true agony over the fact that he murdered Bela and later the gravedigger Richardson, and by the end he even wants the hunting party to catch him because he is afraid that he will hurt Gwen. Chaney's physical presence is also quite striking, as he towers over most of the actors, plus I just love his face. When he goes all wild in the woods in one scene, he gives the most incredible facial expressions. His physicality as the Wolf Man is obvious yet it works for the movie, and he gives the audience yet another Universal monster who is sympathetic and endearing. 

But Chaney's not the only star in this flick. If you count Chaney himself as the Wolf Man, we've got three, count 'em, three classic monsters in one little movie. Claude Rains, whom I fell in love with as the Invisible Man, plays Larry's father Sir John Talbot. The great Bela Lugosi, a.k.a. Dracula, plays the gypsy fortune teller Bela (coincidence or homage? I can't decide) who is the werewolf that bites Larry. Lugosi's time on screen is short-lived, but Rains give a wonderful supporting performance. He loves his son and wants to protect and help him, yet his book-smart personality refuses to allow him to believe that Larry has become a werewolf. Of course this turns out to be a fatal mistake, revealed in a very heart-breaking and surprising ending.

Now for the not-so-awesome parts of the movie. I know that the werewolf makeup must have taken hours and was probably pretty damn uncomfortable for Chaney, but come on. He doesn't look anything like a wolf. He just looks like one of those really hairy dudes that I saw on Ripley's Believe It or Not that one time. And while we're on this, I got a question. Why did they show the werewolf Bela as actually looking like a wolf when Larry killed him and then have Larry's transformation be so much different? What, was this just he first stage of werewolf-ism or something? It doesn't make sense. Okay, so I didn't like the overall look of the werewolf. Sue me.

I also didn't like the set in the woods. It's the same patch of fake-looking woods and trees used over and over again throughout the movie and it's just campy. That forced, perpetual fog? There are other ways to make the woods look "spooky," I'm pretty sure. They do a great job on lighting Larry as the wolf while he's in these woods, though. Several good shots of him in full makeup looking through the trees and stuff.  I have this weird hatred of wood or forest settings that are obviously done on stages. In some movies, I'm shocked to find out that certain scenes like this were actually not on location, but with others I can usually tell right away that those woods are not real, and it takes me out of it for a second. 

Another thing I can't let go about this movie is the strange and creepy hookup of Larry and Gwen. I mean, seriously. He charms her into going out with him by admitting that he spied on her in her room through his daddy's high-powered telescope? And she never really acts like that's just a little bit weird? Anyway, all is forgiven pretty quickly and Gwen and Larry actually turn out to be quite cute together so I guess they do have some chemistry. I love how she messes with him by bringing her friend along to what he thinks is going to be their first date. She's also a playa, because she's engaged to this other dude while she's running off with Larry. I like that about her.

I guess it sounds like I didn't really like The Wolf Man all that much but I really did. It's not my particular favorite of this classic monster bunch so far (I think The Invisible Man might just win that title), but there's definitely something special about it. The werewolf has always been a metaphor for the monster or the animal that is within all of us, or the idea of man's dual capabilities for good or evil, and I love how that is represented in this movie. Chaney's performance in the title role, as well as all the supporting performances, make this one a truly surprising classic that had much more to it than I expected. 

Movie Review: Dog Soldiers

In my triumverate of horror film monsters - vampires, werewolves, and zombies - probably the one with the least room for growth, I thought, was werewolves. It's utterly simple lore - men (or women) turn into wolves at the full moon each month and if you get bit you turn into one yourself. How to kill them and/or reverse the effects of being bitten can change with each movie, but it's basically a scenario of fighting off huge wolves that rip you to shredded paper.

Bad dog.

Why not add some trained soldiers to square off with the werewolves in an isolated farmhouse? It certainly worked in Dog Soldiers. I like werewolf movies and I like war movies, with the camaraderie and loyalty among soldiers. And I got the feeling half-way through watching Dog Soldiers that this movie (as one of the actors also said) is not a werewolf movie with soldiers, but rather a soldier movie with werewolves.

The Big Fat Plot Paragraph: A squad of six British soldiers are dropped into the Scottish Highlands on a training mission. They soon find the remains of a Special Ops camp that had been killed and destroyed, but there is one survivor. Not knowing it at the time, werewolves begin hunting the soldiers, who are picked up by a woman (a zoologist) and taken to an old farmhouse where they hole up to fight off the savage enemies.

As a British film, I don't know much about the actors but they all seemed very talented and took their roles and this movie seriously. You care about these guys; they're nice and they're loyal and you really don't want to see them torn in half or turn into werewolves themselves. Sean Pertwee is actually the only one I recognized - he was in the awesome Event Horizon - and I loved his role as the Sarge who was fiercely protective of his men, even if some of them aren't too serious or are kind of wimpy.

Oh, it's beautiful.

As an enhancement to the men's relationship with each other, the dialogue is very good throughout. There's your standard dirty-mouthed soldier talk and a lot of British slang that I honestly didn't understand some of, but more importantly, the dialogue feels realistic. The soldiers seem like real guys in a real bad situation and they handle it and talk probably just like someone in this situation would talk. The dialogue is also great in that it is extremely funny. "My guts are out!" "Well, we'll put them back in!" "They won't fit!"

Speaking of guts, the gore and other effects are top notch. No CG here, but rather all practical effects with buckets of blood and stuntmen in body suits with probably really uncomfortable shoes. The werewolves look like your basic werewolf, except they seem to be exclusively bipeds. They're about seven feet tall (very menacing), quick and brutal in their kills and also happen to be a nice little family who live in the farmhouse when they're not out killing humans. Aw, how sweet. Anyway. There are some good gore gags in this flick, my favorite being when one of the soldiers is killed in a truck and when the others open the back door, a freaking RIVER of blood spills out. Killer. Also there are plenty of your random guts and people/werewolves being impaled. There could have been a bit more gore; what we get here only partially whet my appetite for blood. I'm just sayin', a little more couldn't have hurt.

Werewolves can be just as funny as zombies.

Big spoilers here.

The one flaw in the movie was Megan. If she is a werewolf, and the werewolves are her family, how is that she did not change until the very end? If we're going with traditional lore/myth here, then she should have changed as night set, UNLESS they changed the lore whereby one can be in control of their transformation. However, it is never explained either way so hardcore werewolf movie lovers or enthusiasts might have a slight problem with that.

That aspect of the film could also be a part of its success, though. The characters don't spend all their time worrying about finding out all they can about the creatures; they don't dig into a boring history of the mythology or all the possible ways to defeat them. They react much like soldiers would - they see a threat, and while they may not totally believe it at first, their only mission is to kill the threat and get the fuck out of there. Cut and dry, plain and simple.

Neil Marshall's directorial debut is no doubt a big hit, and regarded by a lot of fans as one of the best werewolf movies out there. Neil already gets big kisses from me because of his stellar film The Descent but now having seen Dog Soldiers (BTW, isn't that pretty much the perfect title? Kudos on that), I'd say this is one talented guy. Great shots and movement and action to keep the story going, but also able to make a genre picture about werewolves somewhat sentimental in how it shows the relationship and connection among soldiers. I like it A LOT. Great, great movie.