Werewolves - Treatment in film

Lycanthropy - Treatment in film

(far from complete, I know...)

1935 The Werewolf of London

Universal's first werewolf film falls in the shadow of the 1941 hit The Wolf Man. You might say it's a different animal, as this version carries none of the now-familiar trappings of the wolf-man legend: no wolfsbane, no silver bullets, no gypsy curse. Dr. Wilfrid Glendon (Henry Hull) is a London botanist whose search for a rare flower takes him to a "cursed" valley in Tibet where he's mauled in the moonlight by a wolflike creature. Back in London he meets the mysterious Dr. Yogami (a marvelously melancholy performance by Warner Oland), who explains they met once before "in Tibet... in the dark" before asking for a flower from his botanical find, the only antidote for his curse. Glendon scoffs at his stories of werewolves--until he transforms into a hirsute killer under the effect of the full moon. Although leaner and edgier than the famous 1941 Lon Chaney classic, The Werewolf of London stumbles with the corny Scotland Yard investigation of the murder spree and gets sidetracked in the bizarre bickering of two old drunken cronies. But it takes flight in wonderfully imaginative and eerie scenes and striking action sequences, while a Jekyll-and-Hyde dynamic turns a jealous squabble between Glendon and his young wife Lisa (Valerie Hobson) into the tragic twist of the curse: "The werewolf instinctively kills the thing it loves best." --Sean Axmaker (editorial review Amazon.com)--

1957 I was a Teenage Werewolf

Horror motion picture about a troubled teenager who turns into a werewolf after going to a psychiatrist, with Michael Landon, etc.

1961 The Curse of the Werewolf

After Hammer Studios rewrote the histories of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy it was only natural to take on the howling hirsute one. Discarding the cursed gypsies, blooming wolfsbane, and chanted legends that swirl through Universal's The Wolf Man, director Terence Fisher and screenwriter John Elder (a pseudonym for producer Anthony Hinds) returned to Guy Endore's novel The Werewolf of Paris for inspiration. Switching locations to 18th-century Spain (to make use of standing sets from a canceled production about the Spanish Inquisition), this is a story of sex, sadism, and decadence, a curse produced from human evil. Young orphan Leon, the progeny of a mad, animalistic prisoner and a ravaged young peasant, is plagued with nightmares while village sheep are slaughtered, but it isn't until he grows into the stocky young Oliver Reed that his curse takes its terrifying toll. Reed cuts an intense figure as the brooding, serious young man and makes a marvelous werewolf, moving with a boxer's grace under feral makeup that looks as much ape as canine. Curse of the Werewolf has all the cleavage and blood you'd expect from a Hammer film, but it's Fisher's eerie touches that make the film so gripping: a dog's howl anticipates the crying of the newborn Leon, holy water ripples as if coming to a boil before his christening, and the wild-eyed, fanged boy struggles against the bars in his room consumed in a canine bloodlust. --Sean Axmaker (editorial review Amazon.com)--

1981 The Howling

A graduate of Roger Corman's school of low-budget ingenuity, Joe Dante gained enough momentum with 1978's Piranha to rise to the challenge of The Howling, and he brought along Piranha screenwriter John Sayles to cowrite this instant werewolf classic. Makeup wizard Rob Bottin was recruited to create what was then the wildest onscreen transformation ever seen. With Gary Brandner's novel The Howling as a starting point, Sayles and Dante conceived a werewolf colony on the California coast, posing as a self-help haven led by a seemingly benevolent doctor (Patrick Macnee), and populated by a variety of "patients," from sexy, leather-clad sirens (among them Elisabeth Brooks) to an old coot (John Carradine) who's quite literally long in the tooth. When a TV reporter (Dee Wallace) arrives at the colony to recover from a recent trauma, the resident lycanthropes prepare for a howlin' good time.

Dante handles it all with equal measures of humor, sex, gore, and horror, pulling out all the stops when the ravenous Eddie (Dante favorite Robert Picardo, later known as the Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager) transforms into a towering, bloodthirsty werewolf. (Bottin's mentor Rick Baker would soon raise the makeup ante with An American Werewolf in London.) As usual, in-jokes abound, from characters named after werewolf-movie directors, amusing cameos (Corman, Sayles, Forrest J. Ackerman), and hammy inserts of wolfish cartoons and Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." It's best appreciated now as a quintessential example of early-'80s horror, with low-budget limitations evident throughout, but The Howling remains a giddy genre milestone. --Jeff Shannon (editorial review Amazon.com)--

1981 An American Werewolf in London

Motion picture about two college students, David and Jack, who encounter a werewolf while travelling in England.

Remember back in the early 1980s when special-effects makeup artists were tripping over themselves to create the next big effect? The Howling boasted a fantastic werewolf transformation scene courtesy of makeup wizard Rob Bottin. Then along came Bottin's mentor, Rick Baker, with his own spectacular effects in this popular horror comedy directed by John Landis. An American Werewolf in London is more of a makeup showcase than a truly satisfying movie, but the film is effectively moody when David Naughton discovers that a wolf attack has turned him into a bloodthirsty lycanthrope. Jenny Agutter plays his love interest (watch out, he bites!), and who can forget Griffin Dunne as Naughton's best friend, an undead corpse who progressively rots away as the plot unfolds? All things considered, it's easy to see why An American Werewolf in London became a modern horror favorite. --Jeff Shannon (editorial review Amazon.com)--

1994 Wolf

Sophisticated to a point, this well-executed wolf-man tale works due to its clever setting and enormous star power. We all know Jack Nicholson can go nuts, but the script makes his character aware of his changes, sometimes for the better, early on. The setting, a publishing house in the middle of a takeover, gives the characters dramatic life before the horror elements kicks in. A senior editor about to get the boot, Nicholson's character becomes a new man after being bitten by a wolf. He takes on challenges at work, lives a more robust life, and attracts a new love. But will his newfound energy consume him? Director Mike Nichols keeps the action alive in the first half, but the film peters out at the end with cheap theatrics and the overuse of slow motion. Michelle Pfeiffer has little to do as simply the love interest with a grittier than average personality. Better is James Spader as a smarmy colleague. Nicholson is in fine form, relying on his keen gift to spark interest (a twitch of the head, a look in the eyes), instead of heavy doses of movie makeup. Giuseppe Rotunno's sweeping camerawork sets the mood quite well. Easy to recommend, with the added feature it's hardly gratuitous. --Doug Thomas (editorial review Amazon.com)--

1997 An American Werewolf in Paris

(sequel to An American Werewolf in London) The movie offers plenty of gruesome makeup and special wolf-transformation effects, and there are some effectively spooky moments in the plot involving an underground population of hungry Parisian werewolves. One of them is seductively played by Julie Delpy, who is rescued from attempted suicide by an American tourist (Tom Everett Scott, from That Thing You Do!) but ultimately can't hide her dual identity when darkness falls and the full moon shines. The movie begins well, but gradually succumbs to nonsense and mayhem, prompting critic Roger Ebert to observe that "here are people we don't care about, doing things they don't understand, in a movie without any rules." In other words, you'd have to be a die-hard horror buff to give this one the benefit of the doubt. --Jeff Shannon (editorial review Amazon.com)--

Other Movies:

1985 Silver Bullet
1989 My Mom's a Werewolf
1996 Werewolf
1997 Werewolf Skin
1997 The Werewolf of Fever Swamp
2001 Night of the Werewolf
2001 Eyes of the Werewolf

- return to index Werewolves -