When & where to get a copy of “Howl”

Howl is a 2015 horror film from director Paul Hyett about a commuter train out of London that has no problems, does not break down in the middle of a werewolf-infested forest, and which gets everyone to their destination safely and on time. The preceding synopsis was brought to you by Britain’s National Rail. “National Rail: not getting our passengers murdered by the supernatural since 2009”.

National Rail’s payment for that sponsored synopsis never arrived, so allow me to amend it: the train does break down in Nighttime Werewolf Forest, and many of its passengers get severely eaten. No post on this site has received more attention in 2015 than the one showing Howl‘s trailer, and like all of those visitors, I want to know when and how I can watch the carnage.

If you live in North America like me, you’ll have to wait until January 2016, when distributor Alchemy releases it. British audiences are luckier: Werewolf News reader dhardynelson emailed me this morning to remind me that Howl will be available to own on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on October 26th.

I’m on a train myself as I write this, and we’re passing through a forest. If this is the last Werewolf News post, rest assured that I survived the attack and definitely didn’t get mulched.

Oct. 13th 2015

Cinemax orders pilot script for George R.R. Martin’s “The Skin Trade”

A tip from @Howlitzer and a sudden influx of visitors to my 2013 info-dump post have alerted me to what the rest of the Internet already seems to know: George R.R. Martin’s werewolf novella The Skin Trade might become a TV show. The news was posted by Martin himself on his site yesterday afternoon.

I am very excited to announce the Cinemax (HBO’s sister company) has optioned the television rights to “The Skin Trade,” the offbeat “werewolf noir” novella I penned back in the late 80s. The deal is closed, and Cinemax has ordered the pilot script. This being Hollywood, of course, you never know where things will end… but if they like the script, we’ll shoot a pilot, and if they like that, hey, who knows, maybe we’ll get a series on the air.

The pilot script is being written by Kalinda Vazquez, a writer and producer whose previous work includes Prison Break, Nikita and Once Upon A Time. Martin seems very pleased to have her on board:

She loves the story and the world… and her pitch to Cinemax was one of the most polished and professional I’ve ever heard. I love her enthusiasm, and look forward to working with her.

This is great news, and I hope the show survives the insanity of the pre-production gauntlet. If you haven’t read the novella, check out this post for more detail on the story, and where to get a copy.

Oct. 11th 2015

For your viewing pleasure (or terror)

The Current & upcoming werewolf movie home releases post has just been updated to include everything I can think of from 2015, plus the first 2016 entry, Uncaged. It’s a popular enough post that it’s now a permanent fixture in the site sidebar! From now on I’ll be updating it forwards and backwards in time, so expect to see films from 2014 and 2013 appearing at the bottom of the list. If I’m missing anything that’s available on home media, let me know in the comments.

Oct. 7th 2015

Explore scuzzy ennui with “Megg, Mogg, and Owl” (plus Werewolf Jones)

Today I learned about a new-to-me comic to binge on. Megg, Mogg, and Owl is a (extremely NSFW) tragi-comic gross-out experience by Australian cartoonist Simon Hanselmann, who has has been publishing it on Vice since 2012.

My introduction to Hanselmann’s work came in the form of this recent interview with The Fader, which describes the comic’s cast as “a stoner witch named Megg, her gross feline partner Mogg, their fucked up party pal Werewolf Jones, and Owl, the pushover they freeload off.”

The presence of Werewolf Jones is what made the Fader interview appear in my news feed, but after reading only a few cartoons, Megg, Mogg, and Owl has already become a work in which the werewolf character is incidental to my enjoyment. As the Fader article observes, there’s something deeply cathartic about its miseries and minor triumphs.

Hanselmann’s comics address the dingiest crevices of the human experience—suburban ennui, body freakouts, and acid trips—but none of his characters are human, which just makes them that more relatable. And for all its absurdist, stoner tendencies, his work aims a magnifying glass at the anxieties, delusions, and often crippling self-doubt we all feel but rarely talk about.

There are nearly 40 comics on Vice and more odds and ends on Hanselmann’s site. I plan to inhale it all much like I inhaled Achewood in 2005.

Oct. 7th 2015

Test your classic werewolf film knowledge with TFH’s Famous Monster quizes

You think you know werewolf movies? Prove it (and don’t use IMDB!) with this Trailers From Hell werewolf quiz, which came to my attention via Craig J. Clark (who got 10/10, because of course he did). These questions will seriously test your mastery of lycanthropic film lore! If you waltz in there all smug because you watched Werewolves on Wheels once, be prepared to receive the same ignominious score I did. I can only hope to redeem myself on Thursday, when TFH posts “Part Two of our Werewolves quiz” – hopefully with an 80’s theme.

Update 2015-10-08: Part Two is up now, and my 10/10 score on today’s quiz brings my overall average to a solid B–. I’ll take it!

Oct. 6th 2015

Todd McCullough’s “Who Needs The Moon?”

I’d like to thank Todd McCullough for sponsoring Werewolf News for the entire month of October with his incredible book Who Needs The Moon?, a devastating horror graphic novel about werewolves and vampires, obsession and revenge, and what it takes to really be a monster.

I’ve been raving about WNTM since I read the first two issues back in 2013.

The atmosphere in this book is dense and cold, but it’s alive. The main character, Ethan, is endearing, haunted and terrifying all at the same time. He’s likeable, but it’s also clear that he’s capable of monstrous things. Kingford, the small town setting, feels like a brooding Everytown, and also like a half-dead incarnation of places I have called home. This mournful malevolence is achieved through a combination of effective writing and phenomenal colours on the page.

By the third issue I was calling it the best werewolf comic I’d ever read.

[WNTM] is the work of a truly gifted storyteller and artist, made even more singular by the fact that it’s self-produced and self-published. Honestly, I don’t know what else I can say right now, except please go buy it for whatever price you deem fair, and read it.

Through the ensuing tragedy, carnage and betrayals, Who Needs The Moon? remains the best werewolf graphic novel I’ve come across. The artwork is both painterly and animated, its themes are uncomfortable and sometimes terrifying but never without human connection, and the storytelling is clever enough to warm your heart on one page before tearing it out on the next. If Kingford really existed, it’d be a town known internationally (as readers will come to understand), and it’d be a place I would avoid as adamantly as Silent Hill.

Who Needs The Moon? is available as a name-your-price download on Gumroad. If you’re over 17 and you want to start the scariest month of the year with a truly excellent horror comic experience, I suggest you download it immediately. I’d like to thank Todd again for sponsoring Werewolf News for the month of October!

wntm-transform-large

Oct. 6th 2015

It’s October, so get your spooky profile picture commissions!

It’s my favourite Twitter tradition! As soon as September ends, you have to perform two rituals:

  1. Change your Twitter username to a spooky derivative – equal parts scary and corny (eg. if you’re Marco Arment, you could be Marc O’Lantern).
  2. Get a profile picture to match. It has to be a picture of you, but Halloween-ified – you can’t just put up a stock image and call it good (unless you’re rocking a gimmick, in which case, you’re excused).

Finding an artist who’ll do a good monster portrait of you cheap and quick can be tricky, but three of my favourite artists are starting the month of Halloween October with special limited-time deals to help you out.

If you get a profile pic drawn by one of these people, mention @WerewolfNews on Twitter because I wanna see!

The flattering portrait of me at the top of this post is by Lew, who will get added to this list instantly if and when they start accepting this kind of commission.

Oct. 2nd 2015

Women Write About Comics: Ulula The Werewolf Woman

Doris V Sutherland‘s inaugural article for Women Write About Comics is about Ulula the Werewolf Woman, an example of Italy’s sexy, violent and “gleefully pulpsh” fumetti comics. As you can guess, an illustrated assessment of a pulpy werewolf sex comic isn’t safe for work – there are some images of sex, violence, and sexual violence, so click with care, and make sure your screen isn’t mirrored to the Apple TV in the conference room.

Despite having spotted the first issue’s cover floating around Tumblr, I was unfamiliar with Ulula until I read Sutherland’s article. Now, having read her analysis, I’m not especially motivated to seek out any more of the series’s 36 issues than I’ve already seen. I can’t read Italian and I don’t have as deep an appreciation for pulp horror comics as my pal Joey, who was kind enough to share his knowledge on this very site three years ago.

However, what I did enjoy was Sutherland’s analysis, particularly on the subjects of femininity, beauty and the mutation of the werewolf’s portrayal in media over the years.

Today, we do not tend to associate werewolves with femininity, let alone physically attractive femininity. Cinematic werewolves have been portrayed as grotesque creatures from the genre’s beginning in The Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941); this reached a height in the 1980s, when films such as An American Werewolf in London emphasised the visceral body-horror implications of the transformation from human to wolf. More recently, the likes of True Blood and Twilight have cast werewolves as earthy, conventionally masculine counterparts to refined and effete vampires.

But things were once very different. In the literature of nineteenth-century Britain, the favoured variety of werewolf was a beautiful—even ethereal—woman who acted as a temptress. This character type owes something to the widespread folktale motif of the animal bride, variations on which include swan maidens, frog princesses, and —yes— wolf women.

lalupaSign me up for more of this! I’m a big fan of the modern Hollywood-informed portrayal of werewolves as slavering, bestial monsters, but I’m always ready to wash off the fake blood and learn more about the werewolf’s historical and cultural relevance in decades past – especially when the analysis addresses aesthetics, the subversion of conventional gender roles, or the fickle and contradictory tastes of the modern audience.

Sutherland concludes her piece by asking us to consider what Ulula The Werewolf Woman contributes to the world of fumetti (and, I would say, to literature in general).

…Is Ulula a contemptuous piece of exploitation, a harmless bit of derivative nonsense, or an enjoyably brash pulp adventure? Could we even make a case for it as being—at least in some respects—a progressive work, thanks to its gay portrayal and subversion of the male gaze?

My answer: “all of the above, and thank God for that!”

Read the entire piece at Women Write About Comics. Thanks to Nemo for the link!

Oct. 1st 2015

Magnetic Press releases art book of “Little Werewolf” graphic novel adaptation

Via Flayrah comes news of a graphic novel adaptation of German author Cornelia Funke’s young adult “Little Werewolf” books. I’m not a parent or a young adult, but I can appreciate all-ages material, especially when the art looks this fun.

I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics of the source material. At first I thought this was based on Dutch author Paul Van Loon’s “Alfie the Little Werewolf” books, previously adapted into a film, but nope, Funke has her own, more action-adventure-y take on “young kid gets turned into a werewolf”. The publisher, Magnetic Press, refers to a “series”, but I can only find one book, titled “Young Werewolf”. Funke seems like a prolific author, though, so there could be more coming.

The adaptation itself is still in production, but Magnetic Press has released a 48-page art book called “BITTEN: The Full Moon Book” to showcase the process. I’m a sucker for behind-the-scenes stuff, so even as my introduction to the franchise, this is extremely cool to me.

Based on International Best-selling YA author CORNELIA (The Inkheart Trilogy) FUNKE‘s “Little Werewolf”, this production artbook by artist extraordinaire FRANCISCO HERRERA (Megamind, The Prodigies) and animation director RAUL GARCIA (Aladdin, The Lion King) opens the door to a hidden side of Hollywood, where werewolves are real and hiding in plain site!

This limited edition artbook is filled with character designs and concept art being poured into the upcoming graphic novel series by Herrera and Garcia in 2016, including a number of onionskin sheets tipped in for special effect!

BITTEN: The Full Moon Book is limited to 1,313 copies (cute). It’s available for pre-order on Amazon, and it’s shipping right now from the Magnetic Press store.

bitten-art-sketch bitten-art-page

Sep. 30th 2015

Full Moon Features: Blood Moon

With the super blood moon upon us — for the last time until 2033 — it’s fortuitous that there’s a new werewolf movie out called Blood Moon. What’s unfortunate is that it’s not a very good one. Set in Colorado in the year 1887, but filmed in the South of England for reasons known only to its financiers, Blood Moon is about a Native American Skinwalker — a warrior who’s able to take the form of a bipedal wolf creature and is at his strongest during the blood moon according to the film’s resident half-breed font of Navajo legends and dream visions — who has chosen to bedevil the abandoned mining town of Pine Flats and all who pass through it.

Taking its cues from classic Hollywood westerns like John Ford’s Stagecoach as much as modern revisionist ones like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, Blood Moon is populated by all the expected character types. There’s Calhoun (Shaun Dooley), the mysterious gunslinger about whose past there is much speculation, who stops a stagecoach on the road to Pine Flats and talks his way onto it. His fellow passengers are deputy marshal Jake Norman (George Blagden), his blushing bride Sarah (Amber Jean Rowan), saucy saloon owner Marie (Anna Skellern), baby-faced London Times reporter Henry Lester (George Webster), and requisite priest Father Dominic (Kerry Shale), who’s the first to get plugged when the travelers are ambushed by outlaw half-brothers Hank and Jeb Norton (Corey Johnson and Raffaello Degruttola), who are on the run after a bank robbery gone bad. In addition to the repeated references to their deplorable personal hygiene, both are repugnant in their own unique ways. While Jeb has an eye for the ladies and makes plain that he plans to rape Sarah before they move on, Hank can’t go five minutes without spitting and sounds so much like Yosemite Sam that it: a) must have been a deliberate choice, and b) is incredibly distracting.

Speaking of distractions, director Jeremy Wooding and screenwriter Alan Wightman include numerous cutaways to Jake’s cousin, Marshal Wade (Jack Fox), who hires the aforementioned half-breed Black Deer (Eleanor Matsuura) to track down the Nortons, hand-waving her concerns about going out during the blood moon. Once it rises, that should mean the end of the tedium (“Jesus Christ, Jeb. Pull the trigger,” Hank says, speaking for the audience. “Shoot somebody.”), but even when one of the Nortons is put out of his misery and one of the passengers is attacked off-screen by the Skinwalker, the others seem unnaturally unperturbed when it drags the victim’s legs away, leaving the head and torso on the front porch of the inn where they’re holed up. Meanwhile, Wooding reveals the creature incrementally, progressing from an over-the-hairy-shoulder shot to the hairy arm that breaks through a window and grasps at the unwary soul who had their back to it. Then there are the closeups of its hairy back as it’s repeatedly shot so Wooding can show that the bullet wounds heal instantly thanks to the magic of CGI. What’s surprising about this is he was actually given a decent-looking practical werewolf costume to work with, so waiting until the last fifteen minutes to show it off just seems like a waste.

Also puzzling are the film’s attempts to prop up Calhoun like he’s some sort of icon who should be mentioned in the same breath as Eastwood’s Man with No Name. Based on his refusal to ever say where he’s from, despite being asked repeatedly, perhaps he should be known as the Man with No Birth Certificate. Also, his reputation as a crack shot may be somewhat overstated since the Skinwalker has to wait patiently up on the roof for Calhoun to fire a shotgun shell filled with silver jewelry into its heart. Then again, it was probably still dazed after being run over by that stagecoach. Blood Moon may not be a classic, but that’s still a moment for the record books.

Sep. 27th 2015