An adventure in South African horror conventions, industrial music and werewolf transformation videos

One of my favourite things about “online” is discovering new things through a series of unexpected causal connections. I recently went through one of these “one thing leads to the next” adventures. One tweet from a friend turned into multiple hours of enjoyment involving South Africa, werewolves, music and many things with ALL-CAPS names. Join me, won’t you?

HORRORFEST_V_poster_b My journey started when @Somnilux tweeted at me a promo trailer for South African HORRORFEST 2015. The trailer depicts a woman watching a mysterious VHS tape, sort of like “The Ring”, but with more immediate (and better) consequences: she turns into a werewolf. This gave me two cool werewolf-things to think about and research:

1. Check out South African HORRORFEST. I have never been (and probably won’t ever get a chance to go) to South Africa, but I know two people who live there, who might have attended the event during its 11-year run, and/or who might be going to (or submitting something) to the 2016 incarnation. I am convinced that every horror convention is a treasure trove of unique werewolf artifacts, so this bears further research.

2. Find out who did the werewolf transformation makeup work. Who’s responsible, and have they done more werewolf work? A little digging reveals that Clinton Smith & Cosmesis did the creature effects for Flamedrop Productions as part of the promo for HORRORFEST 2009. Their web site is a content-light placeholder at the moment, so not much else to find there.

Then South African pal Lew tweets that the woman in the video is the singer for TERMINATRYX, and that an expanded version of the promo was used as the music video for their song “Virus”. That puts another item on my list.

3. Watch TERMINATRYX’s “Virus” music video. TERMINATRYX is a “female-fronted Alternative band with Metal, Industrial and sometimes Gothic shades” – a descriptor that encompasses many of my musical tastes. The video for “Virus” does indeed expand on the HORRORFEST promo video, depicting the continuation of singer Sonja Ruppersberg’s transformation and the consequences it has on the people she meets. The werewolf design was great. Also, I really liked the song, and with all the running I’m doing lately I could use some new music in my library, so…

3b. Listen to more of TERMINATRYX’s music. Not yet in progress, but I’ll probably start with the self-titled 2011 album that “Virus” came from.

But wait, there’s more! The “Virus” video description text mentions another, longer, final version – a short film representing the conclusion of the project that started with the HORRORFEST promo, which means I need to

4. Watch MARKED, the 8-minute short film with “more special make-up FX”. I have not yet done this, but technology let me download the video for offline consumption while I’m on the train later today. I have high hopes, based on what I saw in the previous two versions.

Before I do anything else, though I have to

5. Finish this post so you too can check all this great stuff out. Done. And as I write this, guess who’s just tweeted another link at me. Is there such a thing as too much werewolf content?

Of course not.

Mar. 24th 2016

Full Moon Features: Werewolf Woman (1976)

Forty years ago this month, a film called La lupa mannara was released in Italy. When it made it to the English-speaking world, it went out under such titles as Werewolf Woman, The Legend of the Wolf Woman, and Naked Werewolf Woman, but whichever one distributors picked, it was bound to be somewhat misleading. True, the film does open with a naked woman (played by Annik Borel) performing a ritual dance and sprouting fur over every inch of her body (except for her face, which has a bit on the bridge of the nose but that’s it) and then tearing the throat out of a guy who looks kinda like Cameron Mitchell, but the film is not about her exploits. Rather, when the werewolf woman is captured by a mob of torch-wielding villagers and tied up, presumably so she can be burned alive, that’s the cue for her modern-day descendant, Daniela Neseri (also Borel), to wake up out of a nightmare. (This is also the point where booing writer/director Rino Di Silvestro would be entirely appropriate.)

Thanks to the undisguised exposition that follows, we find out all we need to know about the unfortunate Daniela. Seems she was raped at the tender age of 13 and has been repelled by men ever since. Furthermore, she lives in the country with her father, a count (Tino Carraro), and has a sister (Dagmar Lassander) who went to America for some reason or another, got married, and has returned to Italy with her husband, who’s supposed to be the spitting image of the Cameron Mitchell-looking guy from the prologue but now he’s got some Harvey Keitel going on. Under the influence of the full moon, Daniela lures her brother-in-law outside, quickly seduces him and then tears his throat out. Next time we see her, she’s been committed to a mental institution, where she’s given shock treatments and confined to her bed as a matter of course, but she escapes when she’s untied by a nympho (who is stabbed with a pair of scissors for her troubles) and hitches a ride with a doctor (who gets her face bashed into a steering wheel, but she survives). Meanwhile, there’s an ineffectual police inspector (Frederick Stafford) wandering about being ineffective and listening to coroners say things like “The lacerations and deep wounds around her throat are almost of an animalistic origin, but it’s uncertain.” Say, does that mean it might be a lycanthrope, doc?

Anyway, Daniela’s killing spree continues when she spies on a couple making love in a barn and then, after the man has gone, kills the woman who is apparently cheating on her husband. (So now she’s making moral judgments?) Then she hitches a ride with an old lecher who tries to charm his way into her pants and when that doesn’t work announces that he’s going to rape her. Frankly, I was not sad when she tore his throat out and then bashed his head in. Then she’s picked up by movie stuntman Luca Mondini (Howard Ross, whose “special participation” credit is an eyebrow-raiser), who announces that he doesn’t plan on forcing his way into her pants and they have a whirlwind romance complete with a montage. She even calls her father the count and announces she’s completely cured, but then three rapists show up at her door and, after they’ve had their way with her and killed Luca, she goes all I Spit on Your Grave on them. When the police finally catch up with her (the inspector has been nothing if not dogged in his pursuit), she’s been living in the woods fending for herself for about a month — but she’s still no werewolf woman. I tell you, I haven’t been so dismayed by a false werewolf movie since She-Wolf of London.

Mar. 22nd 2016

Monster Legacy takes on the creature effects in “The Howling”

If you want to immerse yourself in monster makeup and costumes but you can’t get a job in the creature effects industry, reading Monster Legacy might be the next best thing. Last year they provided wonderful photo-essays on the werewolf in The Cabin in the Woods and the Lycans of the Underworld series. Now they’ve posted an incredibly thorough exploration of the design and execution of the werewolves in The Howling.

Rob Bottin and his crew brought the werewolves of the Colony to life through an ambitious process of iteration and experimentation, but as the article explains, Bottin was unsure whether the work was any good or not even as the finished shots were being edited together. I was particularly interested to learn about Rick Baker’s role, which went from “designer” to “advisor” as he realized his work on The Howling might conflict with his commitment to An American Werewolf in London.

This passage stood out to me as an excellent summary of why I feel bored and a little cheated whenever I see actual wolves uses to portray werewolves in film and TV.

In adapting the story, [director Joe] Dante also rejected the Studio’s proposals “to use large wolves” to portray the antagonist creatures — an approach Dante “always found disappointing” in other films of the genre. “It’s very hard to even find actors who can look natural while filming a scene with an animal,” Dante explained, “and it takes tremendous time and patience waiting for the animal to do the right thing. And that’s just for normal rabid wolves footage — nothing supernatural at all. Real wolves aren’t scary; it brings things down to nature, really robs things of any fantasy value.” The director was, in fact, adamant in the intention to portray Werewolves as beastly humanoid creatures in his film — nightmare stalkers.

If it wasn’t 9 o’clock on a Monday morning, I would drink to that!

Read the full essay on Monster Legacy, and then check out the accompanying gallery of behind-the-scenes photos and production stills from The Howling. Thanks to Monster Legacy for their always-excellent work!

Mar. 21st 2016

Meet artist Pierre-Alexandre Comtois

For today’s #WerewolfWednesday post I’d like to direct your attention to Pierre-Alexandre Comtois, a Vancouver-based traditional and digital artist of 15+ years and designer of some Paul Kidby-level charismatic creatures. His work often delves into the fantasy/alien zones, and werewolves frequently occur.

Pierre-Alexandre Comtois WerewolfI first saw Alex’s art by creeping on him while we were sitting across from each other on a train last autumn. Over the course of 45 minutes I surreptitiously watched as a staff-wielding winged gargoyle/alien materialized in his sketchbook. We had a short conversation right before we went separate ways at our stop, and he gave me his details on a scrap of paper that’s been on my desk ever since. I’m happy to have an excuse to share his work today.

You can can find his galleries of character concepts, digital illustrations and storyboards on Behance, Instagram and his portfolio site. He also very recently (as in Monday) resurrected his Twitter account. If you like his work (or if you have work for him), let him know!

Mar. 16th 2016

Get this Snarlbucks Coffee mug

You need a new coffee mug.

Or tea mug. I don’t care how many you have already. Yes, I know all about the dusty ones at the back of your cupboard that you never get a chance to use because you rinse and refill the same one for three days straight. That’s gross. Put that crusty thing in the sink and get a fresh new one.

Oh, you “don’t drink caffeinated beverages”? Doesn’t matter. Somewhere in your house or office you’ve got at least one mug full of pencils, paintbrushes and highlighters, and I’m going to come in there in the night and knock it onto the floor like a giant cat, and it’s going to break. You’re going to walk in and see your scissors and nail files on the floor in a halo of shattered ceramic and you’re going to say “AQ was right to tell me I need a new coffee mug”.

Because you do. And you should make it this Snarlbucks Coffee mug by Cassandra Aponte, aka TeknicolorTiger, because the design is an excellent werewolf-themed improvement on the muddled character in the original, and Cassandra is a great artist who deserves the two bucks or whatever cut Redbubble gives her on this.

Important addendum: You can get this mug or anything else in her store for 20% off with the code GIMME20.

Mar. 15th 2016

Tom Hardy’s “Taboo” afflictions probably don’t include lycanthropy

I’ve heard some speculation that Tom Hardy might be portraying a werewolf (or similar creature derived from African mythology) in the upcoming FX miniseries Taboo, but I don’t think so. From Variety:

Set in 1814, “Taboo” follows James Keziah Delaney (Hardy), a man who has been to the ends of the earth and comes back irrevocably changed. Believed to be long dead, he returns home to London from Africa to inherit what is left of his father’s shipping empire and rebuild a life for himself. But his father’s legacy is a poisoned chalice, and with enemies lurking in every dark corner, James must navigate increasingly complex territories to avoid his own death sentence. A dark family mystery unfolds in a combustible tale of love and treachery.

There’s enough going on there that an explicitly supernatural angle would overload the plot. The flash of a bloody-mouthed someone (or something) in the trailer is more likely a reference to a crazy experience Delany had during his lost decade in Africa, or cut in from a scene depicting the “madness” plaguing his family. Although Hardy would make an excellent werewolf, don’t you think?

Taboo is an eight-episode miniseries co-produced by FX and BBC One. As of today it has no official release date.

Mar. 14th 2016

“No Dog” by Esben and the Witch

Here’s an exchange I had on Facebook last night with Dan Wallbank, friend and Werewolves Versus contributor. He had just posted this Esben and the Witch song.

AQ: Fucking hell, dude, Esben and the Witch, where did THEY come from

Dan: I was working with Quietus playing on Youtube and it just transitioned seamlessly to that song. I thought it was just Quietus with guest vocals and went to repeat the track and was like… wait. There are no Q’s in this description at all. At that point I had to stop working, crank the volume and just listen.

I encourage you to do the same. Great song, great lyrics, killer performance.

Esben and the Witch are a three piece rock band from the UK, currently residing in Germany and named after a Danish fairytale. “No Dog” was first released in 2014 on an untitled split EP with Thought Forms, then later that year on their album A New Nature, available on Bandcamp, Amazon and iTunes.

Mar. 4th 2016

19 Werewolf Reading Recommendations for World Book Day

photo by naixn

Today is World Book Day, and to celebrate, here’s a guest post from Pennington Beast, featuring her personal list (and accompanying commentary) of books essential to any Lycanthrope Library collection.

1. The Wolf’s Hour by Robert R. McCammon

A Russian-born werewolf spy working for the British Secret Service is recruited to foil a Nazi plan to unleash a secret weapon on invading American and British forces. Picture James Bond, only much more hirsute. The film rights to this 1989 novel were purchased by Universal Studios in 2014. Let’s keep our claws crossed!

2. High Moor (The High Moor series) by Graeme Reynolds

John Simpson and his childhood friends have an unfortunate run-in with a Moonstruck werewolf, one who has lost all control of their wolfen side and becomes a ravenous monster stuck between human and beast every full moon. What follows is a decades long struggle for John Simpson to control his own affliction while maneuvering pack politics and government agencies that want them all exterminated.

note from AQ: Tah the Trickster wrote a glowing review of High Moor for Werewolf News last year

3. Red Moon by Benjamin Percy

Werewolves are common in this universe and are a class subject to persecution. A group of lycanthropic terrorists plot a devastating attack on America in order to divide the population and create a new territory where werewolves can live free. With unfortunate results, of course.

4. Bad Wolf (The Bad Wolf Chronicles) by Tim McGregor

Portland, Oregon detective John Gallager and his partner Lara Mendes get a call to investigate a dismembered body found by the riverbank. The killer is a drifter who travels with a pack of feral dogs and declares that he, himself, is a werewolf. The weirdness only escalates from there…

5. The Frenzy Way (The Frenzy Cycle series) by Gregory Lamberson

A little similar to Bad Wolf in that it’s also a detective story, but this time the bodies start popping up around New York City. An elderly professor with a research history in human-animal transformation methods is found dismembered in his Greenwich Village apartment with a strange relic belonging to the Catholic Church in his possession. NYPD captain Anthony Mace is put to the investigation. Mace is unfortunately somewhat of a celebrity, haven taken out the notorious “Full Moon Killer” several years prior. Now he must speculate if this murder spree is a copycat, coincidence, or something more supernatural.

6. SAAMAANTHAA by D. T. Neal

Samantha Hain is a Chicagoan dilettante belonging to a group of painters, poets, and performance artists who call themselves the Horrorshow. When a one night stand with a beautiful stranger leaves her with a chunk of flesh missing from her shoulder, strange things start happening to Samantha’s body and mind. What follows is an orgy of hipsters becoming werewolves and eating other hipsters.

7. The Devourers by Indra Das

A young history professor in modern-day Kolkata, India is approached by a charming, yet strange, storyteller who declares himself to be a half-werewolf. Enraptured by his tale, he agrees to transcribe several ancient scrolls the man claims were passed down to him by his father, a ravenous werewolf from Scandinavia. And the other by his mother, a young woman from the Mughal empire who was raped by his father as his pack was passing through her village, fleeing persecution from the werewolf hunts in Europe. The story transitions back and forth from past to present in a visceral exploration of love, sexuality, violation, gender, friendship, humanity, and identity. Currently available in India, a North American release date is set for June 2016.

8. Autumn Moon by Slade Grayson

Tanneheuk, Montana is a small town kept safe from harm by a pack of werewolves who call themselves The Elders. Their only demand for their protection racket is to be able to hunt a human being once a year -one of the town’s teenagers in a Hunger Games-esque obstacle course. If the child manages to reach the river and cross it before the hunt is over, they are allowed to live. So far, none of them have made it. This grisly tradition has been the norm for years, until a new minister named Drake Burroughs is relocated to Tanneheuk and tries to rally the townspeople against the Elder’s diabolical regime.

And finally,

9. The Hyde Effect by Steve Vance

Savage animal attacks begin terrorizing a small Southern California town. A teenage girl named Meg Talley miraculously survives and claims that the killer is no natural beast, but a werewolf. Together with a team consisting of journalist Douglas Morgan, horror novelist Blake Corbett, and private detective Nick Grundel they hunt the suspect down. What follows is one of the most horrifying depiction in literature of the sheer force and power a werewolf is capable of. The novel has a slow momentum in the beginning that eventually explodes in an orgasmic cataclysm of visceral terror. No wonder so many (including myself) consider The Hyde Effect to be the quintessential werewolf horror novel. I have but one caveat, avoid the sequel. It’s absolute rubbish.

These are only a fraction of the amount of werewolf novels I’ve read over the past decade and a half. I tried to choose the ones that left the most memorable clawmarks on my psyche, and tried to pick a few that might not be as well-known as others in the genre.

Not enough for you? Here’s some bonus recommendation from our mutual friend Viergacht:

10. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

A vicious, gory, beautifully written deconstruction of classic fairy tales with a definite feminist slant. Basis for the movie “The Company of Wolves”.

11. Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson

An early example of urban fantasy and “scientific-ish” werewolves. A boozy reporter interested in an archeological discovery that proves the existence of supernatural creatures is seduced by a beautiful werewolf whose entraps him in a cult of monsters awaiting the rebirth of the Child of Night, the first pureblood to be born in centuries. Pulpy and stereotypical in some respects (it was written in 1940), it nonetheless has some amazing set pieces and a really cool backstory for its werewolves (who can also turn into other animals, like sabretoothed cats and pterodactyls!).

12. Wilding by Melanie Tem

A multigenerational family of female werewolves struggles to cope with the matriarch’s senile dementia, a mother’s inability to become either fully a wolf or a woman, and a rebellious teen who fails her transformation trial and runs away, pregnant and defiant, while another branch of the family plots to take them over.

13. The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore

Werewolf traditionalists might moan about the lack of “onscreen” lycanthropic action, but they’d be missing one of the cleverest, most offbeat werewolf stories ever, and puts it in perspective: the bloody actions of a single monster pale to insignificance compared to the atrocities humanity commits in wartimes. A bestseller during the Great Depression. Adapted into the movie “The Curse of the Werewolf” starring Oliver Reed.

14. The Jaguar Princess by Clare Bell

Ok, technically not a werewolf, but this novel about an artistic, headstrong young Olmec woman desperately trying to suppress her urge to transform into a jaguar and fit in with the oppressive Aztec society she lives in is rich in emotion and fascinating historical detail.

15. Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King

A collection of twelve short stories chronicles the depredations of a werewolf on a small Maine town, this book is mainly notable for the fantastic illustrations by Bernie Wrightson. (note: he spells it Bernie now but it was Berni when this was published)

16. Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson

Those who like all-wolf werewolves who retain their own personalities will like this one! It takes place in an alternate history where magic is real, and the United States are fighting a very different WW2. Anderson very cleverly combines magic with practicality – the main character uses a Polaroid “Were-flash” to shift back and forth (it’s designed to be used without thumbs) and because of the conservation of mass, he makes a big wolf but a were-tiger is a 600lb man!

17. The Adventures of a Two-Minute Werewolf by Gene DeWeese

An easygoing teen finds himself suddenly turning way hairier than puberty would account for, to the delight of his horror-film-loving best friend Cindy, who promptly starts researching lycanthropy and trying to figure out a way it could be “useful”. One of my favorite werewolf books when I was a kid, I reread it and still enjoyed it as an adult. (Don’t worry, he ends up being a werewolf for much longer than 2 minutes, and he discovers he can take either a cinematic Wolf Man form or a 4-legged that looks like a huge, bristly bulldog faced monster that startles him with his own reflection!).

18. How to Care for Your Monster by Norman Bridwell

A charming tongue-in-cheek kid’s book by the illustrator best known for Clifford the Big Red Dog.

19. The Werewolf’s Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten by Rich Duncan and Bob Powers

So, you were bitten by a large, mysterious canine while walking though the woods or a dark alley during the last full moon? You suddenly are a lot stronger, with keener senses, a short temper and an odd craving for steak? You need this exhaustively researched and complete self-help book.

Have a howling-good #WorldBookDay!

Mar. 3rd 2016

“Little Dead Rotting Hood” looks like a rejected Mystery Incorporated episode

I saw part of a commercial for Little Dead Rotting Hood in January and managed to forget about it until this morning, when I was updating the werewolf movie list. This is an Asylum release so don’t get your hopes up – I just watched the trailer and it was putrid.

  • A woman stumbles through the foggy moonlit woods, pursued by the stock “snarling” sound effects that came on a Sound Blaster demo CD and what IMDB reassures me are real wolves.
  • A townie (who seems to think they’re in a Scooby-Doo episode) says that someone got killed down by “the Old Wolf Lady’s place”.
  • A wise cop tells a roomful of her panicked colleagues that they “are dealing with a new breed of wolves”. The camera cuts away before anyone can say “jinkies”.
  • Eric Balfour looks incredulous, like he hit his head on the seafloor while surfing and he expects to wake up from this nightmare production at any moment.
  • A huge CG werewolf that looks like a custom Unreal Tournament 2004 model.

little-dead-rotting-hood-werewolf

The worst part was this voiceover:

“What” …big?

“big” okay TEETH come on hurry UP

“teeth” you’ve dragged this out over 10 seconds already if you don’t end it with anything other than ‘you have’ I’m going to cut my own head off

“you have” goodbye forever

goodbye

Why am I in this

Mar. 1st 2016

Instant Moonlight & Werewolf Biscuits at Hoxton Street Monster Supplies

If you’re a monster in need of a pick-me-up (or a human in need of a unique souvenir), check out Hoxton Street Monster Supplies in London. Like a cross between the SRA and a Diagon Alley transplant, they sell “goods for the Living, Dead and Undead” – real edibles and novel objects cunningly designed by We Made This Ltd to appear both terrifying and delightful.

They have several products designed for werewolves, the most useful of which is this jar of Moonlight, “For a quite immediate and singularly effective transformation from human to werewolf, for the modern lycanthrope who finds waiting an entire month for a full moon an utterly inconvenient bore.” Don’t let the fact that it’s a solar-charged battery and a blue-tinted LED lamp inside a frosted mason jar discourage you – under its glow, any kid (and any cool adult) will definitely feel the fur start to grow on their skin.

Werewolf BiscuitsAlso, coming mid-March, they’re introducing Werewolf Biscuits, guaranteed to help any lycanthrope “maintain a rich, glossy coat”. You may also be interested in Tinned Creeping Dread, which actually contains candy and a short story, or Fang Floss, endorsed by David Kessler and designed to remove “common forms of fang-matter”.

Due to a “rather inconvenient curse“, all Monster Supplies profits go to the Ministry of Stories, “a local writing and mentoring centre in east London, where anyone aged eight to 18 can come and discover their own gift for writing.” A wonderful cause worthy of support, and all the more reason to avail yourself of their products, whether you’re local or (like me) stuck gazing longingly at their online store.

Thanks to Todd and Crys for letting me know about Hoxton Street Monster Supplies.

Feb. 23rd 2016