Author: Lew Viergacht

SHIFT: The Werewolf Collaborative

SHIFT is a werewolf-themed zine put together by Sarah Mason, Sketchbook and FeatheryFlukes featuring 18 artists. I pledged on Kickstarter to get a physical copy as a collector’s item, but PDFs are still available. At A5 size, it’s small but packed with skilled imagery – a perfect haiku of lycanthropic goodness. 

Each artist gets a two-page spread, and the imagery ranges from cartoony and cute to vicious and gory to abstract and eerie. Particular favorites are WolfSkullJack’s wild-maned, fiercely snarling figure in stark red, grey and black, Mx. Morgan G. Roble’s frenzied pack with their tortured expressions and exposed rib cages, and Dominique Ramsey’s colorful, vividly stylized beast who has a complete nighttime woods incorporated into its fur. 

Honestly, there’s not a single dud in the bunch, and you’re certain to find something to your taste. My only critique is that all the werewolves adhere to the basic design of fully lupine head, legs, tail and fur, and human torso and arms. It would have been nice to see more variety, anything from feral monster quadrupeds to more humanoid, or more depictions of transformation, otherwise, it risks being indistinguishable from furry art. 

This was the first venture for the Werewolf Collaborative, and as it was a howling success, I’m looking forward to more volumes from them in the future.

Purchase the PDF on Gumroad.

FrightFest Guide to Werewolf Movies

Since 2000, FrightFest has become the UK’s largest and most respected horror movie festival, and are now venturing into publishing with their Dark Heart of Cinema series of movie guides. Werewolf Movies is the fourth (after Ghost, Monster, and Exploitation movies, and I for one am happy werewolves were featured before those limelight-hogging vampires or zombies), and proves to be as helpful as that one smart but weird friend of yours who’s seen every horror movie ever produced when it comes to sorting the mongrels from the Best in Show. And even if you are that weird friend, you’re liable to discover some rarities you’ve never heard of before.

After an introduction from Neil Marshall, director of the fan-favorite gorefest Dog Soldiers, author Gavin Baddeley gives us an intro to cinematic lycanthropy, and then a lengthy essay on the history of the werewolf. This is where most authors trip up, repeating error-ridden nth-hand versions of stories or blatantly making shit up, but this is practically worth the price of admission alone. Comprehensive and accurate, he explains how the concept of werewolves has been influenced by politics, religion, the natural world as it evolves over time. For a general public that is often familiar with only the most overused tropes (silver bullets and full moons are extremely recent additions to werewolf lore), this is an excellent introduction. This is followed by a chapter on non-lupine shapeshifters, and speculation on why movie werewolves are so often the “underdogs” compared to other monsters.

The special effects budget required to put even a minimal werewolf onscreen is a hurdle for entry-level filmmakers, and even big-budget productions can struggle to produce a convincing beast, so there are far fewer films featuring them than lesser monsters like vampires, zombies, ghosts or nominally human slashers. We’re lucky to get one or two new werewolf flicks a year; hoping that they’re worthy of intense analysis or anything more than popcorn fodder is almost too much to ask for. Nevertheless, over the years there’s been a couple of solid genre classics amid the pack, and even the most incompetent, incoherent or downright goofy werewolf flick can be enjoyable if you’re in the right frame of mind. A werewolf movie guide doesn’t suffer quite the same rapid obsolescence as another subject might, but they also require an author with insight, a clever turn of phrase and a vast tolerance for cheese to tackle the roughly 200 entries.

Baddeley isn’t just some rando with an opinion. A journalist and fiction author with decades of experience and an admirable infatuation with lupine cinema. His skill shows in how he doesn’t fall victim to the tired trope of snarking the many awful films he must have sat through, which can get juvenile and tiresome to read. Even without the use of a cutesy rating system like “three out of five full moons”, he gives a concise recap and fair evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses which runs from a paragraph to two pages, depending on the meatiness of the entry. Each review is illustrated with large stills, posters, and other art which considering the full-color printing on heavyweight, slick paper, gives the book as a whole a heft and expensive feel. 

As always, there are a few errors and quibbles – for example, Stan Winston’s work on The Monster Squad is incorrectly attributed to Rick Baker, the generally well-liked Bad Moon (the first werewolf film to use computer morphing effects in its transformation scene) is overlooked, and Baddeley uses “Oriental” rather than Asian, a term considered offensive when applied to people, although this may be a British quirk that sounds off to an American reader. 

You can purchase a hardcover or signed version directly from the publisher’s website, or a paperback from Amazon.

Creepshow “Bad Wolf Down” Review

The Creepshow reboot is all-horror streaming service Shudder’s newest offering, and they didn’t waste any time getting to the werewolves with episode 2’s first story, “Bad Wolf Down”.

Set in WW2 France, the tale follows four American soldiers on the run from Nazi troops. Taking refuge in an abandoned jail, they discover a pile of gnawed-on corpses and a strange, yellow-eyed woman locked in a cell. As the enemies close in, the trapped men make a desperate deal with the woman – she passes on her lycanthropic curse in exchange for a silver crucifix to end her own life. The three freshly inducted werewolves then proceed to tear through the unsuspecting Nazis like a chainsaw through cupcakes.

Nazis and werewolves are a theme that has come together surprisingly often, most likely because of Hitler’s wolf obsession, with many fictional tales using Mengele’s horrific tortures as a setting for mad science, something that is of questionable taste. Heroic werewolves are seen less often, with Robert McCammon’s novel The Wolf’s Hour and its shapeshifting super-spy being a notable example. And of course, our own AQ’s zine Werewolves Versus put out a special charity issue, Werewolves Versus Fascism.

Writer/director Rob Schrab (Scud: the Disposable Assassin, Monster House, The Sarah Silverman Program) is best known for his comedy, and “Bad Wolf Down” has its slobbery tongue very firmly in cheek. The cinematography has strong comic book sensibilities, switching from gritty browns to vivid red during the werewolfy bits in a distinct 80’s style. The script is fast paced and rather bare bones, and sprinkled with Easter Eggs for werewolf movie fans. Especially enjoyable is how each soldier transforms into a different type of wolf – classic Wolf Man, quadrupedal hellhound in the style of An American Werewolf in London, and the towering, long-eared biped that became the new gold standard in The Howling

One thing that might cause fans to grumble are the transformations, which are rendered as a series of still pictures. However, this fits with the general style of the show cutting away to comic panels. The drawings are well done, and considering we get two suits, a full and two partial make-ups, and plenty of practical gore effects (genre fav Jeffrey Combs as the Nazi commander gets a particularly gruesome demise), realistically the budget had to give somewhere.

Overall this is a fun stylistic throwback to the slightly cheesy anthology shows of the 80’s like Monsters, Tales From the Crypt and Tales From the Darkside.

“Joe Dante’s The Howling: Studies in the Horror Film” & “The Complete History of the Howling”, reviewed

Horror fans rightly consider The Howling one of the defining films of the werewolf genre. The practical transformation sequences put the most up to date CGI to shame – they’re visceral, organic and intense, and originated tropes that filmmakers still slavishly imitate. In fact, the design of the werewolves almost single-handedly redefined the look of the creature for the modern audience. Whereas the default werewolf used to be Jack Pierce’s Wolf Man, nowadays ask anyone what a werewolf looks like and you’ll get a description of Rob Bottin and his crew’s creation: a shaggy grey beast towering upright on doglike legs, with a muscular humanoid torso,  clawed hands, and a demonically snarling lupine head. But The Howling was more than just an FX spectacular, with solid performances, stylish direction, a distinct and unforgettable score, and quirky, memorable characters populating an unusually smart script. It also boasts the dubious honor of having spawned seven sequels that, while distinctly less competently made, often have their own offbeat charms.

Front and back cover art for “Joe Dante’s The Howling: Studies in the Horror Film”, via Facebook

“Joe Dante’s The Howling: Studies in the Horror Film” by Lee Gambin (Centipede Press) focuses entirely on the original movie. Each chapter takes a scene and recaps it, with relevant snippets of interviews with the cast and crew, and explores the deeper thematic elements. Compared the shallow hack ‘n slash plots of most lower tier werewolf movies, The Howling’s clever, complex script truly deserves this in-depth treatment. Some of the insider stories  – like the fate of the “rocket wolf” effects and the stop motion version of the fully transformed beasts – are known via DVD extras, but much of it is new and interesting even to hardcore fans.

More supplemental artwork by Richard Hescox

At a chunky 351 pages in a 6×9 format, it’s packed with tons of behind the scenes photographs and illustrations. The drawings by Richard Hescox that flash by almost too quick to see as Eddie Quist’s art in the film are a special treat, especially considering their powerful impact on the popular concept of werewolves. It’s also amusing to spot details such as the sketches of skulls in mid-shift labeled “Larry Talbot syndrome”. The only thing lacking is a table of contents, and perhaps an index to the interviews, which would make navigating the book a bit easier for those who haven’t memorized the plot.

Front and back cover art for “The Complete History of the Howling”

“The Complete History of the Howling” by Bryn Curt James Hammond (Miami Fox Publishing), by contrast, covers every single movie in the franchise. It runs 128 pages in 9×12 format, is also richly illustrated by stills and behind the scenes photos including full-page illustrations, and has text arranged in a two-column format that recalls magazines like Fangoria.

Currently film series are Serious Business, with studios competing to create merchandise-ready “universes” composed of interlocking high budget offerings, with varying degrees of success (compare the money-making juggernaut of the Marvel comics films to Universal’s stillborn “Dark Universe”). The Howling sequels were . . . not that. Right out of the gate, the second movie, Phillipe Mora’s “The Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf” aka “Stirba: Werewolf Bitch” utterly fails as a horror movie but succeeds as a bizarro comedy. The third movie, by the same director, was even stranger, featuring were-thylacines complete with a marsupial birth scene. It’s easy to sneer at Mora’s attempt, but “The Complete History” describes working conditions that would tax any director, such as shooting with Czech film crews that didn’t speak English, being assigned an Assistant Director who was a KGB spy, and having to make do with secondhand monkey suits to serve for werewolves! In fact, the stories behind the sequels are far more entertaining than the movies themselves.

The rest of the series are a mangy collection of mutts including a low-budget reboot shot in South Africa, a murder mystery in which the actual werewolf appeared for about 5 seconds on screen, a romance set in a freak show which introduced vampires into the mythology, a whole-movie clip show padded with endless country music and line dancing scenes, and the most recent, another reboot that disappointingly attempted to appeal to the Twilight crowd. Werewolf fans, well aware that Sturgeon’s Law applies heavily to our favorite genre, have the choice to either turn their noses up at them or turn off their critical facilities, pop some popcorn and enjoy them for what they are. Hammond gives all The Howling sequels the same fair, detailed, lavishly-illustrated coverage, reminding us that even the most hilariously inept flick had at least a few passionate artists behind it.

Both books are perfect complements to each other’s strengths and must-haves for the library of werewolf enthusiasts. Gambin’s is an informative, meticulous exploration of the crafting of an enduring classic. Hammond’s book is an entertaining, open-minded and fascinating perspective on the low-budget shenanigans behind the wonderful weirdness of the obscure sequels. Hopefully we’ll see similar books in the future showcasing An American Werewolf in London, Ginger Snaps, and other outstanding lycanthro-pics!