Category: Film, Television & Music

Believe it or not, there are werewolf movies other than “An American Werewolf in London”.

Trailer, DVD Cover & Release Date for Universal’s “Wolfman” Follow-Up

As previously mentioned on Werewolf News, Universal has decided to reboot/refresh/rehash the lycanthropic segment of their monster movie franchise with a brand new direct-to-disc werewolf movie.

Yesterday, Collider got first dibs on the PR package, which includes promotional stills, a trailer, Blu-ray features – and a release date. You’ll be able to buy Werewolf: The Beast Among Us on October 9th, 2012. Here’s the trailer and synopsis, to help with your purchase decision.

A monstrous creature terrorizes a 19th Century European village by moonlight and a young man struggles to protect his loved ones from an unspeakable scourge in Werewolf: The Beast Among Us, Universal Studios’ all-new addition to its time-honored legacy of classic monsters. During his studies with the local doctor (Stephen Rea), Daniel (Guy Wilson) witnesses the horrific consequences of werewolf attacks. Watching as the beast’s fearsome reputation draws bounty hunters, thrill seekers and charlatans to the tiny town, Daniel dreams of destroying the ruthless predator. So when a mysterious stranger (Ed Quinn) and his team of skilled werewolf hunters (Stephen Bauer, Adam Croasdell) arrive to pursue the monster, he offers to join them, despite his mother’s (Nia Peeples) protests. But it soon becomes clear that this creature is stronger, smarter and more dangerous than anything they have faced before. As casualties mount and villagers see their neighbors transformed into ravening monsters, the townsfolk take up arms against each other to find the true identity of the werewolf. Amid the hysteria, Daniel begins to suspect he’s closer to his target than he ever dreamed.

I’m trying to picture myself enjoying this, and in order to make it happen I have to set the film up as an exquisitely self-aware and dark, dark comedy. This doesn’t sound much like the film I was imaging when I was daydreaming about what Universal could do with a direct-to-home feature:

Universal can make this Wolfman re-imagining as dark, gory, twisted and otherwise stylistically radical as the material warrants without having to worry about what mainstream reviewers, audiences or Cate Blanchett think.

I will reserve judgement until I’ve seen it, though – I’ve put my foot in my mouth too many times to go off on a tear based on some marketdroid’s “fit the whole cast in” synopsis.

There’s one disc extra in particular that I’m interested in seeing, a la Underworld Awakening‘s Building a Better Lycan feature:

“Transformation: Man To Beast” – Revealing behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with director Louis Morneau, producer Mike Elliott, production designer David Hirschfield and makeup SFX designer Paul Hyatt show viewers how the monster in Werewolf: The Beast Among Us was brought to life using a mix of computer-generated graphics and practical makeup.

Here’s hoping they used more practical makeup than CG! For a full listing of disc features and extras, and to see a selection of werewolfless promotional stills, visit the Collider article. And keep your fingers crossed for something dark, gory and twisted.

Jul. 25th 2012

20-minute “Freeborn” short bolsters feature length appeal, confirms Tasha is a total bitch

Anthony Brownrigg’s Freeborn project has moved into phase 3 of its fundraising effort, and this round is supported by a short film that looks pretty slick. Tasha’s Decision provides 20 minutes of backstory for an antagonist Brownrigg describes as “quite the witch with a B.”

I liked Tasha’s Decision the movie, but I detested Tasha’s actual decision, and I found her throughly unlikeable besides. I guess that was the point, though! Check it out yourself, and if you’d like a chance to hate Tasha for 120 minutes instead of just 20, consider contributing to the Indiegogo campaign.

Jul. 24th 2012

GrimWolf: Pure American Werewolf Metal

Werewolf News reader Tah the Trickster wrote in to tell me about some werewolf-related music that will nicely counter-balance the last music post I did. I’m just going to quote Tah’s email, since it says 95% of what you need to know.

There is a small Californian metal band by the name of GrimWolf that I really think you’d be interested in. Their tagline is “Pure American Werewolf Metal” so their subject material is obviously relevant to your interests.

GrimWolf currently has only two releases – their debut EP “Pure American Werewolf Metal,” which is available for free download on signing up for their newsletter, and their debut full-length album “Lycanthrope.” I realize it might not be your preferred genre of music – it’s very loud and very heavy, which I understand not everyone likes – but I think it’s definitely worth it to check them out and give these guys a mention.

Hey, now. Just because I listen to Fiona Apple and drink tea doesn’t mean I need my music served lukewarm in a porcelain bowl! Last year I blew a $200 pair of Sennheisers listening to Pelican too loud. But I digress.

I don’t know much about metal, but I know what I like, and after listening to two songs, I can confirm that I like GrimWolf. Tasty riffs, just the right amount of face-shredding abrasiveness, and pretty much the only “guttural growl” vocals I’ve been able to get into. Plus, all of their songs really do seem to be about werewolves, just like it says on the tin. Below is the video for “Moonshine”, the first single from Lycanthrope. For more on the band, including upcoming gigs, check out their site GrimWolf.net.

Jul. 10th 2012

Full Moon Features: Adapting Guy Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris

Unlike Universal, which had its writers concoct original stories for its werewolf films of the ’30s and ’40s, Hammer Studios used a literary source — namely Guy Endore’s sensationalistic 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris — as the basis of its lone such effort, 1961’s The Curse of the Werewolf. Directed by Terence Fisher and scripted by producer Anthony Hinds (using the nom de plume John Elder), the film is a very loose adaptation of Endore’s book, as evidenced by the fact that the setting was moved from France to Spain in order to utilize a set that the studio had built for a film about the Spanish Inquisition that never got made due to censorship problems. Even so, within those limitations Fisher and Hinds managed to produce an engaging film that adhered to the spirit, if not always the letter, of Endore’s story.

They also gave Oliver Reed’s budding film career a boost by casting him as the title creature, the son of a mute servant girl (Yvonne Romain) who was raped by a mad beggar (Richard Wordsworth) who was imprisoned by an excessively cruel Marques (Anthony Dawson) and left to rot in his dungeon for several years. The whole set-up is a major change from the novel, but the boy’s dubious parentage — as well as the fact that he was born on Christmas Day, which is considered an ill omen — is not. That doesn’t come to pass, however, until after Romain has escaped from the Marques and been taken in by a nobleman (Clifford Evans) and nursed back to health by his servant (Hira Talfrey), who is the first to voice concern about her impending due date. She’s also the one who has to take care of the child after his mother dies in childbirth, which is only fair since his father died right after conceiving him.

The next part of the film pretty much comes straight out of Endore’s novel as the child, who has grown into a young boy (Justin Walters), begins changing into a wolf (which he believes is just bad dreams) after he gets his first taste of blood. Evans puts bars on his windows to prevent him from getting out at night and consults a priest whose knowledge of lycanthropy is pretty shaky, but the holy man’s diagnosis that what the boy needs is extra love to counteract his wolfish nature seems to do the trick until he grows up to be Reed and is ready to go out into the world. As befits a young man who needs to stay on the straight and narrow, he goes to work at a winery where he falls in love with the boss’s daughter (Catherine Feller), despite the fact that she’s already engaged to a priggish fop. Their relationship is further doomed when he abruptly resumes his beastly ways after being dragged by a co-worker to a house of ill repute for a night of debauchery. Sure enough, it isn’t long before he’s begging to be put out his misery, but first he has to have one last night on the town — literally.

Unsurprisingly, a great deal of the film goes by before we see Reed in his wolf form. (Then again, Reed himself doesn’t even show up until the film is half over, but he takes command of it once he does.) When we finally do get a look at it, though, it’s quite a stunner — unlike any other werewolf design I’ve ever seen. It’s a pity this film wasn’t a financial success for Hammer, but in a way I’m glad they didn’t drain the life out of the concept, as they did with their other, long-running monster series. This also left the door open for another British company — the short-lived Tyburn Film Productions — to take another stab at Endore’s novel 14 years later.

Not only does 1975’s Legend of the Werewolf have the feel of an old-school Hammer film (the period setting, decent production values on a limited budget, the emphasis on sex and blood), it was even made by a number of Hammer vets, from director Freddie Francis and screenwriter Anthony Hinds (again using his John Elder pseudonym) to star Peter Cushing and supporting player Michael Ripper (who also appeared in The Curse of the Werewolf). It’s no mere retread, though. Rather, Hinds used some of the story elements that hadn’t made it into his previous adaptation and even moved the setting back to Paris (which doesn’t prevent most of the cast from speaking in British accents, but there’s nothing unusual about that).

Cushing gets top billing, but he doesn’t appear until the story is well underway. Instead, the film opens with an orphaned baby being adopted by a pack of wolves and growing into a feral child who is taken in by professional swindler Hugh Griffith, who makes the wolf boy the star attraction in his decidedly low-rent traveling show. Eventually the boy grows up to be a strapping young lad (David Rintoul) who transforms into a hairy beast under the full moon one night and, after making his first kill, hightails it to the city whereupon he immediately lands a job as assistant to grubby, raspy-voiced zookeeper Ron Moody. He also promptly falls in love with prostitute Lynn Dalby, who tries to keep her profession a secret from him with predictable results. Meanwhile, forward-thinking police surgeon Cushing takes an interest when bodies start showing up at the morgue with their throats torn out and investigates the attacks on his own initiative, despite being warned off the case by inspector Stefan Gryff (one of the few actors who even attempts a French accent). As for Ripper, he’s one of Rintoul’s victims, who’s so unfortunate I don’t even think he gets to be discovered by the police.

Since Legend of the Werewolf predates The Howling and An American Werewolf in London by half a decade, its makeup and transformation effects aren’t groundbreaking in any way, but the werewolf does have a great look that holds up well even at the end of the film when the camera settles down and holds on him long enough for us to really study it. And speaking of the ending, this may very well be the first werewolf film on record where the fully transformed creature is still able to speak and be reasoned with. I know there are a number that have come out since where that is the case, but it’s nice to see a werewolf on film that isn’t entirely bestial, that hasn’t completely lost touch with its humanity.

Jul. 2nd 2012

Song for the day: Fiona Apple’s “Werewolf”

I’ve always liked Fiona Apple (thanks largely to my wife, who played Extraordinary Machine endlessly during our first summer together), but she releases new records so infrequently that her latest release caught me by surprise, particularly once I discovered it contains a song called “Werewolf”. It’s a rueful, bittersweet track about – what else? – confronting the realities of a failed relationship, and while it’s not really about a werewolf (unlike another favourite “Werewolf” song), I like it a lot.

From the Pitchfork review of the song:

“Werewolf” is a song about one of the superpowers you get as you grow older: it gets easier to see things from both sides. “I could liken you to a werewolf, the way you left me for dead,” Apple sings, and then the next line feels like something that nobody would have written as a teenager (especially not Fiona Apple), “But I admit that I provided a full moon.”

Not every post on Werewolf News needs to be about some gloriously gory comic or movie, right? Right?

Jun. 19th 2012

Don’t pedal so hard, Bill! Stephen King’s “IT” to become two-part Warner Bros. film

According to The Hollywood Reporter, we can expect not one but two films based on Stephen King’s epic doorstop of a book, IT. Warner Bros. has chosen Cary Fukunaga to direct, and he and screenwriter Chase Palmer are splitting the story into a two-part film. No release date or casting details… yet.

I like the two-part approach, since It really tells two tales that encompass the same characters and themes, but divide them with 27 years. In both parts of the story, a central cast of characters (the “Losers Club”) faces a nameless monster that incapacitates its victims by appearing as the victim’s worst fear. The novel alternates between the two time periods, but for the sake of keeping the storylines straight, I hope the first part of the film focuses on the 1950’s Losers Club and the second with their grown-up counterparts.

It is one of the first “grown-up” books I read. I couldn’t have been older than eight or nine, and I know I didn’t understand most of what was happening in the book, but reading about Bill Denbrough‘s encounter with “It’s” werewolf disguise is one of my most vivid childhood memories. I must have re-read those pages a dozen times, hoping each time that somehow the story would change and werewolf-It would be just a little faster, and snatch Stuttering Bill off his bike. And I liked Bill! I’m glad they kept the werewolf in the 1990 made-for-TV version, even if they did completely re-write the scene. I hope Fukunaga and Palmer keep the original scene in the new films.

The real question, though, is this: will they ask Tim Curry to make a cameo appearance? Curry’s turn as the monster’s “Pennywise the Dancing Clown” persona in the 1990 adaptation is the stuff of legends!

Jun. 9th 2012

Full Moon Features: It’s Monster Brawling Time!

One of the draws for me at March’s HorrorHound Weekend in Columbus, Ohio, was getting to see a midnight screening of Monster Brawl, which I’ve known about for a while now thanks to this very site, in advance of its June 12 video release. And midnight was the ideal slot for it because it has all the hallmarks of a ready-made cult movie. Not sure how much of an overlap there is between monster fans and professional wrestling aficionados, but writer/director Jesse Thomas Cook appears to fall into both camps and knows well enough not to take their intersection too seriously. With matches like Cyclops vs. Witch Bitch and Lady Vampire vs. Mummy (and those are just the middleweights!), what other choice does one have?

The main events are the winner-takes-all, loser-takes-a-dirt-nap heavyweight bouts, all of which are overseen by color commentators Dave Foley (doing a killer Howard Cosell and not even bothering to hide his heavy drinking) and Art Hindle (whose gruff demeanor is explained by the fact that he’s a Sasquatch), with Jimmy Hart (as himself) as the ringside announcer and Herb Dean (also a real person, so I’ve been led to understand) as the referee who’s eliminated in the very first match, thus allowing the subsequent combatants to fight as dirty as they want to (and most of them do). And wrestling aficionados will no doubt recognize Kevin Nash as the colonel in charge of the military’s zombie soldier program (which is, of course, based out of Pittsburgh). Personally, I was happier when it was revealed that the film’s Werewolf hails from Silver Springs, New Jersey. And Hindle’s aside about Frankenstein (“Technically, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster, if you want to be a dick about it.”) was also quite amusing.

Not that all of them need one, but each monster gets a backstory-laden introduction, some of which are presented as clips from other shows. For example, the Mummy’s escape from a museum is retold on a cable news report, and Louisiana-based Swamp Thing-like creature Swamp Gut’s background is explored in the form of a nature documentary on Grisly Planet. The one constant is Lance Henriksen’s voice-over narration, which extends to Mortal Kombat-like interjections such as “Magnificent!” and “Spectacular!” during the matches. (“Discombobulated!” crops up as well, but I think that may be unique to this film.) If the film as a whole has a flaw, it is that it gets a mite repetitive at times — in this regard, I fear it may ape professional wrestling broadcasts a bit too closely — and the final fight is drawn out to an absurd degree. These are minor quibbles, though, when you consider that anybody who chooses to watch a movie called Monster Brawl probably knows what they’re in for. I know I did.

Jun. 3rd 2012

Short film “Animal” is a tasty little werewolf snack & an example for would-be Kickstarters

Yesterday, @werewolfnews follower @jasonious alerted me to the existence of Animal, a 5-minute short by Cosmic Mutt Pictures. It’s a short, simple little snack for the werewolf-hungry. I liked the makeup, especially the menacing portrait at 3:22.

Okay, unsolicited opinion time. Are you thinking of raising money for a short film or a web series? Do you need five (or twenty-five) grand to pay for the actors, equipment and makeup? Let me make a suggestion: don’t even create an account on IndieGoGo or Kickstarter until you’ve got something like Animal to show as an example of what you intend to do with the money you raise.

I don’t know how much money Cosmic Mutt spent on the production of Animal – they’re a 2-person production company that makes “micro micro micro budget films (for now)!” – but I’ll bet it wasn’t much more than the cost of the MacBook I’m typing this on. Showing what you’re capable of with a small budget you raised yourself will go a long way to reassuring potential backers (and promotional venues like Werewolf News) that you’ll put your crowdsourced budget to good use.

May. 25th 2012

Werewolf Wednesday Digest – May 2012, Part 1

It’s been a few weeks since my last celebration of Werewolf Wednesday, but when I woke up in my Boston hotel room this morning, I had this inspirational image by Tandye in my inbox, so I knew the time was right. (more…)

May. 16th 2012

Rob Zombie ruins my day, officially nixes “Werewolf Women of the S.S.” feature-length project

I saw this on the Werewolves.com Twitter feed and it wrecked my morning. Rob Zombie just talked to Screen Crush about his current film project, The Lords of Salem, and what he won’t be working on next: a feature-length version of the Grindhouse faux-trailer Werewolf Women of the S.S., which he says was

…just what it was, it was a fake trailer for a Quentin Tarantino movie. That’s all it was ever suppose to be, it was never going to be a full movie.

I guess I’m not surprised, since he’s already downplayed the concept, but after years of hopeful rumour-mongering, it’s a shame to hear the official “no”. I’m in a conference hall in Boston right now, but as soon as I get back to my hotel room I’m going to listen to Werewolf, Baby! and have a little cry.

May. 15th 2012