Author: Craig J. Clark

Ever since I first saw how the scenario played out in 1995’s Project: Metalbeast, I’ve never understood why anybody would think turning soldiers into werewolves (or vice versa) is a good idea. I mean, I get that werewolves are unstoppable killing machines, but they’re also uncontrollable killing machines — and giving one a metal exoskeleton is just plain begging for trouble. Even if the feral creatures in Syfy’s Battledogs aren’t metal-plated, they’re still highly unsuitable for military use, but you just try telling that to lieutenant general Dennis Haysbert, who’s willing to put the entire island of Manhattan at risk if that’s what it takes for him to get hairy super-soldiers.

The directorial debut of Alexander Yellen, cinematographer of such Asylum classics as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, and boasting a teleplay by Shane Van Dyke of Titanic II and Transmorphers: Fall of Man fame, Battledogs opens with an outbreak of lycanthropy at JFK International when an airline passenger, wildlife photographer Ariana Richards (the little girl from Jurassic Park, all grown up), spontaneously turns into a ravenous, four-legged (and unfortunately entirely CGI) beast and starts attacking her fellow travelers. Some of them die, but many more don’t, and the survivors are quick to change themselves, which is how the situation quickly snowballs. Much to the relief of president Bill Duke, the military is on the scene in a jiffy and gets things under control and the infected quarantined, which is when by-the-books Army medical researcher Craig Sheffer and CDC official Kate Vernon get involved, much to the annoyance of Haysbert and, by extension, his right-hand man, Wes Studi.

The only other actor of any note is Ernie Hudson, who plays JFK’s director of security and is keen to show off their state-of-the-art hologram surveillance system when Sheffer comes by in search of any clues that will lead them to the identity of the Lupine Virus’s Patient Zero. When Haysbert seizes the opportunity to test one of his unwilling recruits in the wild, Sheffer reveals himself to be the Werewolf Whisperer — a gift that comes in handy on more than one occasion — but he doesn’t really get a clue until all the major players (with the exception of Duke, who’s off doing something presidential) are gathered together in a cramped operating room and Haysbert lays his cards on the table. Eventually we reach the point where Sheffer and Haysbert have both been infected and start whaling on each other, but the film takes its sweet time getting there. In the meantime, we get to watch the spectacle of a bunch of computer-generated werewolves get mowed down on the streets of Manhattan. That’s nothing, though, compared to the spectacle of a fleet of CGI jets blowing up all of the bridges leading out of the city. Now I can’t wait for Battledogs 2: Escape from New York to be announced.

Next Up: We check in with a werewolf based out of our nation’s capital.

The Sci-Fi Channel rebranded itself Syfy in the summer of 2009, making that year’s Wolvesbayne the first official werewolf-centric “Syfy Original Movie.” I went into it hoping for the best, which I’ve always found to be preferable to the alternative, but alas, Wolvesbayne is a sorry slice of sub-Underworld schlock with a convoluted plot about a rogue vampire clan collecting magical trinkets to resurrect their queen and a newly minted werewolf who’s recruited to help stop them.

A puffy-faced Jeremy London stars as Russell Bayne, a slimy real estate developer (is there any other kind?) who’s rebuffed by occult book store owner Christy Romano (the lone holdout holding up a major property deal), but has bigger problems to contend with when he is attacked by a werewolf and survives. Soon he’s dreaming about transforming into a hairy beast, waking up covered in blood and finding animal carcasses in his house, and looking up information on “WEREWOLVE” on the popular Internet search site BooYah! And screenwriter Leigh Scott (the auteur behind The Beast of Bray Road) leaves no cliché unturned since he also includes the requisite moment where London discovers that he has super-sensitive hearing. Before he can get too bogged down in the bewildering changes he’s going through, though, he’s rescued from two hot vampire chicks by Romano, who also turns out to be a werewolf because why the hell not?

From there, London finds himself caught between the vampires (headed up by clan leader Mark Dacascos, who amply illustrates the difficulty of speaking intelligibly with fangs) and the slayers (led by Rhett Giles as Jacob Van Helsing because of course he’s a Van Helsing) who keep them at bay. Director Griff Furst does them no favors, though, by intercutting their first fight scene with two other, unrelated melees. And he also does little to restrain Yancy Butler, who devours scenery left and right as vampire queen Lilith, who turns out not to be that much of a threat, really. Sure, she was planning to blot out the sun so vampires could take over the world, but I never believed for one second that she was going to pull that off. As for London, by the time he masters the ability to wolf out, he looks silly enough that he probably should have just stayed hairy on the inside.

Things didn’t improve much the following year when Syfy unveiled Red: Werewolf Hunter, which somehow managed the trick of being a knockoff of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters years before that even existed. As the film opens, federal agent Felicia Day is bringing jerky fiancé Kavan Smith (also a federal agent) home to meet her family — headed up by wise, all-knowing grandmother Rosemary Dunsmore — for the first time and let him in on the family secret — namely, that they hunt werewolves. Smith barely has time to process this before he’s bitten by a particularly nasty customer named Gabriel (Stephen McHattie) who is able to “phase at will,” but he’s able to keep this a secret long enough to put Day and her family in danger.

Between action beats, writer Brook Durham gives smartass younger brother David Reale (who comes across as vaguely B.J. Novakish) a hair more complexity than older sibling Greg Bryk, but Durham’s least compelling contribution to werewolf lore has to be the notion that they burst into flame when they’re killed. (Really? That’s your choice? What were your other options?) Also, while I was expecting the transformations to be computer-assisted (this is a Syfy Original Movie, after all), the fact that the werewolves are completely digital creations was a major letdown to me. I guess director Sheldon Wilson couldn’t be bothered to have an actual werewolf suit made. (Even a guy in a crappy werewolf suit — like the ones on display in The Beast of Bray Road or Never Cry Werewolf — would have been preferable to the rail-thin, virtually weightless creatures in Red: Werewolf Hunter. Ish.)

Next Up: The embattled Summer of Syfy reaches its conclusion by going to the dogs…

From the first time I heard about the Canadian direct-to-video horror movie Never Cry Werewolf (which premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2008), I knew it was one that I was eventually going to get around to seeing. I just had no idea that I had essentially already seen it, only with a different supernatural monster.

Directed by Brenton Spencer and written by John Sheppard, Never Cry Werewolf owes a huge (and completely unacknowledged) debt to Tom Holland’s 1985 film Fright Night. That film (which received the official remake treatment in 2011) was about a teenage boy who can’t make anyone believe him when a vampire moves in next door. In this film the teenager is a girl and the new neighbor is a werewolf, but otherwise the parallels are unmistakable. There’s even a washed-up television star (played by Roddy McDowell in the original Fright Night and here by Kevin Sorbo) in both that the hero goes to for help. The main difference between them is McDowell is a horror movie host who comes through in the clinch and Sorbo is a self-involved hunter/sportsman who actually gets treed at one point. (No one could ever accuse Sorbo of not having a sense of humor about himself.)

Anyway, enough about Fright Night. What about Never Cry Werewolf? Well, it kicks off with an attack on a registered sex offender (never let it be said that werewolves are too picky about the class of their victims), after which we start to get to know our protagonists. The girl (Nina Dobrev) is a vegetarian who believes something is up almost right away when she finds out their hunky new neighbor (Peter Stebbings) has hair on his palms. Her younger brother (Spencer Van Wyck) is impressed by his Harley, though, and starts hanging out over at his place, helping him with his remodeling. (I’m guessing the sex offender scene may have been added to deflect any speculation that anything else was going on between them.) The other major character is the dorky guy played by Sean O’Neill, who has a huge crush on Dobrev and gets turned into a werewolf by Stebbings in much the same way that the best friend in Fright Night gets corrupted. (Okay, that’s the last Fright Night reference, I promise.)

The lack of originality on display in Never Cry Werewolf would be bad enough, but it’s fairly cheesy to boot. The special effects aren’t very special and the werewolf is mostly shown in extreme closeups or long shots because of how fake it looks when we finally do get a good look at it. It’s also very telling that the big transformation takes place entirely offscreen. Still, it’s amusing that the film makes up its own mythology and then tries to pass it off as common knowledge. (Werewolves travel with demon familiars that take the form of big, black dogs? Really?) The most overwrought part of the story, though, is Stebbings’s belief that Dobrev is the reincarnation of his long lost love, Melissa (who looks like Alyssa Milano in the picture that he carries around with him). Too bad that’s also something that this movie cribbed from Fright Night. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.) In the end, the best way not to cry werewolf is not to watch it in the first place.

Next Up: A Syfy double feature that’ll have you seeing red and bayin’ at the moon…

I didn’t have very high expectations going into 2007’s Hybrid — after all, the TV movie was pretty much tailor-made for Syfy — but for a story about a guy who receives an experimental eye transplant from a wolf and then starts acting kinda wolfy, it’s remarkably tame. Directed by Yelena Lanskaya from a script by Arne Olsen — whose previous credits include Red Scorpion (which rather infamously was co-conceived and produced by Jack Abramoff), Cop and a Half, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie and All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 — Hybrid gives us perfunctory (at best) introductions to its main characters before plunging them into a faintly ridiculous story that everybody on screen takes way more seriously than anybody watching will be able to.

At the Olaris Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, research scientist Justine Bateman is working on the problem of inter-species eye transplants and finds the perfect human guinea pig in heroic security guard Cory Monteith, who loses his sight while saving a dumbass coworker. Meanwhile, Native American teacher Tinsel Korey banters playfully with tribal medicine man Gordon Tootoosis and rescues an injured wolf that rather conveniently gets passed along to Bateman’s research lab. Monteith’s operation is a success, but it comes with some side effects both expected (night vision, which is never referenced again after it is briefly demonstrated) and unexpected (enhanced hearing, strength and agility, as well as vivid flashbacks to the donor wolf’s memories). It also prompts to Korey to break into Olaris to confront Bateman about the innocent wolf that had to give its life so Monteith could spend the rest of the movie wearing yellow contact lenses, but Korey is thrown out before she can make her case. Fortunately, she immediately runs into Monteith and helps him escape, leading to an oddly choreographed bar fight and Monteith’s discovery that he’s a natural conga drummer. His further nocturnal adventures include going out shirtless, running with a group of stray dogs, and winding up at the zoo where he hangs around the wolf enclosure and nearly mauls a guard. There he’s found by Korey and his partner, Brandon Jay McLaren, who lets them crash at his apartment, which is then crashed by a security detail from Olaris under orders from Bateman’s G. Gordon Liddy-like superior, William MacDonald.

From there things spiral even further into absurdity, with Monteith making a dramatic escape from Olaris, doing the nasty with Korey, and being sent on a spirit quest by Tootoosis. The latter sequence is cross-cut with MacDonald and his crew gearing up and heading out to the woods where they patiently stalk Monteith (having been warned that “This is not an ordinary man that you’re going up against”) and then blindly spray automatic weapon fire at anything that moves. Bateman also shows up, having found time to Google “lycanthropes” for the benefit of those in the audience who need to have the concept of clinical lycanthropy explained to them, but Monteith gets the strongest assist from his lupine pals, who help him dispatch all the bad men with the loud guns. He then gets to run off into the sunset with them, which is just about the corniest ending I could ever imagine for a movie about a guy with wolf eyes, but there you have it. Hybrid may be 90 minutes that you’ll never get back again, but what were you planning on doing with them anyway? Restoring eyesight to the blind?

Next Up: Syfy demonstrates why you should never cry werewolf…

Summer won’t officially be here for another month, but the summer movie season has already been in full swing for the past few weeks. Alas, we won’t be seeing any werewolves at the multiplex this year, but Syfy has our back with Battledogs, which our esteemed webmaster was kind enough to bring to our attention. Sure, it actually premiered back in April, but Syfy is giving fans another chance to check it out on Saturday, June 29, at 3 p.m. In the meantime, I figured it would be worthwhile to run down some of the other werewolf films the channel has seen fit to grace us with over the past decade and change.

It may surprise some to know that back in the Dark Ages, Syfy was the Sci-Fi Channel, and it actually gave Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers its US premiere. For those who have been living under a rock for the past 11 years, the film is set in the Scottish highlands, where an Army patrol on a routine training mission finds themselves up against a pack of werewolves (who are, I’m happy to report, almost entirely men in werewolf suits — and pretty good-looking ones at that). Sean Pertwee stars as the squad’s sergeant, who gets eviscerated by one of the beasts early on, leaving private Kevin McKidd in charge. This leads to some conflict with the Special Ops officer they run into (Liam Cunningham), who has a history with McKidd and knows more than he’s letting on about their furry foes. And the same goes for zoologist Emma Cleasby, who picks the soldiers up in her Land Rover and takes them to a remote country house where they hold up for the night.

Marshall may have gone on to bigger (and occasionally better) things like The Descent and Doomsday, but this was his feature film debut and he pulled out all the stops for it. His characters are well-drawn, their dialogue is snappy, the action sequences are exciting (and edited in such a way that you can tell what’s going on), and the special effects are much better than you would probably expect from such a low-budget film. Even given Marshall’s predilection for blowing shit up (which he indulges on a few occasions), I’ll take this over the much more extravagant Underworld films any day. It’s just too bad the proposed sequel has had so much trouble getting off the ground, but I’ll happily lap it up should it ever see the light of day (or night).

Like Dog Soldiers, 2005’s The Beast of Bray Road wasn’t produced by the Sci-Fi Channel (as a matter of fact, The Asylum is the company that holds that dubious distinction), but that is where I got to see it. You know you’re in for something different when you’re watching a werewolf movie and the first words that pop up on the screen are “BASED ON A TRUE STORY.” Thanks to the Asylum connection, my expectations weren’t very high going into The Beast of Bray Road (which is apparently based on actual werewolf sightings that took place in rural Wisconsin), but at least it had the good sense not to take itself too seriously.

Written, directed and edited by Leigh Scott, the film has more than a few parallels with Jaws. For example, star Jeff Denton is the new deputy in town who moved there from the big city for the peace and quiet, with Thomas Downey in the Richard Dreyfuss role as a cryptozoologist working on his Ph.D. who is attracted by internet reports of an unidentified wild beast. (Downey was something of an MVP on the film since he also served as production designer and stunt performer and did the special effects.) There’s even a budget-conscious sheriff who’s more concerned about selling hunting licenses and the tourist trade than hunting down the creature.

Speaking of the beast, it would probably be more frightening if it didn’t look like a guy wearing a collection of throw rugs, which makes it doubly confusing why the director would show it so fully and so early in the film. He also gives the new deputy a seemingly pointless love interest in local roadhouse owner Sarah Lieving (who could probably use a bouncer like Patrick Swayze), which I suppose is meant to heighten the drama at the climax, but it ends up seeming as random as most every other element in the film. Still, if all you’re looking for is a cheesy werewolf movie, you could probably do a lot worse than this one — and cheesy is definitely the word for it. What else would you expect from a film that is “dedicated to the Great State of Wisconsin”?

Next Up: Syfy goes the hybrid route, and I don’t mean they bought a Prius…

Do not be alarmed by the title of this month’s Full Moon Feature: Orgy of the Dead was made in 1965, so it’s nowhere near as risque at it sounds. It was also written by Edward D. Wood, Jr., based on his own novel, so there’s little chance of anyone finding it at all erotic in spite of the bevy of nearly naked women that are made to dance for the pleasure of Criswell, the Emperor of the Night (and allegedly the audience).

It all starts out innocently enough with a young couple (William Bates and Pat Barrington) driving out to a cemetery because, he being a horror writer, he’s looking for inspiration for one of his extremely popular monster stories. She’s not so keen on the idea, but she does exchange a chaste kiss with him, prompting him to remark, “Your puritan upbringing holds you back from my monsters, but it certainly doesn’t hurt your art of kissing.” Soon after, he loses control and crashes the car, which they are thrown clear of. That’s the cue for Criswell to beckon forth the “princes of darkness” — or maybe he says “princess.” It’s really hard to tell. I’m leaning toward the latter because only one darkness-dweller comes forth, the Black Ghoul (Fawn Silver), who gets things started by summoning a Native American girl who died in flame to… dance topless near a flame. This she does for a long time, setting the precedent for all of the acts to follow.

While this is going on, director Stephen C. Apostolof (credited as A.C. Stephen) cuts away to Bates and Barrington as they come to and decide to investigate the music coming from the cemetery. They miss most of the next act, a streetwalker, but they watch in an unconvincing approximation of horror from the treeline as a girl who worshiped gold in life (also Barrington) is put through her paces. Her routine ends with Criswell imploring her two hunky helpers to “Throw gold on her” and “More gold” and “More gold” and “More gold!” It’s only after she gets deposited in a boiling cauldron of gold and emerges looking like she ran afoul of Auric Goldfinger that the two interlopers are caught by a Werewolf (John Andrews) and Mummy (Louis Ojena) and tied up so they can have a better view of the proceedings. Incidentally, when the Mummy speaks his voice is dubbed in such a way that’s oddly muffled, which makes it really strange when he banters with the Werewolf, who only howls and growls. They also stand off to the side for the rest of the picture and seem to get a lot more into it than the other four spectators, who can’t work up the energy to look even slightly enthused to be there.

And it’s hard to blame them, really, since the balance of the picture is taken up by half a dozen mostly interchangeable dance numbers punctuated by the occasional Wood-ism. (My favorite: “A pussycat is born to be whipped.”) Apart from the cat woman, who wears a full-body costume and is whipped throughout her number (a reference to the Ann-Margret vehicle Kitten With a Whip, maybe?), the others can only be distinguished by their outfits (which always disappear during a cutaway — it’s like the filmmakers were specifically prohibited from showing any actual stripping) and maybe a thematic prop or two. (For example, the bride who strangled her husband on their wedding night gets to keep her veil on the whole time.) Finally, the whole shebang comes to an end with the sunrise, which causes the creatures of the night to turn into skeletons (yes, the Werewolf, too), but as Criswell warns, they’ll return with the next full moon. Personally, I think one visit with them is more than enough.

In the wake of Universal’s success with The Wolf Man in 1941, two other studios rushed their own werewolf films into production, but only one of them had significant resources to throw behind it. The one that didn’t was Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, which turned out The Mad Monster in record time, releasing it just five months after Larry Talbot first sprouted fur and ravaged the countryside.

Directed by Sam Newfield, a preternaturally prolific filmmaker who cranked ’em out at the rate of a dozen or more a year at his peak (and whose vast filmography includes such anti-classics as The Terror of Tiny Town, The Monster Maker and I Accuse My Parents), The Mad Monster stars George Zucco as a mad scientist whose theories on blood transfusions between species (which he believes will produce feral, unstoppable soldiers) got him laughed out of academia, forcing him to retreat to the swamp to conduct his unethical experiments in secret. There he injects the blood of a wolf into his slow-witted handyman Petro (Glenn Strange), who becomes a wolf man in a series of lap dissolves, and sets the savage beast on his critics. Well, that’s what Zucco says he’s going to do. Mostly he just lets Strange wander around the foggy swamp aimlessly — all the better to pad out the running time. There’s also a budding romance of sorts between cub reporter Johnny Downs and Zucco’s daughter (Anne Nagel), who believes he’s a great scientist without having any idea what he’s working on. Naturally she has to find out in the most dramatic way possible.

As it’s in the public domain, The Mad Monster has been packaged and repackaged several times over, and can be come by quite cheaply. Budget label Alpha Video has it by itself, but it can also be found in Mill Creek Entertainment’s “Horror Classics” 50-movie pack alongside a number of Newfield’s other PRC cheapies. The best way to see it, though, is with Joel and the Bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000 (it’s in Volume XIV from Shout! Factory). Even if they did tackle it in the show’s first season, when the writers were still working the kinks out, they gave it no quarter.

In comparison, 1942’s The Undying Monster has been treated much more respectfully on home video, but that’s what comes of having a major studio behind you. Produced by Twentieth Century-Fox on a substantially larger budget, the film was given a professional sheen by director John Brahm (who also did the 1944 version of The Lodger and 1945’s Hangover Square, released alongside The Undying Monster in the first “Fox Horror Classics” set) and cinematographer Lucien Ballard, who withhold for as long as possible the revelation that there’s something supernatural afoot at Hammond House.

Set at the turn of the century, The Undying Monster is in fact the dreaded Hammond Monster, which visits its curse upon siblings Heather Angel and John Howard, although they’re a bit blasé about it until it strikes them directly. That’s when Scotland Yard forensics specialist James Ellison and his eccentric assistant Heather Thatcher are brought in. The curious thing is they’re introduced in such a way that it seems like this is but one entry in a series of films featuring the duo, but that is not the case. The other major character is doctor Bramwell Fletcher, who clearly knows what’s going on from the start but is tight-lipped about it until the last minute. For a film that barely tops an hour, that doesn’t leave much time for the monster to do its thing.

When it came time to make House of Dracula in 1945, Universal Pictures must have known its classic monster series was winding down for good. The second film to bring Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster together, it doesn’t appear to be too concerned with plot continuity. There are also coincidences aplenty since Count Dracula (John Carradine) and Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) both arrive at the door of the same blood specialist (Onslow Stevens) without once revealing how they managed to come back to life after being felled by sunlight and a silver bullet, respectively, at the end of House of Frankenstein. This is probably for the best, though, because when screenwriter Edward T. Lowe (who also penned House of Frankenstein) gets around to bringing Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) aboard, his explanation for how the monster came to rest in the mud-filled cave beneath the doctor’s house is patently ludicrous. Sometimes it’s best to just leave things unexplained.

Since the film bears his name, it’s fitting that Dracula get the most attention, at least at the start. After being given little more than a glorified cameo in House of Frankenstein, Carradine — here passing himself off as Baron Latos — uses his expanded screen time to exude menace and sexual temptation, particularly when it comes to the doctor’s beautiful assistant (Martha O’Driscoll), who quickly falls under his spell. The same is not the case with the doctor’s less beautiful assistant (Jane Adams), a hunchback who hopes to benefit from his experiments with spore concentrate, which can apparently be used to soften and reshape bones. This comes in handy when the doctor determines that Talbot’s transformations are caused by pressure on his brain, which can be relieved by a simple skull operation, but Dracula requires a different kind of treatment and the doctor soon learns the folly of giving blood transfusions to a vampire. The film also features Lionel Atwill (in one of his final screen appearances) as the local police inspector — the kind of role he could probably play in his sleep by this time.

As with House of Frankstein, the directing chores on House of Dracula were handled by Erle C. Kenton, who made a few more films before jumping to television in the ’50s. And as for Universal’s monsters, this wasn’t quite the end of the road for them since the studio would bring all three back one last time for the 1948 horror comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In many ways the movies were becoming parodies of themselves anyway, so ending the cycle with an outright spoof was only logical.

Made in 1948 and directed by Charles Barton, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was the first in a series where the irascible Bud Abbott and his pudgy pal Lou Costello met up with various creatures from Universal’s stable of monsters. Of course, if the studio had known it was going to be such a huge success they probably wouldn’t have stacked the first one so full of monsters. In addition to the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster (again played by Glenn Strange), the film also features Bela Lugosi’s final appearance as Count Dracula, a role he hadn’t played since the original in 1931. I guess it’s a good thing the cape still fit.

Totally ignoring the fates that had befallen all three of them at the end of House of Dracula (pretty much par for the course for Universal at this point), this film casts Abbott and Costello as railroad baggage handlers who receive a frantic call from Chaney (taking his last turn as the Wolf Man), who phones from London to prevent them from delivering two crates containing the bodies of Dracula and the Monster to a wax museum where they’re to be put on display. They go ahead and deliver them anyway but lose the bodies (that is to say, the bodies get up and walk out on their own volition, which Costello witnesses but Abbott does not), which puts insurance investigator Jane Randolph, who pretends to have a thing for Costello, on the case. Meanwhile, Costello is being played up to by the beautiful Lenore Aubert, who secretly plans to transfer his brain into the body of the Monster at Lugosi’s request. I’ll bet he’s never felt so wanted in all his life.

The first time I saw Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein I wasn’t entirely sold on it despite its reputation as a classic. Maybe that’s because I had only seen the original Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man at that point, so I didn’t know how much their respective series had already fallen into self-parody by the time this came around. In fact, the argument could be made that this film takes the monsters more seriously than some of the films that preceded it. Not that we believe for one minute that the bumbling Costello is actually in danger of losing his brain, but we believe in the threat that the monsters pose to him (and, to a lesser extent, Abbott). Still, it’s a pity this took the place of a House of the Wolf Man, which surely must have been considered at least in passing. As it was, the Wolf Man would have to wait another six decades to find his home.

Made independently in 2009, House of the Wolf Man was written, produced and directed by Eben McGarr, who shot it in black and white and in the Academy ratio of 1.33:1 for verisimilitude’s sake. He even recruited Ron Chaney, the grandson of Lon Chaney Jr. (which makes him the great-grandson of Lon Chaney), to play the sinister Dr. Bela Reinhardt, who picks a rainy night to invite five strangers to his spooky estate to find out which one will inherit it. They include jock Dustin Fitzsimons and intellectual Sara Raftery (who are fraternal twins), geek Jeremie Loncka, sultry siren Cheryl Rodes, and great white hunter Jim Thalman. They are all greeted by Reinhardt’s creepy servant Barlow (John McGarr, who’s made up to look like Warren Publishing’s Cousin Eerie) and try their best to keep their wits about them — no small feat, all things considered.

Like the films that inspired it, House of the Wolf Man is on the short side, clocking it at 76 minutes, and the first hour or so is more or less the preamble to the monster melee that occurs once Reinhardt reveals his true nature to his guests. “My heir will be chosen by the process of elimination,” he tells them early on and he means that literally. Not even the eleventh-hour intervention of Frankenstein’s Monster (who’s being kept in the basement because of course he is) and Dracula can save them from the Wolf Man’s curse. I only wish the ending of the film didn’t feel so abrupt. A little denouement would have gone a long way.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the earliest known werewolf film, a silent short from 1913 called (creatively enough) The Werewolf, about a Navajo woman who uses her ability to transform into a wolf against the white settlers encroaching upon her people’s lands. Unfortunately, this 18-minute film is considered lost, and little is known about its successor, a French silent feature from 1923 called Le loup-garou. At least 2013 can definitively lay claim to being the 70th anniversary of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which was released on March 5, 1943, and plays to a certain degree like the world’s first example of fanfiction (albeit one perpetrated by Wolf Man screenwriter Curt Siodmak).

With its Frankenstein series winding down and the Wolf Man as its new breakout character, Universal decided to combine the two into a film that is more Wolf Man than Frankenstein’s Monster and give it to Roy William Neill (who had just taken over its Sherlock Holmes series) to direct. For starters, the story picks up four years after the events of The Wolf Man, with the cursed Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) being revived when his crypt is disturbed by grave robbers. After reverting back to human form far from home, he’s taken to a hospital where his head wound is treated by kindly doctor Patric Knowles (who had previously played Chaney’s romantic rival in The Wolf Man), who knows nothing of his history or his ability to change out of his hospital pajamas and into his Wolf Man get-up (and back again) when the moon is full.

While Knowles is investigating his puzzling new patient’s identity, Chaney escapes from the hospital and seeks out the old gypsy woman from the first movie (Maria Ouspenskaya) and together they search for Dr. Frankenstein, who is said to hold the secrets of life and death. When they reach the town where he lived, though, they are rebuffed by the townspeople and Chaney is chased by a mob after he transforms under the full moon. Eventually Chaney stumbles upon the monster (now played by Bela Lugosi, a full twelve years after he initially refused the role) frozen in a block of ice in the ruins under Frankenstein’s castle, which makes no sense in light of the ending of 1942’s The Ghost of Frankenstein (the previous film in that series), but I’m guessing Siodmak wasn’t too concerned about continuity. That also carries over to the casting of Ilona Massey as Elsa Frankenstein, who has a completely different accent than her predecessor did, and the location of the castle at the bottom of a ravine overlooked by a previously unseen dam. (No points for guessing how the castle ends up getting destroyed.)

Eventually Knowles tracks Chaney down and he, Massey and Ouspenskaya team up (with the apparent blessing of town mayor Lionel Atwill) to try to help him end his cursed existence and rid the world of the monster at the same time, but Knowles changes his mind at the last minute and recharges the creature instead, touching off the monster battle royale the audience has been waiting for since the start of the picture. Audiences must have liked what they saw, too, because they were immediately scheduled for a rematch the following year in House of Frankenstein, which introduces a brand new mad scientist played by Boris Karloff, who claims to be the brother of Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant and who is obsessed with the idea of transplanting the brain of a man into the body of a dog (and probably vice versa). Locked up for 15 years for his crimes against man and canine, Karloff escapes from prison thanks to a freak thunderstorm and, with the aid of soulful hunchback J. Carrol Naish, who wants Karloff to give him a new body, sets about getting revenge on those who put him away.

Soon after their escape they come by a traveling Chamber of Horrors that houses the skeletal remains of Dracula, who is embodied by John Carradine when the stake is removed from his chest, but he barely merits a walk-on. Karloff then moves on to the village of Frankenstein, where he hopes to find the doctor’s records and where Naish falls head over hump in love with gypsy girl Elena Verdugo, who finds it hard to see past his physical deformity. In the meantime, Karloff thaws out Talbot and the monster (Glenn Strange) when he finds them frozen in the glacial ice cavern beneath Castle Frankenstein’s ruins. (Doesn’t every castle have one?) When first seen Talbot is the Wolf Man, but upon thawing out there is a too-quick dissolve to his human form, whereupon he agrees to help Karloff in exchange for a brain transplant that will rid him of his curse. How this is actually supposed to work is never adequately explained, but it turns out Karloff has lots of brain transplants in mind once they reach their final destination of Visaria, where his laboratory is still standing.

Directed by Erle C. Kenton, who previously helmed The Ghost of Frankenstein, and based on a story by Curt Siodmak, House of Frankenstein may be a little overstocked in the monster department, especially as it represents the convergence of three disparate series, but it’s kind of disappointing that we never see all of them active at the same time. That said, I did like some of the details that went into the Wolf Man’s subplot, like the way he thoughtfully removes his shoes and socks before transforming. (No reason to ruin good footwear.) This is also the first film in history where a lycanthrope is felled by a silver bullet, so that’s one more trope for the pile. It may have taken a few entries, but Universal’s monster series eventually established all the rules that future werewolf films would abide by (or subvert, as the case may be).

Next Up: A visit to Dracula’s pad, plus a meeting of monsters and comedians.

For my final Full Moon Feature of the year, I went with what promised to be the werewolf movie event of 2012 — Universal’s Werewolf: The Beast Among Us. Supposedly an offshoot of The Wolfman (although there’s no real connection between them as far as I can tell), the film takes place in a world where the existence of werewolves and other creatures of the night is taken as a given, which saves a lot of time and unnecessary dickering around. It’s also a world with enough of a werewolf problem that it can support teams of professional werewolf hunters, with one particularly colorful crew headed up by top-billed Ed Quinn, whose backstory involves bearing witness to his mother and father getting batted around by an enormous beast when he was a wee lad, but not before having a wolf-headed family heirloom passed on to him.

Twenty-five years later, Quinn and company are summoned to a remote village where they encounter a foe of unusual intelligence and a whole array of potential suspects. They’re also dogged by an overeager doctor’s assistant (Guy Wilson), who has to offer his services three times before Quinn finally relents, over the objection of his preening second-in-command (Adam Croasdell). For his part, Wilson is a constant worry to his gypsy mother (Nia Peeples), sneaking off to meet up with his rich girlfriend (Rachel Katherine DiPillo) — whose trigger-happy father doesn’t exactly approve of him — whenever he isn’t needed by the doctor (Stephen Rea, appearing in his second werewolf movie in one year), who’s grown distressingly accustomed to putting down the survivors of the werewolf’s attacks. (Seems if this isn’t done soon enough, they turn into wurdaleks, although the film never actually bothers to explain what a wurdalek is. All we know is that you don’t want them hanging around.) Steven Bauer rounds out the cast as the boastful huntsman with an eye patch and the one story about how he got it that he trots out in every town they visit.

Given its direct-to-video budget, it’s a wonder Werewolf: The Beast Among Us is as watchable as it is, what with its Renaissance-Fair-crossed-with-the-Old-West costumes and Van Helsing-like weaponry. As for the plot, director Louis Morneau and his co-writers toe the line between painfully generic (pretty much any scene between Wilson and DiPillo is a waste of time) and bizarrely specific (e.g. Rea’s determination to send Wilson off to medical school). They even find a way to tie the whole thing to the winter solstice, which is when we get our most sustained look at the title creature, which goes back and forth between being an entirely digital creation and a stunt man in a suit. It fails to sustain a consistent look, though, which is the most basic thing you can ask for. If there’s a sequel — as the open ending suggests there could be — maybe they’ll manage to hammer that out.