Werewolf News

This holiday season, Netflix subscribers received a lump of coal in their stocking in the form of Bright, a movie with more than a passing resemblance to 1988’s Alien Nation since it’s about a human cop reluctantly partnered up with an orc. Coming on the heels of 2015’s poorly received Victor Frankenstein, screenwriter Max Landis’s last high-concept genre effort, this doesn’t exactly bode well for his plans to retool the story of his forthcoming American Werewolf in London remake, but if one looks back about a decade in his CV, it’s possible to have a glimmer of hope for what might be.

It’s hard to imagine now, but long before he had any features to his name, Landis was just an up-and-comer whose sole writing credit was on the Masters of Horror episode Deer Woman, on which he collaborated with its director, who just so happened to be his father. When Showtime decided two Masters of Horror seasons were enough, creator Mick Garris sold NBC on a similar anthology called Fear Itself and brought the younger Landis on board to pen one of its episodes. The result was the scrappy werewolf tale Something with Bite, which never aired on the network because it pulled the plug on the ratings-challenged series after eight episodes in favor of airing the 2008 Summer Olympics. Talk about shortsighted.

Directed by Ernest R. Dickerson — another Masters of Horror veteran — Something with Bite stars Wendell Pierce as tubby, lethargic veterinarian Wilbur Orwell, who’s good with animals but whose home life isn’t all it could be. (His wife and son both feel neglected, and with good reason.) Then he gets bitten by an injured werewolf that’s brought to his clinic when it’s hit by a truck and, well, things start turning around for our man Wilbur. Not only does he develop a heightened sense of smell (along with the ability to transform into a large, hairy, ravenous beast at will), but he also becomes more assertive with his employees and attentive to his family. The only hitch is the series of apparent animal attacks that has been plaguing the city. The police detective on the case believes they’re the work of a man (“A disturbed man, but still a man.”) and somehow comes to suspect Wilbur, which puts him on the spot. After all, if he doesn’t remember everything he does when he’s a wolf, how does he know for sure that he didn’t do them?

Maybe I’m biased, but when I eventually caught up with Something with Bite on DVD, I found it to be one of Fear Itself‘s better episodes. Its take on werewolf lore is interesting (for instance, did you know there are vegan werewolves?) and Landis leavens the script with enough humor to keep it from getting too dark. I also like the design of the beast, which Dickerson is able to give a fair amount of screen time at the climax. Even in extreme closeup it manages to be convincing, which is quite an achievement given the budget constraints. Should Landis’s American Werewolf redo see the light of day, I hope to be able to say the same thing about the creature his special effects team conjures up.

In a just world, you would be reading my review of Another WolfCop right now, but as this world is not just, the closest the sequel to 2014’s premiere Canadian werewolf film is playing to me is a four-hour drive away. Plus, it’s only being screened at midnight, making it especially inconvenient for out-of-towners (and out-of-staters) such as myself. So, in its stead, my final Full Moon Feature of the year is dubious also-ran Werewolf: The Devil’s Hound, which went straight to video ten years ago this month.

Right off the bat, The Devil’s Hound puts the wrong furry foot forward by claiming that “The events that follow take place in the near future,” which doesn’t seem all that necessary since there’s nothing in it that’s even vaguely futuristic. (And considering it was released in 2007, the odds are good that its “near future” has already come to pass.) It also doesn’t waste any time in revealing its poorly designed title creature, which looks like a white, long-haired yeti. After mauling a couple of unnamed Germans, it gets tranqued and packed in a crate so it can be shipped to some guy named Kwan, but instead it gets delivered to a small special-effects company in Connecticut owned by portly Phil Madden (co-producer Phil Gauvin), who runs it with his son Kevin (Michael Dionne) and daughter-in-law Char (Tamara Malawitz). His wife, meanwhile, is local vet Elizabeth (Jennifer Marsella), but the cutaways to her office reveal she’s more than that.

Since Dionne is top-billed, naturally it falls to Kevin to be the one who gets scratched when the werewolf decides it’s spent enough time in the box, and before long he starts exhibiting all the signs of the newly bitten: increased sex drive, heightened senses, voracious appetite, fast healing, and yes, all of a sudden he doesn’t need his glasses anymore. He also starts running into pale-skinned, leather-clad goth chick Christine (Christy Cianci), whose identity isn’t much of a mystery, especially after she eviscerates a homeless guy right in front of him. (What is a mystery, though, is what becomes of her black leather ensemble when she changes into the Abominable Snowman, or why Kevin does little more than grow fangs, sprout sideburns, and develop slightly hairier arms when he wolfs out.)

Clearly lacking the wherewithal to make a straight-up horror film, writer/directors Gregory C. Parker and Christian Pindar stack the deck with a surplus of comic-relief characters, including Dionne’s alien-obsessed brother Michael (Adam Loewenbaum) and his vacuous girlfriend Krystal (Kirsten Babich), Phil’s ultra geeky assistant Steve (Michael Wrann), and the aforementioned Kwan (Lance Hallowell), who turns out to be quite the pratfall-prone buffoon when he finally shows up. Parker and Pindar also photographed and edited the film, which explains why it goes a little overboard with the creative camera angles and quick cutting. This is especially apparent in the climactic battle, for which Kwan dons a set of leather armor that doesn’t do much to protect him and looks damned silly to boot. Not that I expected any different at that point.