My Top 10 Werewolf Films...

In looking at making a list of werewolf films that appeal to me, I discovered that they are few and far between. Of the standard monster tropes out there, the werewolf is indeed the poor cousin to vampires, re-animated horrors, and spectral bad-guys. The main approach that Hollywood takes with this creature nowadays is to posit it as a symbol of adolescent maturation, the change brought on by puberty and all of its scary and bewildering ramifications. Thus we have a slew of ‘teenaged werewolves’ movies and TV shows which, by-and-large, are fairly poor-quality, inordinately focussed upon sex, and usually comedic.

A problem with werewolves is that they only appear at certain times, ie. whenever it’s a full moon, which makes them rather predictable. This is especially so when it comes to television series based upon them. Conveniently, there’s always a full moon out when things go down on TV, whether it’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Being Human”, “True Blood”, or “Teen Wolf”. This can often get in the way of an audience’s ability to suspend disbelief. Fortunately, everyone seems to agree that silver is bad for werewolves, unlike vampire shows where nobody can seem to make up their minds about how best to get rid of them.

The type of werewolf film which appeals to me are the ones which take as their raison d’etre the notion of the ‘beast within’, moving beyond the simple appearance of secondary sex characteristics and into the realm of uncontainable rage and bestial impulses. Here, things get far more interesting (and way less funny). Given my preference, the list of movies narrows down even more, and, in order to make this exercise worthwhile, I’ve had to move beyond the merely lupine and embrace a wider scope of material which encompasses people turning into all sorts of other creatures. Hopefully, I’ll be able to string this out to a list of ten!

Again, the list is completely chronological, not a ranking by quality.

Waggner, George (1941), “The Wolf-Man”

This is the seminal Universal Horror film that really kickstarted the whole werewolf movie genre. Lon Chaney Jr. arrives at the ancestral British seat of his family, bringing his brash but adorable American ways to a quaint English village. He settles in and begins to woo the daughter of the local antiques dealer. Things are going swimmingly until the gypsies come to town and, after a romantic evening at the gypsy fair, our American hero is bitten by a ‘wolf-like creature’ while defending his potential new girlfriend from its ministrations. Of course we all know what comes next...

Lon Chaney had big shoes to fill, what with his father being the infamous “man of a thousand faces”, and he doesn’t disappoint here in his transformation. As a human being his distress is palpable and the audience is immediately drawn to his plight. On the flipside, Bela Lugosi plays the first werewolf who bites Chaney and is killed by him (with a silver-headed walking stick): this is Dracula ‘phoning it in. Lugosi was alternately good and bad in roles, but this is a stinker; fortunately, he’s not in it for long. They didn’t even bother to give his character a different name!

The plot is twisty and unnerving, leaving the viewer on their seat’s edge until the final, tragic, scene. On top of it all, there’s a nice piece of doggerel which gets drummed into your consciousness and which will stay with you forever:

“Even a man who is pure in heart

And says his prayers by night,

Will become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms

And the Autumn moon is bright.”

Tourneur, Jacques (1942), “Cat People”

Producer Val Lewton and Director Jacques Tourneur were brilliant when it came to making scary movies. They never had a lot to work with, in terms of script, plot, scenery, actors, or special effects, and yet they always came up with the goods. On one occasion, Lewton was thrown a copy of Jane Eyre and told to “do something with this, but call it ‘I Walked With A Zombie’”; even with those crippling limitations he made an excellent film.

Cat People is a text-book example of the sort of magic these two could work together. The premise is crazy – man impulsively marries an Eastern European woman he barely knows, only to regret his decision when it turns out that she’s from a village of people cursed to turn into panthers after dark – and yet, Tourneur and Lewton make it work. In fact, it worked so well that RKO Pictures, the company for which they toiled, was pulled out of an economic nose-dive and back into the black.

The trick they used was to let the imaginations of the audience do all of the heavy lifting. While there is a panther in this film, it’s in a cage at the zoo and doesn’t really cause much mayhem (a little, not a lot). For the rest of the film, we are fed only the suggestion of a stalking night-time menace - shadows and low rumbling growls - and yet the presence of the werecat is palpable. Especially great is the scene at the swimming pool where the cat bails up the hero’s new girlfriend.

The sequel to this masterpiece is, typically, not as satisfying, but it has its moments; Nastassia Kinski was in a re-make of this flick in 1982: ignore it, and go for the real deal.

Cocteau, Jean (1946), “La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast)”

The classic Perrault tale brought to life by a visionary film-maker. There is a problem about filming this story that always makes it a tricky proposition: at the end of the tale, just when we’ve learned to love the Beast, he turns into some ordinary-looking guy who doesn’t quite live up to the fantasy version of ‘the hero behind the mask’ which we’ve built up in our imaginations. Nevertheless, Belle falls into his arms and everyone lives happily ever after. Very unsatisfying. Cocteau realised this problem early on and deals with it in an effective, interesting and – no doubt – cost-saving manner: Belle’s evil suitor, sworn to kill the Beast, swaps bodies with the creature, thus ensuring that the attractive physical form and the beautiful personality are locked together (and also that hero, villain and creature are all played by the one actor). Belle herself comments upon the transformation that it might take some getting used to. Interestingly, while the body swap doesn’t happen in the Disney version, a similar sentiment is expressed by Belle in that film.

Aside from this issue, the rest of Cocteau’s film is a sumptuous and, in places, scary movie. The Beast’s castle is dreamlike and eerie with statues that come to life and arm-shaped torch holders that move as the guests do. At all times the surreal fairy-tale quality of the story is maintained. The Beast himself is played as if reining himself in from his most bestial impulses, which restraint and adoration are always effectively conveyed, despite layers of makeup. There is a hair-trigger atmosphere about this film that makes it feel like a house of cards, ready to come down at any minute, and it makes watching and re-watching it very worthwhile.

Majewski, Janusz (1970), “Lokis – A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach”

An excellent piece of crazy straight out of Eastern Europe. This time, there are no canines or felines; things take more of an ursine turn and werebears are our monster du jour. Again, most of the horror is implied and the whole story turns on an ‘is he, or isn’t he?’ premise; however, there is a large cast of backwoods characters who do things to each other (and to animals) which will shock you along the way. This is high concept and very clever movie-making with a moodiness and dreaminess that sometimes borders on the Hammer horror, but not enough to break its spell.

I wrote an extended review of this film a couple of years ago; check it out for a fuller overview as to why you should watch it.

Landis, John (1981), “An American Werewolf in London”

When this movie first came out it was widely touted as the next big thing in movie special effects. It was also noteworthy for being part of the new ‘horror-is-funny’ movement that was catching on at the time. No longer could a horror movie be made with serious intent; if there wasn’t a heaping side-order of humour to go with it, the studios wouldn’t even touch it.

What this film has going for it is high production values. The humour nestles within the horror, not displacing or leavening any of the drama, but – like the gate-keeper in “Macbeth” - serving as a release valve for the audience, so that they can de-pressurise before the next onslaught. As the movie theatre slowly fills up with the werewolf’s wisecracking victims and they slowly start to decay around him, we gain a psychological insight into the character, along with the horror that only rotting corpses failing to lie down can offer. The transformation scenes – so quintessential to modern werewolf fare – are excruciating and it’s a relief when they’re over.

This movie rests securely on its debt to the previous Lon Chaney Jr. vehicle, following in the footprints left by that earlier film. There is no happy ending here but there are a lot of laughs and screams before the bitter end.

Jordan, Neil (1984), “The Company of Wolves”

With this movie, we’re back in metaphorical territory. This film is based on a short story from Angela Carter’s collection The Bloody Chamber, a feminist re-working of many fairy-tale tropes. In this tale we encounter Little Red Riding-Hood, but an R-rated version in which the blood flows and keeps on flowing.

There are a number of werewolves in this film and they each transform in unique and interesting ways, primary amongst these is the one featured on all the posters and promotional material, where the wolf emerges from the mouth of its human counterpart. It’s as if the director threw down the gauntlet to his production crew, challenging them to innovate and to keep on innovating until he called time on the whole exercise.

The film is a portmanteau of several stories narrated by characters within the initial set-up: we drift from narrative to narrative, taking the lessons to be learned and moving back to our central players. The focus here is once more on the nature of the change from child to adult, but not in the sophomoric “I Was A Teen-Age Werewolf” sense. Here the purpose is to discuss gender stereotypes and we learn that, while the men in this fairy-tale often turn out to be monsters, the women change also and they can more than meet that challenge.

Gans, Christophe (2001), “Le Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf)”

France, probably more than any other country, is the home and source of werewolf legendry. During the Middle Ages and into the Enlightenment, the place ran red from supposed werewolf activity and there are many court records of people being burnt at the stake for being shapeshifters, alongside all of the witches that were being rounded up as well. You’d expect there to be some kind of filmic capitalisation on this source material, but there isn’t much. This film goes a long way towards rectifying that.

This movie kicks off as a moody period piece; however, in short order, the director tears a page out of Luc Besson’s playbook and it morphs into a full-on action adventure. It’s chop-socky meets 18^th Century Europe: fists and feet (and tomahawks) fly, guns roar and swords flash; there’s damsels in distress, suavely evil Counts to bring to justice...oh, and werewolves!

The story revolves around the always-prepared Grégoire de Fronsac, sent by the King of France to get to the bottom of all the rumours about werewolves running amok in the province of Gevaudan. With his Native American manservant, Mani, they ride into town and mayhem ensues. There’s something for everyone with this film – it’s a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

Marshall, Neil (2002), “Dog Soldiers”

A bunch of British SAS troopers head out into the forest for some wilderness survival training. An accident happens, they re-group, a stranger appears and an altercation takes place. Next thing, the soldiers are being taken out one-by-one by something familiar with their training and weapons, and those that don’t die seem to switch sides...

It says something about the impact of a movie when a throwaway line uttered by a second-string character becomes lodged in the pop-cultural consciousness to such a degree that an entire film can be generated using that scrap of dialogue as the punchline. That movie was “The Matrix”; the line was “there is no spoon”; and the film it spawned was this one. Many people hate this movie because it’s seemingly predicated upon this one joking reference; however, I think that they’re missing the irony: isn’t a werewolf flick supposed to be a shaggy-dog story?

With the exception of this one aspect, this movie has a lot going for it. The excitement and tension are visceral; the acting is good; and the transformations are superb. The characters are rounded, they make choices based on their desperate situations, and the narrative flows believably from these choices. Okay, they might be clones of roles from “Aliens” or “Predator” but, for what this film’s trying to do, they work. After all that, for anyone who still objects to the presence of this movie in my list, I have two words for you: “The Howling”.

Isaac, James (2006), “Skinwalkers”

I have an aversion to horror movie franchises and for some reason the werewolf movie seems to lend itself to an endless parade of sequels. It seems as though it’s not enough to make a bad lycanthrope film and quietly walk away from it; no, it’s like there’s an unwritten law that you have to keep hammering away at it in a pathetic attempt to improve upon the concept. Thus we have endless “Underworld” movies, an array of “Ginger Snaps” flicks and the above mentioned slew of “Howling” films that reached a definite nadir with “Howling III – the Marsupials”. It’s reached a stage where my eyes glaze over if there’s even a possibility of a werewolf in a horror film, but fortunately I wasn’t too jaded to catch this one.

What makes this film tick is that it’s about two sets of werewolves – a “good” clan who have settled into town and keep their affliction under wraps, and a travelling pack of “bad” werewolves, who enjoy killing and carnage. The baddies roar into town looking for the youngest member of the good-guys’ pack, because a prophecy has foretold that the kid will seriously affect the way that lycanthrope destiny will unfold in the future (specifically by stopping all the mindless slaughter somehow). Our bad guys are too keen to keep on keeping on, so they decide that the kid must go.

Our two teams collide in the town’s centre and things get wild. There are extended chases, epic fights and gore galore. Both teams are riddled with secrets and unresolved issues and these begin to surface, pushing the action along to a satisfying conclusion. An extra point in this movie’s favour is that it lists Elias Koteas among its actors and – given his penchant for quirky and offbeat productions - this always bodes well, as films such as “Fallen”, “The Prophecy” and even “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (not the recent drek – the very, very first one) would indicate. And so far, no-one’s made a sequel...

Bazalgette, Edward (2009), “Werewolves: The Dark Survivors”

This is a mockumentary which was made by the Animal Planet people as a kind of a joke. It seems kind of weird that they would have gone along with this concept, but nevertheless, it’s out there and it works. Like any documentary tracing the origins and lives of a particular species of creature, it traces the history of the werewolf across the ages, positing reasons as to how the lycanthrope came to be and then watching the animals in their normal environment. It’s a bit like David Attenborough meets Michael Moore.

We meet a clan of rootless werewolves, travelling across the country and trying to keep a low profile whilst keeping body and soul together. As we learn more about them, we observe issues of dominance within the pack structure, tearaway youngsters bridling under the command of the Alpha Couple. We watch as they enter town, stock up on supplies and try to earn some cash. Then someone makes a bad mistake...

This film is not for everyone. Certainly, if you check the online reviews, it gets quite a drubbing from folks who watched it thinking they were going to see the standard werewolf fare. Personally though, I quite enjoyed it, but then I am the kind of geek who likes it when others make an attempt at combining reality with fiction. In fact, there are quite a few people out there in the world who think that this documentary is real... It’s free to view on YouTube if you’re interested.

*****

Well, that wasn’t so bad: I managed to make it to ten films after all. It’s interesting that the were-creature movie trope doesn’t have greater representation than it does, at least in the realm of serious film-making. I guess it’s easier to make movies about serial killers, because then the makeup budget accounts for only a fraction of the cost. Sadly, it seems that the lycanthropes are just there to morph, howl, rip faces off, and wait for someone to invent a silver bullet slash dagger and end the rampage. Surely, after years of “Werewolf: the Apocalypse” being played by gamers worldwide, someone could come up with a better script than the usual B-grade dross?