Author: Craig J. Clark

For the first time in recent memory, werewolf aficionados have two films featuring our favorite furry monsters to choose from in theaters this Halloween. True, they’re both more family-friendly than some might like, but PG werewolves are better than no werewolves.

First up, there’s Hotel Transylvania 2, the sequel to the hit animated film from 2012. I haven’t seen either, but Steve Buscemi does return to voice Wayne, the harried family wolf who has his paws full keeping his rambunctious pups in line. And since Hotel Transylvania 2 has continued to pack ’em in a month after its release, there’s every reason to believe we’ll be getting a Hotel Transylvania 3 in short order.

Less assured of a follow-up is Goosebumps, which brings to life all of the creepy crawlies cooked up by R.L. Stine in his book series of the same name. I had aged out of the target audience long before Stine’s books first came out in the early ’90s, so I’ve never read any of them, nor have I seen the television shows, specials, and videos they spawned. (Nope, not even The Werewolf of Fever Swamp.) That didn’t prevent me from enjoying the film, though, especially since said werewolf gets a fair bit of play. True, he’s a purely CGI creation (as are most of the monsters in the film), but he has a good design going for him and he’s party to some of the film’s most suspenseful sequences.

In addition to the werewolf, which gets about five minutes of featured screen time (not that I was keeping track or anything), Goosebumps also unleashes an abominable snowman (the first of Stine’s creations to escape from his manuscripts), a vindictive ventriloquist’s dummy named Slappy, an army of garden gnomes, the Invisible Boy, a giant praying mantis, a squad of space aliens with freeze rays, a gaggle of ghouls, some scarecrows, a mummy, a scary clown (is there any other kind?), and many others. That should be enough to satisfy just about any monster fan.

On the opposite end of the spectrum in that regard is the horror anthology Tales of Halloween, which received a limited release in conjunction with its bow on VOD. The main draw for me was the participation of Dog Soldiers director Neil Marshall, who contributes the best segment (“Bad Seed,” about a killer jack-o-lantern), but the IMDb keywords page also promised a werewolf that the film failed to deliver, so I have submitted a request to the site to have it removed. And I’m using this space to let potential viewers know there are no werewolves in Tales of Halloween. Maybe if there were, it would have actually gotten a wide release.

With the super blood moon upon us — for the last time until 2033 — it’s fortuitous that there’s a new werewolf movie out called Blood Moon. What’s unfortunate is that it’s not a very good one. Set in Colorado in the year 1887, but filmed in the South of England for reasons known only to its financiers, Blood Moon is about a Native American Skinwalker — a warrior who’s able to take the form of a bipedal wolf creature and is at his strongest during the blood moon according to the film’s resident half-breed font of Navajo legends and dream visions — who has chosen to bedevil the abandoned mining town of Pine Flats and all who pass through it.

Taking its cues from classic Hollywood westerns like John Ford’s Stagecoach as much as modern revisionist ones like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, Blood Moon is populated by all the expected character types. There’s Calhoun (Shaun Dooley), the mysterious gunslinger about whose past there is much speculation, who stops a stagecoach on the road to Pine Flats and talks his way onto it. His fellow passengers are deputy marshal Jake Norman (George Blagden), his blushing bride Sarah (Amber Jean Rowan), saucy saloon owner Marie (Anna Skellern), baby-faced London Times reporter Henry Lester (George Webster), and requisite priest Father Dominic (Kerry Shale), who’s the first to get plugged when the travelers are ambushed by outlaw half-brothers Hank and Jeb Norton (Corey Johnson and Raffaello Degruttola), who are on the run after a bank robbery gone bad. In addition to the repeated references to their deplorable personal hygiene, both are repugnant in their own unique ways. While Jeb has an eye for the ladies and makes plain that he plans to rape Sarah before they move on, Hank can’t go five minutes without spitting and sounds so much like Yosemite Sam that it: a) must have been a deliberate choice, and b) is incredibly distracting.

Speaking of distractions, director Jeremy Wooding and screenwriter Alan Wightman include numerous cutaways to Jake’s cousin, Marshal Wade (Jack Fox), who hires the aforementioned half-breed Black Deer (Eleanor Matsuura) to track down the Nortons, hand-waving her concerns about going out during the blood moon. Once it rises, that should mean the end of the tedium (“Jesus Christ, Jeb. Pull the trigger,” Hank says, speaking for the audience. “Shoot somebody.”), but even when one of the Nortons is put out of his misery and one of the passengers is attacked off-screen by the Skinwalker, the others seem unnaturally unperturbed when it drags the victim’s legs away, leaving the head and torso on the front porch of the inn where they’re holed up. Meanwhile, Wooding reveals the creature incrementally, progressing from an over-the-hairy-shoulder shot to the hairy arm that breaks through a window and grasps at the unwary soul who had their back to it. Then there are the closeups of its hairy back as it’s repeatedly shot so Wooding can show that the bullet wounds heal instantly thanks to the magic of CGI. What’s surprising about this is he was actually given a decent-looking practical werewolf costume to work with, so waiting until the last fifteen minutes to show it off just seems like a waste.

Also puzzling are the film’s attempts to prop up Calhoun like he’s some sort of icon who should be mentioned in the same breath as Eastwood’s Man with No Name. Based on his refusal to ever say where he’s from, despite being asked repeatedly, perhaps he should be known as the Man with No Birth Certificate. Also, his reputation as a crack shot may be somewhat overstated since the Skinwalker has to wait patiently up on the roof for Calhoun to fire a shotgun shell filled with silver jewelry into its heart. Then again, it was probably still dazed after being run over by that stagecoach. Blood Moon may not be a classic, but that’s still a moment for the record books.

Fifteen years ago this month, the Canadian werewolf film Ginger Snaps had its first public screening at the München Fantasy Film Fest on the way to its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. (more…)