Category: Film, Television & Music

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

A Miraculous Way To Make ‘Twilight’ Not Suck

Simple: remove all the superfluous vampire crap and have three minutes of werewolves soundtracked by Radiohead.

Put together by a good friend of mine, Jeremy Leaird-Koch, also known as fledglyng, he’s also produced some pretty great video work under his real name on Vimeo. He also introduced me to Jon Macy, author/artist of Fearful Hunter (kinda NSFW-ish), “a Queer graphic novel with Druids and werewolves”, which I’ll be featuring on the site just as soon as I get out from this mountain of other comics. (Seriously. Send help. Maybe a sherpa.)

To quote Jeremy’s description of the video:

I like werewolves, not vampires, so I made a video edit of the only parts of Twilight : New Moon worth watching.

To be fair, though, they aren’t real werewolves. But it’s a pretty sweet video nonetheless.

Apr. 27th 2011

WTF Moment of the Year (so far): Universal to Reboot “The Wolfman” Franchise… Again… Direct to DVD

When I first saw this in my Google Alerts feed by way of PerezHilton.com, I thought it was either a joke or a two-year-old article that had fallen through a time warp. The ever-reliable Bloody Disgusting has the exclusive, though, so I’m inclined to believe it: Universal is searching for writers to help reboot the “Wolfman” franchise just 13 months after the release of the previous reboot, and this time they’re skipping the theaters and going directly to DVD. “The only details I have,” writes DB’s MrDisgusting, “is that it’s supposed to start a fresh direct-to-disc franchise like what they’re doing with Death Race, although their direction is still unconfirmed.”

This sounds like a very recent development, possibly triggered by the 2010 film‘s recent Academy Award win for Best Makeup. The direct-to-DVD approach makes me doubt they’ll be willing to pay for the continued makeup services of Rick Baker or Dave Elsey, and let’s face it– other than Hugo Weaving’s performance, the makeup effects were the only reason to go see it in the first place. But wait! I can think of two reasons why this could be a Really Good Thing®:

  1. Direct-to-DVD releases don’t need to have Hollywood box office appeal, so they can take bigger risks. Big-budget films with wide theatrical releases need to clean up at the box office in order to pay for themselves, so they have to be more generically appealing. By releasing directly to private viewers, 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.
  2. A smaller budget means the film needs to earn Universal less money in order to be considered a “success”. A successful film tends to spawn sequels, no matter how niche the market is. If Universal plays this right (Universal executives: see point 1 and then trust your director, writer and other staff), the results could appeal to enough horror/werewolf fans that additional films pay for themselves. Thanks to the Internet, small but devoted audiences can turn a lovingly-produced oddity into a cult hit pretty easily.

This is all speculation stacked on top of a rumour, but in the face of vapid, expensively-polished duds like “Red Riding Hood”, a down-and-dirty hard-R-rated Wolfman reboot on DVD sounds pretty damn good.

Mar. 10th 2011

A Fair & Balanced “Red Riding Hood” Round-Up

It has been suggested that I am too quick to torch upcoming werewolf movies and television shows if they don’t fit my personal tastes. In response to this offensive and entirely true accusation, I offer this neutral, non-judgmental post.

Catherine Hardwicke’s teen-friendly re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood opens in theaters tomorrow, and people on the Internet are talking about it! If you would like to talk about it too, here are some things you could bring up:

  • SeenOn.com is a private sale site (registering an account is free) that deals in Hollywood exclusives. They’re selling Valerie’s red riding cape, pendants from the film, a signed script and other Red Riding Hood merchandise.
  • If you like posters of girls running through snowy forests, or posters in general, you can win a copy of the Red Riding Hood poster from The Trades just by giving them your contact information.
  • Amanda Seyfried wore nude heels from Lanvin’s spring/summer 2011 collection to the premiere. (???)
  • The colours in the film are vividly supersaturated because this one time, Catherine Hardwicke went to Burning Man.
  • Gary Oldman can be very polite when confronted by fluff interview questions from Moviefone.
  • Reviews so far have been very decisive: the film is a hollow, bloodless, joyless grab for teen money.
  • Hollywood executives will soon stop green-lighting trash like this, not because some guy was snarky on his blog, but because clueless fad-hopping, glossy over-production and deceptive marketing tactics provide rapidly diminishing returns.

Okay, so I couldn’t keep that whole “neutrality” thing going for the whole post. I tried, though!

Mar. 10th 2011

Rick Baker & Dave Elsey Win “Best Makeup” Oscar for “The Wolfman”

The Academy is pro-lycanthrope! Last night Rick Baker and Dave Elsey each won an Academy Award for Best Makeup in recognition of their fantastic work on The Wolfman. This is Baker’s second Oscar for werewolf work, the first being awarded for An American Werewolf in London on the eve of the category’s inception (insert Inception joke here).

I wasn’t able to find any video of the actual award for this (although I’ll update this post if one pops up), but apparently the Academy gives winners some extra time back-stage to continue their thank-yous.

Update: Six years later, the backstage video is long-gone, but here’s the award:

Congratulations to Mr. Baker and Mr. Elsey, and hey Rick? I really hope your Hugo Weaving wish comes true.

Feb. 28th 2011

Wicked Oliver Reed “Curse of the Werewolf” life-sized wall hanger from Black Heart

Black Heart Enterprises is a group of artists, sculptors and horror/sci-fi/fantasy fans who specialize in creating “accurately detailed resin kits, busts of horror, classic science fiction and fantasy characters”. They’ve produced a number of 1:1 wall-hangers inspired by the characters and creatures that haunt those genres, and one only has to look at their gallery to see they’re serious about bringing all the care, craftsmanship and detail of fine art to the task of modeling these monsters.

Black Heart’s George Stephenson got in touch with me recently about their 1:1 life-sized scale wall-hanger of Oliver Reed from The Curse of the Werewolf, sculpted by Joe Simon. I was immediately impressed by the balance of expression and detail– I don’t think I’ve seen Leon Corledo look more dangerous!

The kit is 1:1 scale and is just under 15″ from the top of the head to the fur just below his neck. There’s no assembly involved, as it’s molded and cast in one piece, and it comes with a 2-page, full-color profile and a short essay entitled A Century of Cinematic Lycanthropy.

George was kind enough to answer a couple of questions:

Why was this particular werewolf chosen (other than Oliver Reed being awesome)?

1) It was time to add a werewolf to Black Heart’s line and Lon Chaney has been done a hundred times, some done very well, and at least a couple in 1:1 scale.  COTW is one of my two favorites of lycanthropic cinema, the other being Werewolf of London.  I considered doing the Henry Hull werewolf but I am concerned about how well WOL will sell.  I love Jack Pierce’s WOL makeup design as much as Roy Ashton’s COTW design (maybe even a bit more) but I try to be conscious of marketability and COTW has broader appeal than WOL.  We also wanted to do a kit that would appeal to the Hammer Films fans. We WILL do WOL down the road; I have to have one on my wall.

2) COTW has been done a number of times as a resin kit, and done very well by some of the best sculptors in our niche of the hobby market, two of whom I know well and have worked with on past projects when I owned GEOmetric Design.  But it had not been done as a 1:1 scale sculpture that would be widely available as a resin kit.  I believed that Joe Simon, with whom I’ve worked since our GEOmetric days, would be challenged and motivated to outdo the other sculptors and I believed he could capture the intensity and fury in Oliver Reed’s expression like no one else has.

3) Yes, Oliver Reed was awesome in the film.  I saw the film on TV as a child in the late 60s and it scared the heck out of me; no other werewolf film had ever done that.  There was a depth to the story and the characters that made it more real for me, I guess.

What sort of material did Joe Simon use for reference when he was doing the sculpt?

I scoured the www for reference photos and found a number of them that gave us most of the angles that we needed for sculpting accuracy.  But there is one famous still from the jail cell scene that was the look I wanted for our kit.  That was Joe’s guide… and he nailed it. [He] has been sculpting for about 15 years and he feels this is his best work yet.  I agree.

The kit is regularly $175.00 but has currently marked down to $140.00. If I was at all competent in the art of model painting I would snatch one of these up right away (and probably a Predator too) – Black Heart tends to produce 100 of each kit before retiring it. Go check it out, and have a look at Black Heart’s other kits too.

Feb. 21st 2011

Joe Dante Brings Werewolf & Vampire Teen Romance “Monster Love” To Party, Also Brings PS2 & Vanilla Coke

Shock Till You Drop brings us the discouraging news that The Howling director Joe Dante is trapped in 2003: he’s starting preproduction for Monster Love, a horror-comedy film that chronicles a forbidden romance between “a werewolf and a vampire [who] fall in love, igniting a war between their respective communities. It’s ROMEO AND JULIET with fangs”. Experiencing déjà vu? Hang on, it’s about to get worse. Here’s a bit of the synopsis:

After PETE, a young dogwalker, gets dumped by his girlfriend, his slacker buddies convince him to run naked through the city park. As the moon rises, the boys laugh, howl, and transform… Later, a distraught young woman named MAGGIE is contemplating suicide when she’s surprised by an enormous wolf. She snarls, baring her vampire fangs. The wolf grins and barks: Let’s play!

This has got to be a mistake or a joke, right? Werewolf-vampire romance is not interesting anymore, if it ever was. Underworld made it (sort of) sexy, Twilight killed it and Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer defiled the corpse with Vampires Suck. I just can’t imagine how Monster Love is going to do anything new with this paper-thin concept.

Feb. 19th 2011

Gore is Boring, Yak Hair is Awesome! NYT Interviews “Wolfman” Makeup Artist Rick Baker

Oh boy, it’s Oscar time, and if you’re  a blogger for a major media outlet and you haven’t got something to blog about, you’re fired. The Carpetbagger‘s Melena Ryzik is no slouch– last week she posted an interview with Oscar nominee and Werewolf News perennial favourite Rick Baker. There are no earth-shattering revelations, but it’s a good read nevertheless, especially if you’re interested in the ways crepe, human and yak hair can be combined to wolf out one’s face and body, even the relatively hairless Benicio Del Toro.

“There was a lot of handling of hair, where we actually have a lot of loose hair that’s glued on the actor’s face. It’s almost a lost art in the makeup field, but it’s something that I perfected because of my love of Wolfman.”

I was also pleased to read about Baker’s disdain for Hollywood’s current love affair with buckets-of-blood horror filmmaking.

“I’m not a fan of slasher movies, of what a modern horror movie is,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of ‘let’s see how we can kill the people in the most graphic ways.’ Zombie gore doesn’t bother me, but when it’s just somebody killing another human being in a graphic way, I’m not a fan of that.” … The gory stuff is really easy to do, and I found that out as a kid… the gory stuff doesn’t impress me.”

Amen! Give us realistic monsters to be afraid of, not boring deranged humans. Read the full interview here.

Feb. 11th 2011

Werewolf-gangs-as-poetry novel “Sharp Teeth” to become a film directed by Danny Boyle?

According to the BBC’s Anglophenia blog, one of my favourite werewolf novels is coming to the big screen! Oscar-nominated writer Simon Beaufoy is currently in the process of writing a screenplay version of Toby Barlow’s debut novel Sharp Teeth, which might then be directed by Danny Boyle. “If I write it well enough,” says Beaufoy, “he’ll direct it.”

Boyle is an interesting choice of director for this story (which isn’t exactly as life-affirming as his previous films), but I think he can pull it off. Sharp Teeth‘s feral werewolf packs would do very well being channeled through the grubby, manic energy of Trainspotting, and Boyle sure knows how to establish and maintain a constant “oh no, what next” sort of tension, which the book contains in abundance. There’s a lot of crucial dialog shared non-verbally between werewolves, though, and I’m not sure how that will survive the transition to the screen. I hope we get a chance to find out!

If you haven’t read the book yet, you’re missing out– it’s a true original and one of the weirdest things (in a good way) I’ve ever read. Amazon’s got the hardcover for less than nine bucks, which is less than you’ll pay to see the film.

Hat tip: ArcLight

Feb. 7th 2011

Making a Monster Movie? You Need The United Monster Talent Agency

Even if you don’t recognize his name, you’ve probably seen Greg Nicotero‘s handiwork. He helped form KNB Efx Group in the 80’s and his creature & gore special effects have been seen in films like Cursed, Splice, Grindhouse, The Mist, Predators and most recently, AMC’s The Walking Dead. Werewolf News reader Viergacht sent me a link to an awesome little short film Nicotero directed last October: The United Monster Talent Agency.

“What if classic monster weren’t special effects but real, (sort-of) trained critters?” writes Viergacht. “A short by special fx artist Greg Nicotero… which includes an out-of-control Wolf Man tearing up the set and getting shot with a tranq!” Watch it below, and keep an eye out for cameos by Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Darabont.

That’s an industry I could work in! If you’re interested in reading about how Nicotero put this together, Shock Till You Drop interviewed him in October– it’s worth a read!

Feb. 4th 2011

Low-Budget Werewolf Western “Man Without a Saddle” Could Use Your Help

Actor / director / screenwriter Ron Ford has a ranch, some horses, horror-filmmaking experience and a hankering to combine the sweet chocolate of the Western film genre with the smooth peanutty goodness of werewolves. Chew on this:

MAN WITHOUT A SADDLE is based on Kipling’s classic story, Mark of the Beast, transferred from colonial India to the American west of 1870. Three ex-Army regulars, Strickland, Fleete and Barton, are hired to convince a Shoshone shaman to move on to the reservation. The shaman, Tanupah, guards a stone petroglyph, sacred to his people. Fleete, in a drunken fit, urinates on the petroglyph and dishonors its spirit. In retaliation, he is cursed by Tanupah, turning him into a raging creature, half man, half wolf.

This project has everything it needs to get off the ground except one crucial ingredient: $3,000 for authentic Western period costumes. To help raise that modest sum, Ford has put together a Kickstarter page with a thorough overview of the project, including a frankly endearing video appeal that contains 1) cowboy hats, 2) werewolf makeup effects by actor / makeup man Mitch Tiner and 3) nearly two minutes of blackness at the end that should probably be removed.

If you want to help out, you can pledge as little as a dollar to be listed in the film’s credits, or $20 to receive a DVD copy of the finished film. If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, just know that by “backing” the project, you commit to having your pledge amount charged to your credit card on April 18th 2011 only if the total pledges reach the $3,000 goal.

Crowdsourcing stuff like this is one of the many things that make the Internet awesome (maybe So Falls the Shadow should try this approach out), so if you have an extra buck, you could do worse things with it than pledge it to a Werewolf Cowboy Hat fund.

Werewolf Cowboy Hat-tip: ArcLight

Jan. 31st 2011