S.M. Douglas

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Tag: American Werewolf in London

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.”

The Making of a Great Werewolf Transformation Scene: Pain

One of the things I love about being a horror author is getting to interact on social media with fans, friends, and peers. In particular, I have more great discussions about all things werewolf there than I have since I was in junior high – debating with my friends whether a werewolf could beat The Terminator or an Alien, and other such fun topics.

A few weeks back I put up on Facebook a post I did several years ago when I initially started my Random Pop Culture blog (that has since been absorbed here into my author website). The post is about the best werewolf transformation scenes of all time.

Howling_Movie_Werewolf_Transoformation_2

That generated quite a bit of discussion, including yesterday from one commentator who made the point that “Transformation shouldn’t be THAT painful and slow, they should just morph into a werewolf without all the drama that would bring too much attention to the transformation.

This is a valid point, and I do not at all want to be dismissive of the commentator’s viewpoint. However, I believe it is wrong. The following explains why.

To start, check out my original post, where I have embedded the transformation scenes engineered by Rob Bottin for The Howling and Rick Baker for American Werewolf in London. If not interested in the AWIL transformation scene then read on for The Howling’s. That post was part of a series I had done exploring why The Howling (the original 1981 movie) proved such a great addition to the werewolf genre.

One of those big reasons for The Howling’s success as a genre altering film came from it’s treatment of the transformation scene:

Before The Howling the classic werewolf movies tended to show the transformation scene as something upsetting to the shape shifting human, but not incredibly uncomfortable. To wit, check out the transformation scenes in two all-time werewolf classics (1941’s The Wolfman and 1943’s Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman – ground-breaking in their own right and for their time) that established what would become the key element (dare I say “money shot”) of any werewolf film:

Now, let’s return to the comment regarding why it is the transformation scenes have to be that painful. The answer is simple and two part.

First, for the transformation scenes to not jar the viewer from the state of suspended disbelief that allows them to enjoy the movie (or for that matter the reader with a book) – the scene must seem real. What I mean is this; take Mr. Eddie Quist of The Howling. He might have been all of 5’10” and maybe 165 pounds. Yet, in a few minutes he alters into a seven plus foot tall several hundred pound werewolf.

Those breaking and reforming bones, dramatically stretching muscles, skin, claws popping through fingertips, and other such changes aren’t just painful – they would be excruciating. For comparative purposes look at the pain a woman goes through pushing a baby down her birth canal. This is a process orders of magnitude less transformative in reshaping the relevant body parts, but involves hours of pain the likes of which most men can’t imagine. For my male readers who would like to imagine – envision trying to crap out a bowling ball and think of what that would do to your ass. For weeks afterward you wouldn’t even be able to pass gas without having to change your shorts.

Second, by portraying the transformation into a werewolf in such wrenching physical terms the author or director is explicitly linking that change to the werewolf’s enormous hunger that must be sated – and now! This is a key component in establishing why it is the werewolf is such a ravenous monster. This thus makes the werewolf movie more believable, and thus fun. Imagine how hungry you are after running a 10k or lifting serious weights for an hour or so. If you think that stokes your metabolism, honey I’ve got news for you – it ain’t nothing like what a werewolf goes through. Most serious artists in the genre agree. I will leave you with the last big-budget Hollywood werewolf movie and it’s transformation scene. The Wolfman remake from a few year’s back:

Though I am not particularly fond of remakes, or “reboots” in today’s vernacular, note how different this transformation scene is from the original Wolfman – not just technically but emotionally.

I hope I’ve answered my questioner who stated his belief that transformation scenes shouldn’t be so painful. To be fair his original comment added the qualifier “so” – and perhaps there we can find a common ground. Does it need to take three minutes? Maybe not. Should it take longer than thirty seconds? Hell yes. Nevertheless, I obviously tend to agree with the Rob Bottin, Rick Baker school of transformation scenes – as can be attested by readers of my new novel Apex Predator.

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.

the-howling_Movie_Poster

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:

Howling_Movie_Werewolf_Transoformation_1

Howling_Movie_Werewolf_Transoformation_2

Howling_Movie_Werewolf_Transoformation_3

howling_werewolf_snarl

Howling_werewolf

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:

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