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<\/a><\/div>\nAnd that got me to thinking. \u00a0Call me a sissy, call me a coward, call me Al. \u00a0But when I was growing up, it was werewolves that scared the bejeesus out of me. \u00a0I mean, like any kid in those pre-VCR\/Call of Gorefest Auto XIII days, I was scared of plenty of things. \u00a0Not all. \u00a0Some monster movies, even in the 70s, seemed silly. \u00a0Though we didn\u2019t usually get to see the \u201cClassics\u201d that often. \u00a0Apart from King Kong<\/i>, I never saw Dracula <\/i>or Frankenstein <\/i>until the age of home video recorders. \u00a0Unless they were chasing Abbot and Costello around. <\/p>\n
But despite some things scaring me and others not, it was until I was a bit older that my fear of werewolves finally went the way of the tooth fairy. \u00a0I won\u2019t say how old. \u00a0Trust me, I was *cough* older. \u00a0Don\u2019t know why really. \u00a0I was always a bit arachnophobic and I trace that back to living in the country when I was a tot in a house my Dad built by his own wit and industry. \u00a0As good a house as it was, you just can\u2019t do anything about spiders in the country. <\/p>\n
Maybe it was a \u2018traumatized as a kid\u2019 thing. \u00a0It was back then that I remember first seeing a \u2018werewolf\u2019 movie. \u00a0On an old black and white TV we had, my sister and a friend had some monster movie matinee going. \u00a0And to this day I don\u2019t know the movie, but it had a fellow who rolled down a wooded hill, and when he popped up \u2013 Bang! \u00a0He was a werewolf. \u00a0Meaning he had hair on his face and fangs. \u00a0But when you\u2019re no more than 5 years old (we moved right after my 5th birthday), that\u2019s all it takes. \u00a0So that\u2019s probably why it took years to shake the shakes when it came to the legendary shapeshifters. \u00a0Thank goodness my wife was there to protect me!<\/p>\n
So in the spirit of my somewhat well received and popular Movies to Scare Kids By<\/a> post, I thought I\u2019d do my favorite howl-at-the-moon movies! \u00a0Just what everyone who comes to a Catholic blogger expects.<\/p>\n 1. The Wolf Man (1941)<\/b> these come from the mind of Curt Siodmac. \u00a0 Lon Chaney, Jr. is strangely cast against a diminutive, but always impressive, Claude Rains as his father. \u00a0Most of the cast is there for filler, but does a good enough job. \u00a0Maria Ouspenskaya, as the mysterious gypsy woman, and Bela Lugosi as her ill-fated son, also steal their respective scenes. <\/p>\n But like most Universal movies, the real star is the build up to the monster, and the heavy-enough-to-crush-you atmosphere. \u00a0Never is it not foggy in the world of Larry Talbot. \u00a0Towering trees, fog-choked woods, an imposing castle, an androgynous European-styled village (supposedly in Wales), all give an extra level of depth. \u00a0True, by now WWII was well under way, and America\u2019s final days of youthful innocence are winding down. \u00a0I can\u2019t help but think that, by then, audiences were not quite as terrorized as we sometimes think. \u00a0Oh, they may have been scared, having nothing to compare it to. \u00a0But even then, the real horrors of what non-shape-shifting men are capable of was all too real, and too common in that mid-industrial era of history.<\/p>\n 2. The Curse of the Werewolf<\/b> Costello team. \u00a0Fun stuff. \u00a0But in the wake of the mushroom cloud and the likelihood of space travel around the corner, somehow those old fog draped villages just didn\u2019t hold the terror, or even the atmosphere. \u00a0If some movies still thrived with the possibilities of black and white, the old monsters didn\u2019t. \u00a0Replaced by a growing repertoire of giant insects and reptiles and space aliens, werewolves and vampires just didn\u2019t seem to fit.<\/p>\n Enter Hammer Films. \u00a0With Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing leading the way, they repackaged and resold the classics in new, vibrant and brooding ways. \u00a0The literary inspiration was as often as not tossed out the window even more than the Universal versions. \u00a0Sometimes the very heart and soul of the stories were changed. \u00a0But there was always a shard, something keeping them connected to the source materials and folklore, even if bright blood and colorful sets were now the norm.<\/p>\n Unlike most of the Hammer catalog, The Curse of the Werewolf <\/i>has neither Cushing nor Lee, but instead turns to up and coming Oliver Reed to show his inner animal. \u00a0Not content with simply rehashing the made-up legends of The Wolf Man<\/i>, Curse of the Werewolf actually taps into ancient folklore and Christian superstition, and spends a great deal of the movie building up characters we should care about. \u00a0An important thing in classic horror, since in almost all cases, they are meant to be tragic.<\/p>\n 3. The Werewolf of London<\/b> \u00a0Released shortly after Fredrick March nailed the Oscar for his turn as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/i>, many saw Werewolf of London as simply J&H; with fangs and more hair. As a result, critics dismissed it and it more or less floundered in the box office.<\/p>\n Over the years, a slow but steady respect has grown for the movie. \u00a0It suffers from wanting to do many things, and never quite getting around to focusing on what. \u00a0But the concept of traveling to Tibet, being attacked by an Asian Werewolf (where foxes or possibly tigers might have substituted), of a werewolf with hat and cape, all seem to be enough to make the watching enjoyable. \u00a0Performances are solid enough, and in the tradition of J&H; that finds itself played out in werewolf legends of later years, the wolf part becomes more pronounced with each change. <\/p>\n Send the kiddies to be with these next two:<\/p>\n 4. An American Werewolf in London<\/b> <\/p>\n According to Landis, he got the idea for American Werewolf while working the crew of Kelly\u2019s Heroes<\/i>. \u00a0He noticed an old time funeral and was taken by the fact that, as late as the 1960s, there were still places in the world untouched by modern thinking. \u00a0Thank goodness. \u00a0He took that and spun it into a delightful, and sometimes frightening, and sometimes shocking film that repackaged long forgotten tricks of the terror trade. \u00a0The earliest part of the movie, with David Naughton and Griffin Dunne traversing the moors and running into the famous \u201cSlaughtered Lamb\u201d pub,\u00a0is the high point. \u00a0Being the early 80s, Landis can\u2019t resist copious amounts of gratuitous sex, just like so many filmmakers of the period. \u00a0Like children who found the key to the liquor cabinet, it was almost as if to say \u2018look Ma! \u00a0We can show sex in movies!!\u2019 \u00a0A shame. \u00a0Because there was a decent amount of humor, suspense, drama and even some character development in a movie otherwise weighed down by some typical over doing in on Landis\u2019s part.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting, BTW, that many see this as one of the turning points in movies in which killing and violence begin to mix with humor in such a way that eventually they become indistinguishable. <\/p>\n 5. The Howling<\/b> The story of a community of werewolves living behind the scenes, attempting to fit in with modernity, has an almost psychological element. \u00a0The screenplay was, in fact, written by a man not with a degree in screenwriting, but with a background in psychology. \u00a0Long and short, he wanted the movie to rebel against the idea that the way to civilization was eliminating repression. \u00a0He wanted to take the opposite view: get rid of repression, and what you get is animals. Given the last couple hundred years of teaching man is nothing but a glorified animal, I\u2019m inclined to agree.<\/p>\n Despite its shoestring budget, it manages to stir up some pretty hefty suspense, and some pretty terrorizing werewolves. \u00a0It still suffers from the 80s \u2018look at our glorious porn culture!\u2019 mentality. \u00a0Beyond that, the concept, as well as the \u2018don\u2019t show more of the monster than you need to\u2019 approach to film making, reminds us that usually our minds conjure up worse images than anything Hollywood can imagine. \u00a0Usually. \u00a0Though I\u2019m not so sure that applies here. Seeing this film on our large screen TV for the first \u00a0time, I actually shrunk down in the couch. \u00a0Those are some pretty horrifying looking werewolves if you think about it. \u00a0The camera work, the eerie music, the right amount of supernatural flare, and just a touch of humor and homage, makes this almost a competitor for the better movies in any lycanthrope list.<\/p>\n Honorable Mention: Dog Solders<\/b>
What can I say, the movie that many people think captures the various legends about werewolves in fact invented many of them. \u00a0Autumn moons, silver bullets, pentagrams, the perpetual need for gypsies, all of <\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
Hammer Films made its mark by taking the classic monsters of Universal days and colorizing them. \u00a0By then, most of the cast of legendary monsters had been reduced to fodder for the high jinks of an aging Abbot and <\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
Overlooked were it not for Landis\u2019s pseudo-remake and Warren Zevon\u2019s addictively awesome song. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
As a keen interpreter of social and philosophical movements, John Landis is a decent filmmaker. \u00a0Made famous by\u00a0Animal House<\/i>, and culminating with his work on Michael Jackson\u2019s Thriller<\/i>, Landis had a knack for producing better products than his rather shallow commentary on events suggests he should. \u00a0Oh, none of them are deeper than an average mud puddle. \u00a0But he had a certain something, and worked well with the first generation of SNL alumni who tried with varying levels of success to make it to the big screen.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
Following in the \u2018werewolf as porn metaphor\u2019 , The Howling<\/i> uses the same groundbreaking effects that Landis has at his disposal, but on a tighter budget. \u00a0In hindsight, it\u2019s easy to see that this had less of a budget to work with. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
Saw this one on TV years ago. \u00a0Didn\u2019t know what it was. \u00a0At first I thought it was Rambo goes to Scotland. \u00a0But as I watched, I had to admit, it was fun. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t really scary, but by now, I probably <\/p>\n