Werewolf links, news, and reviews
Believe it or not, there are werewolf movies other than “An American Werewolf in London”.
I’ll bet you can think of nine movie werewolves lamer than Taylor Lautner’s CGI husky in New Moon. So can Movieline! I don’t agree with all of their calls (I still really like the Underworld Lycans), but from Michael Landon to Van Helsing, there are definitely some stinky screen werewolves out there. Anyone care to share their own worst werewolf (that wasn’t on the list)? Personally, I just can’t get behind the slimy pink were-boar of the original Ginger Snaps.
We need to coin a new term, werewolf fans… a word that we can use to describe something that is simultaneously terrible and great. Something like Kung Pow‘s “badong“. It would take such a world to describe Rambo V: The Savage Hunt, in which Sylvester Stallone’s army-of-one takes on the escaped product of a covert genetic engineering experiement run by the US government. This experiment is a “nearly indestructible creature of incredible cunning and savagery“– a creature that looks an awful lot like a werewolf, according to this hastily-Photoshopped-but-official one-sheet. Thanks to Viergacht for the info!
So… “good-bad”… goobad?
Werewolf News reader and blogger extraordinaire Mac loves werewolves so much that she’s got spreadsheets to prove it. As someone who once used a ClarisWorks database to catalog all of my werewolf memorabilia, I cannot fault her, especially not after witnessing the product of her lycanthropic neurosis: she has compiled a micro-review of every werewolf movie she’s ever seen. The current total is 65. Here are some choice samples:
10 Dark Wolf
I honestly don’t remember much. There was a werewolf, and some sex, and some major movie fail. 1 out of 5
36 Scream of the Wolf
It’s really sad when I don’t even remember what happened in the movie. Guess I’ll have to re-watch it. ? out of 5
46 The Werewolf Reborn!
Pretty much a kid flick. Probably didn’t need to be reborn. 3 out of 5
59 Werewolf vs. Vampire Woman
This movie is known by seven different names. Unfortunately changing the name doesn’t make it any better. 1 out of 5
Check out the rest here!
Werewolf News reader Leon Kruse sent me a link to this music video for “She’s a Genius” by Jet, from their album Shaka Rock.
“In the interview that Video Hits had with Jet,” writes Leon, “they said that the werewolf in the video is meant to be a cross between teenwolf and chewbacca, and the original video idea came from a 60s bike safety video were all the people were wearing animal masks.” I’ve seen that bike safety video (“One Got Fat“) and I’ve seen Star Wars, and I don’t recall Chewbacca being as big an instigator as this leonine werewolf girl. That poor guy’s ice cream! Thanks for the link, Leon.
Thanks to HorrorMovies.ca, the details of Watchmen co-writer David Hayter‘s werewolf picture Slaughter Road have been revealed.
The film is the story of a 17 year old teen who wakes up one day to find his entire family slaughtered and flees only to find animals and people turning up dead left and right around him.
Either this boy has been taking Lunesta or he’s a werewolf. Given that the alternate (or perhaps sub-) title for Slaughter Road is The Werewolf Chronicles, I’m going to guess the latter. According to HorrorMovies.ca, the film starts shooting in Toronto this month, and stars Thomas Dekker as the beleaguered boy.
While cartoony and childish on the surface, this short feature is a frightening venture into the subconscious of the animal that is man. And please, be honest; there are likely a few people here who have thought something along the lines of: “I was sitting in my huge leather armchair watching telly, and thinking how marvelous it would be to be a werewolf.” Savor and enjoy!
Reports abound that MTV has ordered a pilot episode of the Teen Wolf reboot / remake that was rumoured to be in development in June.
“It has a fresh take and is very different from the original,” MTV series development VP Liz Gatele told Hollywood Reporter. “It has more of an ‘American Werewolf in London’ feel to it. It’s a dramatic thriller with two best friends in the center who provide a great comedy element: They are two very relatable characters on the outer circles of popular cliques.”
The fresh, dramatic thriller-comedy script was written by Jeff Davis, the creator of Criminal Minds. Whether it will be awesome, terrible or an irresistible combination of the two remains to be seen, but I think we can all agree that there had better be a Rupert ‘Stiles’ Stilinski character. Thanks to ArcLight and Silverclaw for the links!
Hollywood.com has an interview with Rob Zombie in which he talks about wanting to shoot a low-budget, deliberately retro feature length version of Werewolf Women of the S.S. (one of the faux trailers that ran as part of Grindhouse). His comments seem half-serious, but here’s the interview– judge for yourself!
I missed this last week, with all the Wolfman trailer and Warcraft hoopla. ArcLight wrote in with the not-awesome news that the DVD release of Werewolf: The Series has been officially postponed and won’t be coming out in 2009. It seems that there are some problems licensing some of the music used in the show’s soundtrack, and the way the sound was mixed makes it impossible to replace / remove the music. Brian Ward, one of the DVD producers at Shout! Factory, posted an explanation in the Shout! Factory forum:
In order to extract the music, we would literally need to extract the scenes completely. And these are some fairly important scenes that, in some cases, run several minutes. So we’re still working on figuring it all out. It’s a great set and I hope to see it released shortly. But it doesn’t look like it’s going to be on the books for ’09… There are only a couple songs giving us trouble, but they’re EXPENSIVE songs and we’re just not sure we’d sell enough to meet the record labels’ prices and still make any money whatsoever. We’ve not stopped pursuing it. We’ve put together a great set with some cool extras and a BEAUTIFUL cover, in my opinion. I want people to own it. Hopefully, sometime soon, they will.
Thanks, record labels. You guys just keep on finding ways to endear yourselves to the public, don’t you?
In a recent interview with Fangoria, Hugo Weaving talks about his experiences playing Scotland Yard detective Aberline in the new Wolfman movie. Weaving has consistently been one of my favourite actors (come on, the guy has played a drag queen, a murderous computer program and an ageless elf king). In this exclusive interview he talks about bringing life to a character that wasn’t in the original 1940’s Wolfman, his enthusiasm for a well-written script, and what it was like to work with (and be a subject of) special effects artist Rick Baker. He also comments on the negative effect that press and distribution delays can have on the public’s enthusiasm for a film– something we’ve all seen with the repeated delays The Wolfman has been subject to. But with the recent trailer generating a lot of excitement, The Wolfman is starting to generate some positive buzz again– hopefully that will only increase as the February release date approaches. Thanks for the link, ArcLight!