S.M. Douglas

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Beware of Concentrated Power Wherever It May Go

Earlier this year the recently disgraced Elon Musk sent a rocket into space. Readers of my werewolf horror novel Apex Predator know that I like to explore the ramifications posed by concentrated power running wild on Earth (no less in space).

Perhaps it is no surprise then that the launch of SpaceX’s latest reminds me of one of my favorite films. A film that influenced my fear of untrammeled power in a corporate context. A film that also happens to be in part about the dangers posed by the privatization of space by corporate entities.

Perhaps my fellow horror and science fiction friends know what movie I am talking about…

alien computer text

One of My Writing Influences

When we think of a genre of books or films that include a message about social and political issues science fiction often crops up. As well it should.

Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (and its progeny) is widely praised for this reason. However, it is of course far from alone in this regard. Nevertheless, many people frequently dismiss horror. This is in spite of the reality that horror offers a great way of exploring contemporary issues within our society.

Leveraging horror in such a manner is something I very much tried to do with my werewolf novel Apex Predator (https://www.amazon.com/Apex-Predator-S-M-Doug…/…/ref=sr_1_1…). In that regard I am far from the first. Among my influences is Whitley Strieber – the author of one of the all-time great “werewolf” books:

Wolfen Book Cover

The Wolfen: http://smdouglas.com/…/the-horror-genres-often-overlooked…/…

Winter Werewolves

I’m a sucker for werewolves in winter (and yea, it’s spring time but still).  Love it. So much so that in my werewolf novel Apex Predator I wrote a scene featuring exactly that. In this case it featured a brutal battle fought deep in a snow covered forest. The fight was between a band of veteran soldiers and a werewolf seeking bloody revenge.

Anyway, check out these paintings (done of course by the werewolf maestro himself: the Polish artist Jakub Rozalski). I’m pretty sure I would pick the werewolf to win all of these, but you never know – sometimes the humans have a chance.

Winter Werewolf Battle 1 Winter Werewolf Battle 2 Winter Werewolf Battle 3

Who do you think would win?

Sir Ghastly Graves

I’d like to give a hat tip to Sir Graves Ghastly and provide some Detroit horror history for readers of my werewolf book Apex Predator.

In the book one of my characters mentions growing up with an eerie Led Zeppelin themed TV show featuring a horror movie of the week. Readers who are not from Detroit often ask if there really was such a thing – and there was!

From 1967 to November 1982 the horror show Sir Graves Ghastly ran virtually every Saturday afternoon on WJBK Channel 2 in Detroit. By the way, the show’s host (pictured here) was none other than Sir Graves Ghastly himself! Played by actor Lawson Deming (R.I.P. 1913-2007) Sir Graves may be Detroit’s all-time favorite vampire – a man known for hamming it up like no other.

SirGravesGhastly

Though Sir Graves Ghastly also ran in Cleveland and Washington D.C. the Detroit market provided it’s strongest ratings. That is until College Football proved to be the vampire’s undoing. When the chance arose to write my novel I couldn’t resist sprinkling it with references to my favorite horror influences – including Sir Graves Ghastly.

The Sequel That Never Was

As it turns out John Landis had an idea for the An American Werewolf in London sequel that unfortunately never happened.

American Werewolf In London Poster

Landis explains his idea in an excerpt from a new book by Paul Davis entitled Beware The Moon: The Story of An American Werewolf In London:

“The movie was about the girl that the boys talk about at the beginning of the movie, Debbie Klein. She gets a job in London as a literary agent and while she’s there, starts privately investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Jack and David. The conceit was that during the time in the first film where Jenny (Agutter) goes to work and David is pacing around the apartment, he actually wrote Debbie Klein a letter. It was all to do with this big secret that David had never told Jack that he had a thing with her. She went back to the Slaughtered Lamb and everyone is still there! I think the only changes were a portrait of Charles and Diana where the five-pointed star used to be and darts arcade game instead of a board. It’s then when she speaks to Sgt McManus, the cop from the first movie who didn’t die, that she finds out that Jenny is still in London. She calls her and leaves an answer phone message, which we then reveal is being listened to by the skeletal corpses of Jack and David, watching TV in Alex’s apartment! The big surprise at the end was that Alex was the werewolf. It was pretty wild. The script had everybody in it from the first movie, including all the dead people!”

Off the top of my head I am wondering how this would work. Consider that the werewolf infecting Jack and David had been killed on the moors and thus could not have been Alex. For that matter, why was Jack in limbo again? After all, the werewolf that killed him was dead? David didn’t kill him, it shouldn’t have mattered that David was still alive except for the people he killed.

Anyone else with me on this? Or am I missing something that explains like a pretty glaring plot hole in the original movie (a movie which I love by the way – so don’t crucify me about this) regardless of what it would mean for a sequel?

Anyway, obviously Landis’ idea was never fleshed out. The upshot being that we got the mediocre American Werewolf in Paris CGI cartoon fest for our sequel – ugghhh!

Of course, I would love to see you read my work. But if you aren’t reading my werewolf book then have at this one! Anything about one of the best ever werewolf movies always looks pretty good to me!

On select nights from Sept. 20 to Nov. 2, guests’ worst nightmares will be unleashed as evil takes root at Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights 23. Universal Orlando’s award-winning Halloween Horror Nights event transforms Universal Studios Florida into a realm of movie-quality haunted houses, incredible live shows and streets filled with hundreds of horrifying “scareactors.”

Follow Up: So far I’ve already received a ton of feedback. The best answer to the bloodline questions above went like this: “The bloodline wasn’t severed with the death of the werewolf on the moors, it was passed on to David. Think of the bloodline as children; if a person is infected, then they become children of this lycanthropic family tree. Killing one werewolf wasn’t enough, eradicating every member of this “tree” was the only true way to lift the curse of the undead. It’s the only way to explain why Jack was still around even though the werewolf that killed him was dead itself.”

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