S.M. Douglas

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Category: Movies (page 4 of 6)

How The Howling Raised the Bar For Werewolf Films

A few weeks ago I raised the issue of great werewolf transformation scenes. Today we can fondly remember any number of such examples over the past three decades that helped frighten, horrify, and entertain us. But what many people don’t understand today is that in the nearly four decades following the 1941 classic The Wolf Man the werewolf film as a sub-genre of horror had largely floundered. This was for a number of reasons, many of which were caused by the very brilliance of The Wolf Man itself. Directed by George Waggner, featuring the great Lon Chaney Jr.  and Claude Raines in starring roles, as well as showcasing Jack Pierce’s pioneering work creating the beast himself; the film on at least an emotional level still stands up today.

Problematically however, The Wolf Man so thoroughly established the Hollywood version of what a werewolf is, how one can defeat such a monster, and what he should look like that the werewolf films that followed ultimately ended up being pale imitations. This was so much so that what many regard as the golden era of B-Movie “creature features” – the 1950’s – almost excluded the werewolf all together (with one notable exception being I Was A Teenage Werewolf starring Michael Landon of Little House on the Prairie fame. It did little to challenge the conventions established by The Wolf Man but ended up being an enjoyable film nevertheless).

It is thus with that context established that one must regard 1981’s The Howling.

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As I mentioned in my last post and though 1981 featured one of the other truly great werewolf films, American Werewolf in London, what many people forget is that The Howling came not only first but lacked the budget of its brethren film. Yet it still ended up producing a near equally satisfying experience for the horror/werewolf aficionado. But the question remains: how?

The answer to that question is of course complex. But at its core it involved a significant reinvention of what the werewolf film should be, and in doing so remains a classic that even younger viewers steeped in CGI effects will find genuinely scary. To that end we must give special credit to Director Joe Dante, his screenwriters John Sayles and Terence Winkless, and a young barely old enough to legally drink special effects wizard named Rob Bottin (himself an understudy to the great Rick Baker).

Dante and Sayles set the tone, crafting a screenplay that featured a humorous semi-comedic and self-deprecating subtext that ended up working brilliantly. John Landis would do the same thing in American Werewolf in London – which truth be told was played much more overtly and to such an extant Landis’ film must be regarded almost as much a comedy as a horror film. What is astonishing about Dante and Sayles’ work however is that they had a successful book (Gary Brandner’s The Howling) from which to craft the story, feel, and theme of the film but instead largely junked it. They started over from scratch (as well as significantly reworked Winkless’ initial drafts of the film version).  Consequently, the movie is almost nothing like the book – though both ended up great in their own way (and I recommend that you read the book).

From there Dante filled the cast with a number of superb character actors including Slim Pickens, John Carradine, and Dick Miller among others. In addition he cast the newcomer Elisabeth Brooks; who performed brilliantly as the one character who remained somewhat faithful to the book (the sexy seductress Marsha). Beyond that the film featured additional layers of social commentary poking fun at the media, self-improvement/psychotherapy, and more. Furthermore, Dante, who has a Tarantinoesque reservoir of knowledge regarding 1950’s to 1970’s pulp fiction, paid homage to those who came before him. The film features characters named after great directors and others involved in past werewolf and B-Movie films, plus even includes cameo’s by the great director Roger Corman and Forrest J. Ackerman (he of the well known fanboy magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland).

Moreover, and this is important, Dante and crew did two things that elevated The Howling from merely entertaining to actually reinventing the genre. To that end they made their werewolves not only nearly completely malevolent whether in human or changed form, but also communal. Up until The Howling Waggner’s Wolf Man held an influence so strong that almost nobody had challenged it in any real way. Meaning that Lon Chaney Jr.s anguished portrayal of a guilt ridden Lawrence Talbot had been so brilliant that it had been (as per Hollywood conventions) repeated again and again. Dante cast all of that aside. His werewolves embraced their wolfishness. They reveled in their bestial sexuality and violence, and for the most part accepted themselves for whom they had become. Secondly, the classic werewolf film featured a lone wolf (pun intended), not an entire community of them. This is an aspect of the story that Dante wisely carried over from Brandner’s book. For the audience this was something brand new. And so would be something else….

One of the greatest transformation scenes ever came from The Howling. The scene was so great it served in many ways to overshadow the actual intended climax of the film.  Bottin and Baker (who left during filming to work on American Werewolf in London) dramatically raised the stakes in almost a similar way to what the special effects in Star Wars had done for science fiction/space fantasy films.

Though the effects used in The Wolf Man were revolutionary for their day, by the early 1980s they had become decidedly passe. Bottin and Baker rejected the old conventions of applying makeup filmed slowly over time and melded together to produce the effect of shape shifting.

They also rejected the stop-motion animation craze widely present in that era (that had even showed up in The Empire Strikes Back and doesn’t hold up nearly as well as the other special effects techniques of the time). There actually is a stop-motion scene in The Howling and it is not that bad, though it is jarring in comparison to the remainder of the film’s effects. Mercifully that clip is the only one. Other such scenes that were actually filmed but not used were laughably dreadful, and regretfully sucked up enough of the limited budget that the broke production team had to employ actual animation in one scene and to ill effect.

Instead of those techniques Bottin employed the revolutionary use of bladders, mechanical prosthesis, and a whole range of contraptions to create a truly horrifying werewolf:

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The Howling is not perfect. The ill advised use of animation to close out a scene of werewolf intercourse/transformation was as mentioned truly lamentable. In addition, and though some viewer’s enjoy the film’s ending, in my opinion the effects actually hindered what could have been an all time classic climax. In this case the film’s final transformation, which began quite horrifying enough and with perhaps Dee Wallace-Stone’s best acting performance of the film (featuring a soul shattering scream of terror followed by genuine sadness and fear) paradoxically was accompanied by a final transformation that left her looking more like a Pomeranian than every other werewolf shown in the film. If Dante and crew could just scrape together a few bucks, re-shoot that final up close shot of her transformed face (substituting in something more like the other werewolves), and put out a new “director’s cut” it would be one instance where I am all for changing part of a classic (ahem Mr. Lucas for the opposite extreme).

Nevertheless, for all of the reasons listed above The Howling is still one of the best werewolf movies ever made. It was groundbreaking for its time, and played an enormous role in ushering in a decade that ended up featuring an inordinate number of the all time best werewolf films. But that is the subject of another post.

 

Last night was the debut of American Horror Story’s new season. As the best horror show on television you should really check it out. And yes, last year’s season was a bit of a downer compared to seasons one and two, so hopefully they right the ship this year. Anyway, and as such, it’s time we redirect our popular culture coverage to the upcoming Halloween festivities.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I hope it is yours as well. To kick things off I would like to begin with a much maligned and abused genre: werewolf films. A follow up post in weeks to come will delve more into what makes a great werewolf film, which one’s I think were the best, and so on. In the meantime, and to get your juices flowing, I thought I would leave you with the two greatest werewolf transformation scenes of all time (by the way if you disagree feel free to write in with your thoughts or clips of your favorites).

Now, both these clips come from films released in 1981: The Howling and American Werewolf in London. Along with The Wolfen 1981 is perhaps the best year ever in werewolf film or television history. Enjoy:

From The Howling:

Now from American Werewolf in London:

Thoughts on The Recent Godzilla Movie

In May I, like many others, ventured out to the local movie theater to watch the latest incarnation of Godzilla. I’ll be honest, I initially enjoyed the movie. In fact Gareth Edwards created a wonderful film. It was thoughtful, the beginning of the film featuring Bryan Cranston, playing American engineer Joe Brody at a nuclear power plant in Japan, offered a particularly interesting lead in to the Godzilla concept. A genuine sense of both personal loss and climactic foreboding pervaded the film’s first half hour. In short, and unlike so many other Hollywood blockbusters it offered a real story.

Now, this does not take away from decent size plot holes in the film, and a somewhat bland generic feel to the protagonist (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Joe Brody’s navy officer son Ford. However, the supporting cast beyond Cranston is quite solid and generally the acting is not the issue with the film, nor is the plot, neither is the special effects (which were spectacular), or the attempt to link the film to very real underlying themes of the threat posed by nuclear power (much as did the first Godzilla of sixty years ago), and man’s general impotence in the face of nature. As such I walked out of the theater that Saturday late spring afternoon feeling that all in all it wasn’t a bad movie….but for one nagging problem that at the time I was willing to put aside.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. I was on a flight home from Europe. After six hours of reading and whatnot I was looking for more of a distraction for the last hour and a half of the flight. It wasn’t enough time to watch a movie I had not seen (something I did on the way there the week before – if you have not seen Snowpiercer do so – it is probably the best original Science Fiction film since District 9). But it was enough time to cue up something I had enjoyed enough on a previous viewing. Hence I picked Godzilla. And an hour and a half later and with the numerous interruptions provided by the pilot announcing one thing or another about our impending landing what had I seen? A significant chunk of a movie named Godzilla without seeing hardly anything of the actual Godzilla. And that my friends is the biggest problem with this film.

The fight scenes between the monsters or the monsters and the military, when they do happen, are spectacular.

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But they are so brief in time, even the final battle is not more than a couple of minutes, that the movie commits perhaps the cardinal sin of a reboot of a popular franchise. It sidelines the very reason anyone is watching the movie in the first place: that being Godzilla himself. I get that the director, Gareth Edwards, wanted to offer a tribute to the first great Godzilla film, but that’s just it; this isn’t the first time anyone has seen Godzilla. It’s the thousandth time. Thus, any new Godzilla film better have Godzilla. Especially one as terrifying as the monster Edward’s team came up with; undoubtedly the finest rendition of any Godzilla – ever.

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Thus the film serves as a cautionary warning. If you are going to make a monster movie, don’t forget the monster.

Richard Kiel “Jaws” Dies at 74

Richard Kiel, famous for his role as the James Bond villain “Jaws” in the 1970’s Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker has passed away just a few days shy of his seventy fifth birthday. The 7 foot 2 inch actor was born in Detroit Michigan in 1939. Though he appeared in a number of other films and television shows his role in the James Bond films will forever be remembered. the-spy-who-loved-me-jaws-richard-kiel

As many of you know by now, Robin Williams died yesterday at age 63 (apparently suicide being the cause of death).

My first exposure to his work was via the TV Show Mork & Mindy. From there, and though Mrs. Doubtfire gets so much attention, three of my favorite performances of his were in Good Morning Vietnam and of all things, two of his darker roles; in the 2002 films Insomnia and One Hour Photo. In addition I would be utterly remiss to ignore the 1980 film Popeye, in which he played the titular character. The movie was in heavy rotation on HBO and was a staple of my childhood.

Rather than go into a long introspective piece on the greatness that was his particular brand of comedy I would like to show you some examples of why he was such a riveting entertainer:

 

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