Werewolf links, news, and reviews
Believe it or not, there are werewolf movies other than “An American Werewolf in London”.
Original artwork representing the awesomeness of the only film to challenge An American Werewolf in London as the best werewolf film of all time? Of course this needs to clothe your body.
Can you think of any reasons to not purchase, own and wear this new Dog Soldiers t-shirt from horror apparel champs Fright Rags? No? Neither can I. Get it now for $19.95 and do it soon, because Fright Rags shirts have a habit of selling out fast.
It’s been nearly two weeks since San Diego Comic Con and interesting little nuggets of info are still sifting into my inbox. Reader PedestrianWolf wrote to let me (and therefore all of you) know that the upcoming “Underworld” Blu-ray box set (did you know they were making one? Me neither!) will include an Animatrix-style bonus: animated shorts set in the Underworld universe. Underworld / Underworld: Evolution director Len Wiseman was quoted by Bleeding Cool as telling Comic Con panel attendees that the shorts will be “an evolution of these characters in timelines we haven’t seen.”
Which animation studios would you like to see take on the Underworld universe? My first vote is for Studio B Productions. C’mon, you know it would be awesome.
via Bleeding Cool
Here’s another crowd-sourced werewolf project I thought was worth sharing: an independently produced short film about werewolves called Lose Your Soul. I’ll let writer/director Ray Fawcett tell you a bit more about it.
This script has been a labor of love for a handful of us, it was written and inspired during a military deployment to Kuwait. We arrive home in August, and want to make this project impact those who have been seeking out a horror film with some depth. It’s a film with issues of separation, letting go and loss much like we have done in the last year of this deployment… Our project is small, but has a lot of heart. We really would like to see it get off the ground, and have its beating heart and passion presented to everyone’s computer screens and local film festivals.
To learn more about Lose Your Soul and help contribute to its production, visit its project page on IndieGoGo.
Bloody Disgusting has another one of those exclusives they’re so good at nabbing: Universal’s upcoming direct-to-DVD Wolfman followup has dropped the name Werewolf and is now untitled, and here’s the story screenwriter Michael Tabb is developing:
The new film will take place in a 1901 Romania with the lead character, “Daniel,” caring for his sick mother and attending medical school. Daniel is then recruited to join a group of nomad bounty-hunters tracking down “a disturbing presence” terrorizing the town. Daniel and “Charles” quickly bond and must work together to uncover who this new breed of werwolf is. From what I’m being told, this sequel is very “whodunit”.
This doesn’t sound very “compelling” to me, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and “see”. Dropping the generic Werewolf name is a good move, though.
According to its Facebook page and a post on Fangoria, British horror-comedy Strippers Vs. Werewolves has wrapped and will be released sometime before Spring 2012. The last time I posted about this film I was pretty mean, but I think I had just cause: there were no details on casting or story, and the poster/concept art was… not encouraging. But all of that has changed, and (as I’ve so often done lately) I am retracting some of my shitty comments.
A new poster has been released, which Fangoria describes as “Ali Bastian as stripper Danni, aiming a shotgun at Martin Kemp as werewolf Mickey”. It looks fun, and it’s certainly more evocative and stylistically interesting than previous posters.
On the casting side of this, I’ve spotted two names that I’m kind of excited about: Robert Englund and Alan Ford (bonus points if you can guess which werewolf movie Ford was in without looking at his IMDB page). Also appearing: Barbara Nedeljakova, Sarah Douglas, Adele Silva, Lucy Pinder, Ali Bastian, Steven Berkoff, Nick Nevern, Danica Thrall, Simon Phillips, Billy Murray and Joe Egan.
And what’s the film about, other than the obvious?
When werewolf chief Mickey is accidentally killed in a strip club the girls who work there have until the next full moon before his bloodthirsty wolfpack seek murderous retribution…
Okay, yeah, I’d watch that. Would you?
Yes you would.
Werewolf News reader Komodo recently brought this delightful project to my attention, saying it was interesting but maybe not worth its own post. I think it has just the right amount of esoteric 80’s monster movie kitsch for a Monday morning. I’ve added a few links to Komodo’s text to help those who are, like me, unfamiliar with the world of the daikaijū.
In the mid eighties, when Toho was gearing up to release its first Godzilla film after a decades-long hiatus, the Godzilla fandom received a massive boost in activity. Part of this was the release of fan films, most of which are sadly forgotten and unavailable. One of these films was a little movie called Legend of the Superbeasts: The Wolfman Versus Godzilla.
Considering this was a fan film made in the eighties, the suits are very high quality in my honest opinion. The Godzilla suit was based on the 1962 Kingugoji, infamous as being the version of Godzilla who fought King Kong. The werewolf suit is a bit cheaper looking but I can easily imagine it being something that Eiji Tsuburaya would create were he asked to create a werewolf suit.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate anything more about the film and it remains lost to history. It’s pretty old news among the Godzilla fandom, but I think it’s rather unknown among werewolf fans.
It’s not even 9:00 yet and my day is complete. Thank you, Komodo! If anyone out there has anything more on Legend of the Superbeasts: The Wolfman Versus Godzilla, do the right thing: share it with us!
Images from Toho Kingdom Forums.
Despite posting about it twice last year, I’d forgotten that the Howling franchise is about to get another entry (or is it a reboot? I can’t tell). Here’s the first trailer, brought to my attention by HorrorBid.
Questions: why does that guy look like Harry Potter? Why does this remind me so much of An American Werewolf in Paris? Why are people still writing lines like “I don’t bite… much.”? And when do we get to see more of those werewolves? I had an email conversation with someone involved in the production last year, and this person indicated that the blurry mobile phone photo that leaked didn’t do the werewolf design justice at all. This person also mentioned female werewolves, which I suppose isn’t much of a surprise after seeing this trailer.
If you’ve been watching MTV’s Teen Wolf (if you haven’t been, smarten up), you’ve caught a few glimpses of the Alpha werewolf responsible for Scott’s bite and subsequent transformations. Want a better look at him? Here you go.
Remember my “Okay I guess I’ll try it” post about Teen Wolf back in May? The one where Jeff answered a shitload of questions and showed me an image that I wasn’t allowed to share but that totally sold the show for me? Yeah, this was the image. Thanks for sharing, Jeff! I’m looking forward to seeing more of this guy – and having just caught the end of episode six, I don’t think I’m going to be disappointed!
A while back word was going around that Universal was looking to reboot their Wolfman franchise again after the disappointing performance of 2010’s remake. According to Moviehole’s exclusive (but presently un-cited) report, there’s a script in the works and it appears to be for an original film, rather than another remake.
Michael Tabb’s script is being rewritten and reworked to be an original film – almost a reboot of the classic Universal monster movie series. If anything, this new film – they’ve yet to decide on a title though I hear “Werewolf” is popular -will share a link to the original George Waggner film (from 1941) rather than Joe Johnston’s ill-fated 2009 remake. Maybe.
The Moviehole post goes on to mention that the studio is said to be talking to prospective directors, and that casting will be starting soon in advance of an autumn shooting schedule.
The Internet seems really excited about this information, but there’s not much new meat on this bone, other than the name of the screenwriter and the fact that Universal is actually thinking about doing that thing they said they were going to do. I’ve never seen anything written by Michael Tabb so I don’t have an opinion on his attachment to the project. It’s unclear to me whether Universal is doing a film “inspired” by the original 1941 Wolfman or if Tabb is writing an original film to take the whole franchise in a new direction, and until somebody asks him “hey, so what are you actually doing?” and he provides an answer, I don’t think there’s much reason to get giddy about this. Yet.
There comes a point a little more than halfway through the first episode of MTV’s Teen Wolf where I was certain the show (or at least my interest in it) was slipping into a death spiral. Charming everyhunk Scott and mysterious new girl Allison, both drenched in rain and hormones, exchange uncomfortable “I got a crush on you” bon mots over an injured dog that Scott’s rescued with his capable hands and nascent wolf powers. Scott manages to arrange a date with Allison, then goes home to lay in bed and gaze dreamily out the window at a nearly-full moon. The show had built up a lot of goodwill over the first 20 minutes, balancing wry humour, earnest performances and a few genuine scares, but for me, these two connected scenes threatened to undo it all with its textbook puppy-love schmaltz.
Then Scott rolls over and his clean white sheets become the leaf-strewn floor of a forest that may or may not be a dream, and I’m hooked for the rest of the episode. From that point on I couldn’t say I was watching it just so I could say I’d seen it – I was watching because I wanted to know what would happen next. I made a few guesses, most of which turned out to be correct, but that didn’t take away from my genuine enjoyment of the episode’s second half. There was a lot to like in Teen Wolf, and a lot of the things I was afraid of were either tempered by positive elements, or were entirely absent. Let me break it down for you, list-style.
What does this all mean? Well, I liked it. It’s fair to say that I liked it a lot. I didn’t see anything revolutionary, but it’s early times yet, and I know enough about some of the later episodes to be keenly interested in how the story’s going to unfold. I’ll definitely be watching the next few episodes, and if they provide me with more of the same, I’ll be well-satisfied.
So that’s what I thought. What’d you think?
