And on an evening where the streets are crawling with werewolves and ladies in vinyl “sexy fill-in-the-blank” Leg Avenue costumes! This looks really silly but also delightfully self-aware. Plus, dang, that Robert Englund!
From the “Community” Halloween Episode – Annie’s Discompassionately Macabre Scary Story
From last night’s Community episode, “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps”.
“Teach me to read?” “Awww!”
Also, in case NBC kills the video, here are some animated GIFs of the scene you came to this post to see (thanks to drain-the-blood for posting and @Salome for pointing these out).
David Lapham’s Upcoming Comic “Ferals” Promises Fur, Claws & a Killer Story
The magic of Google Alerts has brought to my attention an upcoming comic series written by David Lapham (Stray Bullets, Crossed: Family Values) and illustrated by Gabriel Andrade Jr. (Lady Death). If this interview at Bleeding Cool (and the issue 1 “gore” cover) is any indication, “Ferals” is going to be a delightfully fucked-up gore-fest – and with Eisner-winner Lapham at the wheel, you know the story’s going to be great.
“If you were longing for an HBO series about werewolves, forget that and buy FERALS,” Lapham says. “It’s everything that TV show would be if it existed — which it doesn’t — and more, because we have no rules. This is a solid series full of true horror and violence, and built on strong characters that has no limits in terms of where we take it. No limits.”
Despite appearances, the creatures in Ferals aren’t strictly werewolves.
…this isn’t a take on the mystical werewolf, full moon and all that. This is about a different kind of person. There are different forms to them but they don’t change back and forth like the Hulk… There are several other tricks up a Feral’s sleeve, and we’ll see that and some other more altered forms of the Feral condition, but we’ll save that for the comics.
The title will be published by Avatar, and issue 1 should be out in January 2012. For more, read the full article at Bleeding Cool. Below are two more issue 1 cover treatments – a wrapper version, and the (NSFW) “gore” cover the wrapper is ostensibly covering. Werewolves or not, Andrade Jr. can draw some mean monsters.
She-Wolf Wants to Know: Who’s Your Favourite Female Werewolf?
Academic, writer, publisher, friend and fellow werewolf enthusiast Dr. Hannah Priest has a terrific post up on her blog, She-Wolf, in which a number of contributors (including your humble servant) make a case for our favourite female werewolves. Hannah’s the authority on lady lycanthropes, so the results of this poll will be canonical – we’ll be logging the results with the Library of Congress and Wolfram Alpha.
The nominees are:
- Kelsey ‘Boobs’ Bornstein (in ‘Boobs’ by Suzy McKee Charnas)
- Sergeant Angua (in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series)
- ‘Wolfgirl’ (in The Company of Wolves)
- Nina (in Being Human)
- Kitty Norville (in Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville books)
- Brigitte Fitzgerald (in Ginger Snaps: Unleashed)
- White Fell (in Clemence Housman’s The Were-Wolf)
- Leah Clearwater (in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series)
I nominated Brigitte Fitzgerald, but she’s up against some pretty tough company. Read through each contributor’s analysis and post your vote (or write in your own) on the She-Wolf blog, then come back here and defend your choice (unless you picked Brigitte).
Howling at the Map
Via Frank Jacobs’ Strange Maps segment of Big Think comes this image of “a relatively rare poster for An American Werewolf in London, arguably the best horror/comic film ever made”. Arguably the best werewolf film ever made, Frank. He posted this under the title of ‘Lycanthropography‘, a very specific word which I nonetheless feel needs to be used more often.
Yet Another MMO, But This Time With Werewolves
Via VG247, there are reports of the Korean branch of Epic Games working on an MMORPG called Bless, to be powered by Unreal Engine 3 and published by Neowiz, who most recently brought the free-to-play Alliance of Valiant Arms to Steam. As yet, there’s no news on when it’ll be released, or whether it’ll be available in Korea-only or worldwide.
From the teaser trailer below, it seems to hit most of the generic fantasy buttons, with one notable exception: it’s got werewolves in it. Werewolves that you can play, and fight people with, and go around being awesome. We assume. Not many details have been released on the game, but if nothing else they can put together some pretty CGI.
I Got Your Next Purchase Right Here: “Feeding Ground” Graphic Novel & Trailer
I’ve read a lot of werewolf comics in the years that I’ve been running Werewolf News, and some of them have been quite good, but Archaia’s Feeding Ground stands above them all as my absolute favourite. It’s that simple. It succeeds on every level: as a compelling story eerily grounded in reality, as a collection of astounding artwork that simmers with heat and tension, as a serious commentary on a life-and-death social issue and as a self-contained objet d’art crafted by three friends who wanted to make something great, and then did.
Now all six issues have been collected as a hardcover graphic novel, and as your official werewolf life-coach, I advise you to go check it out, either from Amazon or your local comic shop. (more…)
“Dog Soldiers” Finally Returns, with a Web Series & Sequel in the Works
2002’s Dog Soliders is one of those polarizing werewolf movies – either you love it or you’re not a real person. Murmurs of a sequel called Fresh Meat faded back in 2006, but now Kismet Entertainment has plans to bring our super-tall, super-skinny werewolf friends back to the screen. Two plans, actually: a web series called Dog Soliders: Legacy, and an as-of-yet untitled full-length sequel. No release dates have been announced for either, although Kismet has released a trailer for Legacy (somewhat confusingly titled Red) and a handful of promotional stills. I’m kind of on the fence about the trailer, but come on… more Dog Soliders! Additional details will presumably appear on Kismet’s site as they become available.
Hat-tip: ArcLight
In Case You Missed It: Never-Before-Seen “American Werewolf in London” Transformation Storyboards
Digging through some marked-as-read emails, I found that I’d missed an email from reader Byron Dunn, who shared this Badass Digest article about An American Werewolf in London‘s 30th anniversary. Click the link, friends, and gaze upon the wonders contributed by Beware The Moon director Paul Davis: never-before-seen-storyboards of David’s first werewolf transformation, by concept artist John Bruno. Here’s one frame, showing David’s muzzle – click through to the article to see the rest!
“Welcome to Hoxford” Fan Film is 20 Minutes of Blood and Grime-Splattered Perfection
If you haven’t seen this already, scroll down and watch it. Go. Now. If you have seen it, holy shit, right?
Holy shit.
Director Julien Mokrani and an extraordinarily talented cast and crew have created what I think we all have to agree is the definitive motion-picture version of Ben Templesmith’s comic series Welcome to Hoxford – or the first part of it, anyway.
Hoxford isn’t Mokrani’s first fan film labour of love – he and writer / producer Samuel Bodin spent two years working on Batman: Ashes to Ashes, a $15,000 tribute to Batman’s quasi-vampiric nature. On the strength of that project, Mokrani and Bodin were able to entice actors Jason Flemyng (X-Men: First Class, Hanna, Snatch), Arben Bajraktaraj (Harry Potter – Order of the Phoenix and the Deathly Hallows) and Dexter Fletcher (Kick-Ass, Band of Brothers, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), plus director of photography Thierry Arbogast (The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita) and special effects makeup artist Jean-Christophe Spadaccini (The Bourne Identity, The City of Lost Children).
And why in the world would Mokrani and his colleagues invest their time, energy and money in a film that will never make a legal dime? “Welcome to Hoxford ran around in my head for over a year”, Mokrani says. “One day it was too much, I had to make it!”
Despite his passion and skill, he wasn’t able to get official sanction from Hoxford creator Ben Templesmith, who said he’d enjoyed Ashes to Ashes but was contractually obliged to avoid even thinking about talking about the idea of considering having anything to do with a fan-made Hoxford film – presumably because the rights are currently managed by Circle of Confusion, who Mokrani says are only interested in talking to major studios. Circle, come on. Quit fucking around and let Mokrani and company have a stab an official Welcome to Hoxford film – if this 20-minute production is any indication, they’ll treat it right.
You can see production stills and a whole lot more at welcometohoxford-thefanfilm.com. I’ll just stay here and watch Warden Baker eat that… “steak”… over and over. Somehow I can’t look away.