Werewolf links, news, and reviews
I’m in the office while every other Canadian is sleeping off a turkey binge. The desperate pleas, frantic cries, werewolf snarls and random gunfire in this video by sketch comedy group (posse?) Dumbshit Mountain are exactly what I need to keep a smile on my face this morning.
Before the emails about this thing started arriving in my inbox yesterday, I hadn’t thought of Werewolf: the Apocalypse in years. I rolled my last dice in that system during the spring of 1998, and at the time, I didn’t actually miss it much. My group of gaming friends moved on to a weird hybrid of Rifts and Rolemaster that resulted in me getting less sleep and more C’s than I would have liked during my final year of high school. But I kept my WtA book and leafed through it occasionally, enjoying the artwork and the florid-yet-melancholy world described within. I don’t know where that book is now – probably sold to help pay for rent during my dipshit years – but my interest in the game and its universe has suddenly been renewed by news of a Kickstarter to help fund the creation of a Deluxe “Werewolf the Apocalypse” 20th Anniversary Edition.
The goal is to fund the creation of “a deluxe hardcover edition that stands proudly on its own as an amazing volume, or with Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition.” This volume, referred to as “the W20”, is planned as a black leatherette hardcover with “an inset disk on the spine featuring the W20 round symbol, with 520+ full color, silver-edged, interior pages, and a red silk ribbon bookmark.” Naturally, the cover will feature the classic Werewolf claw marks, die-cut right through the cover material.
Contributors will receive perks that range from a listing of their name on the thank-you page of the book, to the book itself, to an Ultra Deluxe W20 Heavy Metal Edition – a version of the book with an actual metal slab in the cover, bearing punched-out claw marks. In between (and beyond) these tiers are a treasure trove of PDFs, artwork, wallpapers and even a chance to have WtA “showrunner” Ethan Skemp GM a game for you and your friends over Skype.
As of this post, only two days after its start, the project has been 138% funded with contributions totalling nearly $120,000. Both of its stretch goals have already been met, too: all backers will also receive a Making of the Art of W20 PDF “that details via sketches and the text of emails and phone conversations the chaotic process of creating the art for W20“, and early access to a PDF copy of a new WtA novel by Bill Bridges.
I fully intend to get on board with this thing, partly out of nostalgia and partly because I think Werewolf: the Apocalypse is an important part of modern werewolf culture (if such a thing could be said to exist). Whether you played it or not, what you see when you search the Web for “werewolf” is influenced in some small way by what Ethan Skemp and his colleagues first released in 1992. Much of its aesthetics are things I turn my nose up at now – the cyperpunk/eco-warrior bent of its stories can be heavy-handed, and the spiritual elements of the game’s world are the purest distillation of that “tree-hugging anthropomorphic wolf in a loincloth” business that I love to hate) – but if you’re a werewolf fan who was old enough to get an allowance in the early 90’s, you’d better pay WtA some Goddamn respect or I’ll go Crinos on your ass.
Sculptor, mask-maker and general “makin’ cool stuff because I can” guy Evan Campbell has created a fantastic tutorial showing how to make your own totally realistic werewolf fangs with a few commercially available supplies, a little skill and a lot of practice.
Okay, technically the tutorial is titled “Vampire Teeth”, but the word only appears once on the page, and the technique will let you make any kind of chompers you can sculpt. I love DIY stuff, and despite the unfamiliarity of some of the gear (that Articulator looks like something out of a Saw movie), there’s nothing going on here that’s out of reach for anyone with the willingness to spend a few bucks and a lot of hours getting messy. Thanks to Evan for sharing his expertise – between this tutorial and his others on mask-making (part one and two), skin textures and punching hair, you’ve got everything you need to make a killer werewolf mask. Thanks also to Tandye for sending me the link!
Two months ago I posted that Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie remake contained what might be described as an “incidental werewolf”. A reader named Lew commented that Burton’s werewolves look like were-rats, and as it turns out, that’s actually what the “werewolf” is: a were-rat! This morning, Bloody Disgusting shared seven new “creature feature” – inspired Frankenweenie posters featuring monstrous pets, and one of them is for a non-existant film I’d probably go see before Frankenweenie: The Night of the Were-Rat.
London-based event company Chillsauce has announced Birmingham Overnight Werewolf Hunting, a new experience package that may interest Werewolf News readers in the UK… particularly those with a penchant for paintball guns and falling down in the dark.
For £149 per person, you and seven (or more) friends can spend six hours living out your “werewolf attack nightmares” in the woods outside Droitwich, Worcestershire. Werewolf News reader Yang kindly emailed me a link to a PR Newswire release explaining what, exactly, participants are getting themselves into:
This potentially life-changing night requires a minimum group size of 8 people, arriving for 8pm and then continuing until dawn. Hunters will be prepared with safety training, kitted out with werewolf repellent clothing, undergo a crash course in basic military training and receive a briefing on weapons training. Before the hunters begin, they will set up preventative trip wires and explosive booby traps around the camp to protect against the imminent attack.
Hunters will then embark on their werewolf hunting mission almost physically shaking with fear in the knowledge that at some point in the night their fortified group position will be attacked by these beasts. The aim is to hold off the threat and secure the silver bullets to defeat the werewolves. The session will run through the night and end at approximately 2:00am. Military style accommodation with bunks is available where they can rest until the safe light of day.
Chillsauce can stock your bunk with £10 Stag Packs, so you and your pals can drink lager and eat “assorted snacks” until your fiancée picks you up at dawn and takes you home for a shower, a nap, and brunch with her parents at 11.
I think this is a bad idea, and not because I like to play “werewolf rights advocate” on Twitter. Chillsauce runs a lot of events, many of which involve wearing tactical pants, holding a paintball gun and looking forward to beer, so I’m sure they have the event logistics well in hand. They wouldn’t be able to afford that nice web site and that London office if they didn’t know what they were doing. The problem lies with the “werewolves”.
It’s hard enough to make a werewolf look realistic and properly threatening in a five-second movie FX shot! An in-person encounter, regardless of lighting conditions and adrenaline jitters, is going to be much harder to pull off with any realism, let alone the realism people are going to expect when they’ve chipped in for a $2,000 USD “experience”. Two dudes in costume shop masks probably aren’t going to cut it, but anything more elaborate than that is just going to get trashed by tree branches and whatever acrobatics are necessary while breaching a perimeter.
Chillsauce might be better off re-purposing their extra paintball guns and paramilitary trainers into a zombie-themed event, like this one. Zombie makeup is easier to “do” than werewolf makeup, and will actually look better the more its wearer mangles it while crashing through bushes in the dark. Plus, zombies tend to attack in groups and waves, which sounds like it would be a lot more fun to defend against than one or two focussed werewolf onslaughts.
As usual, I’m probably overthinking this, but when it comes to werewolf stuff, that’s… kind of my deal!
Werewolf News has a new design, based on a total re-write of the WordPress theme. This time around the site has been built on the Skeleton responsive framework, meaning the design will adapt itself to the screen width of your device (try resizing your browser window the smallest it’ll go – neat, huh?). I’ve also updated the navigation, re-arranged the post area, and moved most of the ads from Google to Project Wonderful (which will let me run my own ads when there aren’t any bids).
Skeleton is really solid, but if you find any glitches, please let me know by posting a comment on this thread (and please include your OS, and your browser + version).
Before I tackle the rest of Paul Naschy’s “Hombre Lobo” series, I’d like to highlight one entry in particular that may be a little hard to come by since it’s never been released on DVD, but it’s definitely worth the effort to track down. That film is 1975’s Night of the Howling Beast, which was originally called La Maldicion de la Bestia (literally “The Curse of the Beast”) and also went out as Hall of the Mountain King (a somewhat nonsensical title) and The Werewolf and the Yeti (which is rather more germane since there is a scene at the end where Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky fights a yeti). Directed by Miguel Iglesias (who’s credited under the not-fooling-anyone pseudonym of M.I. Bonns), the film opens with an incredibly brief and chaotic yeti attack, after which we’re whisked off to London. There Waldemar — a noted anthropologist and psychologist who just happens to be fluent in Nepalese — is recruited by an old professor (Castillo Escalona) for an expedition to the Himalayas to continue the work of the first expedition (shades of Monty Python’s “Sir George Head” sketch). Of course, the main attraction for Waldemar may be the presence of the professor’s beautiful daughter/assistant, Sylvia (Grace Mills). (And no, the fact that he knew her as a child isn’t creepy at all.)
As one might expect, things don’t really get rolling until the expedition reaches Nepal and Waldemar decides to scout ahead with a skittish local guide. When they reach the Pass of the Demons of the Red Moon his guide freaks out and disappears, leaving Waldemar to wander on his own until he finds sanctuary in a cave inhabited by two hot priestesses who nurse him back to health. After some disturbing dreams he discovers that they’re cannibals who worship a skeleton with fangs, kills one with a silver dagger and is bitten by the other before he can dispatch her. Thus having contracted the curse of the beast, he stumbles out of the cave in just a shirt, which would be a problem if he didn’t sprout fur and fangs that night during the full moon.
Meanwhile, there is unrest back at camp since one of the expedition’s Sherpas (Gaspar ‘Indio’ González) keeps warning them about the bandits that could attack them at any time. Waldemar kills three of them the first time he transforms and even chows down on Nathan (Juan Velilla), the group’s main naysayer, after he gets drunk and tries to paw Sylvia. Naturally, when the professor and the others discover Nathan’s body the next morning they think it could be the work of a yeti, but they are soon set upon by more bandits and there is a big shootout, during which Sylvia escapes and the professor and Melody (Verónica Miriel), the other female in the group, are captured. Alas, the bandits are less interested in poor Larry Talbot (Gil Vidal) — yes, Naschy went ahead and used the name of the most famous werewolf in history for a minor character in the film — but we don’t find out his fate until the next day, after Waldemar has reunited with Sylvia after slaughtering some more bandits in his bestial form.
When Waldemar and Sylvia find Larry he’s been impaled on a spike and begs to be put out of his misery (much like Lon Chaney, Jr. frequently did), but before he expires he tells them the bandits have taken the professor and Melody to the palace of the ailing Sekkar Khan (Luis Induni), who is attended by the sadistic Wandesa (Silvia Solar), a foreigner who delights in having people tortured and is stringing the Khan along. On their way to the palace Waldemar and Sylvia stop at an abandoned monastery where an old man tells them of the only cure for Waldemar’s condition (which involves the red petals of a magic flowering plant and the blood of a young girl), but before they can seek it out they are captured and taken to the palace, where Wandesa announces her intention to dominate Waldemar and make him her slave by having Melody skinned alive before his eyes. Before the full moon comes, though, Sylvia and the other female prisoners effect an escape and Waldemar is freed in time to have two protracted fights — one in human form with the Khan and the other in his more feral state with a yeti that tries to abduct Sylvia. Sadly, the creature’s shaggy costume looks decidedly off-the-rack, but that doesn’t make much of a difference since it’s hard to make out much detail against the blinding white snow. I’d say a DVD restoration is in order, but that seems about as likely as Waldemar Daninsky rolling over and playing dead.
Hi everyone! This weeks theme is up so draw whatever comes to mind when you think, Big & Beastly. You know, anything besides the Beast from Beauty and the Beast or Beast from X-Men, the Hulk… okay, okay, let’s stick to werewolves here people. Be creative, share your art in the comments, and as always, have fun!
edit by Andrew: Tandye will be Livestreaming a werewolf-themed drawing & chat session at her Livestream page today, starting at 2 PM Pacific. Come hang out!
Reader Nyetwerke shares this short article from France’s The Local: Town hunts werewolves after sheep attacks.
A flock of ewes were found dead by their owners, savagely killed and often with their throats cut, in the town of Les Mauges, near Nantes. Locals speculated a wild dog or a wolf may be to blame.
I’m thinking the locals are probably correct, but a sizeable Facebook group called Sauvons les loups garous français (“Save the French werewolves”) – created by Adrien Collineau and Martin Crépon – says the deaths are the result of werewolves who have “returned” to France, and that need to be saved. My French is terrible so I can’t tell exactly what’s going on there, but the images and videos posted to the group and its sister site all have a do-it-yourself aesthetic that makes me wonder if Adrien and Martin are serious, if they’re having fun… or if they’re trying to distract people from all the lambchops they’re selling out the back door.
The hat is a beanie called a Zaphat, and the logo on the front acts as a target for an iOS app that will render a 3D model “mask” over your head. One of the masks that it (presumably) ships with is a werewolf, who reacts accordingly when you poke it in the nose.
The company behind this gimmicky (but cool) technology is Zappar, who “make bite-sized entertainment experiences using our proprietary image recognition”. The Zaphat will hit retail “real soon”, at which point you’ll be able to purchase additional masks based on original and licensed properties.
I don’t spend a lot of time just starting at people through my iPad, but if augmented reality garments go mainstream, I might have to start! (Zappar, if you want this to go mainstream, please use models who don’t look like extras from Jesse Pinkman’s crew).