The wolfman hasn’t had an especially storied career in the
movies, or so goes common thought. Without the gravity of the Frankenstein
monster – and the nobility – or the suave power of Dracula, he wound up a
sidekick in the Universal pictures, a sad joke (Lon Chaney Jr’s puffy
appearance in films like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein underlines the
actor’s drunken darkness, and that reflected in how we interpreted the Wolfman
as well).
But there are good werewolf movies, and not the obvious ones
either. The original The Wolfman, John Landis’ funny, tragic American Werewolf
in London and Joe Dante and John Sayles’s satiric, meta-fun The Howling get
most of the credit. But you can be rewarded if you dig a little deeper.
Dog Soldiers, Neil Marshall’s brutal and intense feature
debut, pits a group of unarmed (more or less; they don’t have bullets, anyway)
soldiers on maneuvers in the Scottish Highlands against a roving group of tall,
fearsome werewolves. Marshall’s wolves are bipedal, supernaturally tall and
absolutely terrifying. The soldiers, led by Sean Pertwee (son of third Doctor
Who Jon Pertwee), must battle these beasts with their wits, and some are
disassembled in spectacularly gory ways. The film is unwaveringly tense,
presaging Marshall’s next, supremely scary film The Descent in its commitment
to tone.
Just a couple years before Dog Soldiers, John Fawcett’s Ginger
Snaps used lycanthropy as a metaphor for the pubescence of two gothy Canadian
girls. A smart, witty script marries it to the sort of societal commentary and
body discourse fellow Canadian David Cronenberg used to truck in (Rabid, The
Brood, The Fly), as well as the kitschy philosophizing of Larry Cohen (It’s
Alive, The Stuff). Ginger Snaps was followed by two relatively decent sequels.
Speaking of kitschy, The Beast Must Die features the
divinely unkitschy Peter Cushing and Michael Gambon among the assembled guests
at gloriously ‘70s millionaire big game hunter Calvin Lockhart’s mansion. One
of the guests is a werewolf, and it’s up to Lockhart -- and you – to determine which one is
causing all the ruckus. A convenient 30 second “Werewolf Break” happens at the
climax so you can cast your votes and make a drinking game out of it, if you so
choose. Getting there is most of the fun, though, even if it’s a bit dated by
this point.
Cushing’s alma mater Hammer Pictures staged The Curse of the
Werewolf, with Oliver Reed as the beastly titular character, a wolf sired out
of the rape of a young prison girl. Hammer films were at their best when
pairing straight-laced Britishisms with lurid colors and images – all heaving
breasts, thick, bright red blood and impeccable set design. Given these films’
meager funds, it’s always amazing how great they look, thanks to smart use of
dense sets at Bray Studios, shot by the likes of Arthur Grant, who went on to
do the smart Satanic cult pic The Devil Rides Out and Hammer’s sole zombie
epic, Plague of the Zombies.
While not a straight werewolf picture – instead of a wolf,
the main character turns into something resembling a cicada the dog’s been
chewing on – The Beast Within has some marginal thrills and a supremely icky
timbre. But the transformation effects will do it for the 12 year olds in most
of us.
Wes Craven’s Cursed gets a bad rap – to be fair, it mostly
just gets ignored – but I think it’s a somewhat interesting film, if only for
its unusually varied cast (Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Joshua Jackson,
Judy Greer, Portia DeRossi, and in glorified cameos Craig Kilborn and Scott
Baio) and slightly funny pro-gay subtext (if you can call it sub-) courtesy of Scream writer Kevin Williamson. It’s
passable weekend afternoon entertainment, assuming the fridge is stocked.
For further viewing: The Werewolf of Washington, Werewolves
on Wheels, I was A Teenage Werewolf, Brotherhood of the Wolf
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