Scootin' On The Carpet

And from yesterday's thrill ride into Awesometown, we come to a screeching halt in the middle of WhatTheFuckville with broken door locks and forgotten wallets.

We're gonna get murdered in the face.

The movie starts with two men hunting in the jungles of Cameroon.  Oddly, Bebe Zahara Benet, winner of season one of RuPaul's Drag Race, did not come racing across the screen lip-synching to Diana Ross.  They get a call on the radio that includes the sounds of someone getting eaten.  Because this is Africa, they think nothing of it until they get attacked themselves.  And this is why hunting is bad.  Because there's a reason they call Nature a Mother.

Years later, we find Derek, a meek, scrawny milquetoast of a teenager pledging a fraternity, going up to his stepfather's cabin with 5 of his friends for some standard teenager fun.  They get lost and have to ask Clint Howard for directions.  Normally, this would be a bad thing but this time Clint is actually helpful.

Yep.  Still creepy, though.

So, after spending hours trying to FIND the cabin, the shenanigans begin.  It's all fun and games.  One couple goes outside for a little romp in the ... woods?  There's, like, one fucking tree there.  Another couple gets down and kind of dirty seeing as how the girl isn't gonna give up the hymen until marriage and, apparently, doesn't swallow.

The two on the left?  Sexually generous.

That leaves grungy trailer park chick, Sam, and Derek.  Nothing happens there.  Snoozeville.  Not sure Derek has a penis at this point. 

Anyway, the couple outside gets torn to shreds and then something begins terrorizing the kids indoors.  While most of the kids are cowering in the living room, Cherry Poppins in the bedroom, there, gets raped and murdered by, gosh, well, I'll be, a friggin' werewolf because her boyfriend told her to put some fuckin' clothes on.

That might be a hymen.  We'll never know.

So, Sam and Derek get back to civilization and work out, somehow, that Derek's stepfather is a damn werewolf.  They go all Scooby-Doo, as idiotic horror movie characters are wont to do, and because they do, Derek's uncle gets slaughtered.  Kind of a revenge thing, I guess.  All the while, Derek, Sam and the step-dad are all being hounded by... the school news team?  Like they're going to be the ones to break a story about mysterious murders?  For real?

Your W-DUM news team.

So, long story short, Sam gets abducted by step-dad and taken back to the cabin, Derek and the news team follow, the news team gets rendered into kibble, Derek and Sam attach silver knives to arrows, KNOWING that they ain't gonna fly that well, the werewolf is set on fire, the cabin is destroyed, Derek gets bit, step-dad passes on the curse, Sam gets all soppy and they drive off on a moped.

You people owe me.  You all had better be buyin' shit when I start offering it because if I don't shoot myself from the mental scarring all of these bad movies inflict, I'm still gonna have to pay a therapist and my paycheck just won't cover that right now.

This movie was AWFUL.  I don't care that it won an award in Houston, Texas.  It's TEXAS!  What the hell do they know besides big hair, Jeebus and lax gun control laws?  This was of even lower quality than your standard made-for-Syfy movie.  Sharktopus was better than this.

Seriously.  What the fuck was up with that makeup?  It's like someone sat on it before the latex cured completely and the $20 they reserved for make-up effects was almost gone because somebody needed a latte.  And the brown on brown on brown color scheme just made that face appear to have been molded from a weeks worth of dog shit.

This video?  Better than this movie.  NOT SAFE FOR WORK! 

 

Just ignore this movie.  Pretend it never existed.  If I can save you from the suck then maybe my life has some meaning.

A-teeeeen, HUT!

To be completely honest, werewolf movies kind of hit their peak with An American Werewolf in London.  The quality of werewolf movies after the early 80s dropped dramatically.  Until 2002.

That's when werewolf fans and furries with very specific fetishes were treated to the lycanthropic masterpiece, Dog Soldiers.

This blend of military action and bestial horror is, quite honestly, one of the best produced werewolf films, EVER.

I'm still gonna make fun of it.  'Cause that's how I roll.

So.  We begin with a young couple out camping.  The young man gives his girl a gift of a silver letter opener.  Which she should have stabbed him with because who gives their girlfriend a letter opener?  In recognition of the gift faux-pas, they promptly get attacked by something large and hairy.

Then we move on to our heroes, Private Cooper is seen running through the forest trying to escape a group of pursuers and rejoin his squad.  He fights his attackers but is overwhelmed.  Turns out this was part of a special forces exercise that he fails when he refuses to shoot a dog.  Which, y'know, is the right course of action to anyone with a conscience. 

Four weeks later, Cooper's squad is dropped in the middle of the Scottish Highlands for another exercise.  They expect to be shooting blanks at a Special Air Services unit, all they find are puddles of goo and bone.  The one survivor they find tries to tell them what did it but he's all cryptic and shit.

YAY!  RED FLAGS!

Unseen things make their presence known and in the process one of the squad is impaled on a branch and another, Wells, is attacked.  Cooper rescues him and carries him to the road where the squad meets Megan, a zoologist.  She gets them to an isolated house for cover and shelter.  Because that's the BEST place to hide.  Of course, communications are down, too.

So tense... someone needs a massage.

As they settle in, Megan reveals that the attackers, who have gathered around the house by now, are werewolves. And it's getting dark.

The rest of the movie is all Rambo.  I refuse to go any further into this because if you haven't seen it, you won't get it.  Suffice it to say that this movie is AMAZING.

Not least of which is due to the creature effects.  

I'm TRYING to SLEEP!

Seriously, this is one of the best full-body makeups I've ever seen.  I'm betting they couldn't move real well on stilts but they LOOKED incredible.

I truly appreciated how they brought werewolves into the modern day.  They took the time to explain how the superstitions were false and the werewolves have science and, it appears, a knowledge of military tactics on their side.  They KNEW how to corral the squad into what basically amounts to an abbatoir.  Brilliance.

This is a must-see for horror fans.

I kinda wish the sequel hadn't been shelved.  I'm kind of interested in how this particular mythos can spread.

Is Paris Burning? Is That What I Smell?

You guys already know my love for An American Werewolf in London, right?  I mean it's not like I haven't mentioned it.

Soooooo... yeah.  As much as we want to cover this up with false memories and tiny drops of acid applied directly on the parts of the brain that retain this memory, it had a sequel.  A really bad sequel.  A sequel that should have warranted a public flogging and beheading but apparently we're all "civilized" and "we don't DO that, anymore."  Hell, we don't even tar and feather people, anymore.  Where's a friggin' RAIL when you need one on which to drive someone out of town?

I would say that I hate all of you, right now, but I remember that I volunteered for this shit.

Anyway, off we go.

Andy and his two, sex-crazed, asshole friends, Brad and Chris, are touring Europe and are all hot diggity-dog about Paris.  Being assholes, they decide to get into a little bit of hot B&E action on the Eiffel Tower.  Because I know I want to sleep in a sleeping bag on a metal fucking grate all night.  Brad and Chris tease Alex about not having the balls to do crazy shit so Andy gets all bungeed up to take a leap off the tower.  They get interrupted by Seraphine, who has apparently decided to do the same thing, only in a skirt and without a bungee cord.  In the process of saving her life, Andy gets her to the ground but then forgets that bungee cords stretch and a basically triangular erector set with the wide part on the BOTTOM is probably not the best place to jump when the laws of physics send him directly into an I-beam.

Because he's still an asshole and he kept her shoe, he decides to go all Prince Charming and find her. 

Green Screen fuckin' FRANCE!  Seriously?

He DOES but she tries to blow him off.  There's a barely humorous scene involving a condom and a power-lifter.  The guys then hit up "Club de la Lune", a snack bar for werewolves disguised as a dance club.  It's run by a dude named Claude.  He becomes vaguely important later.  In any case, chaos, mayhem, Chris escapes, Brad is eaten and Andy, because he's the HEAD asshole, gets bit and wakes up at Seraphine's house.

QUICK!  Cover yourself so we can market this movie to teenagers!

Seraphine has to hide him from her mother... badly... well, more to the point, she has to hide her mother from Andy because her mother is DEAD!  Oh, did I mention that Seraphine is supposed to be 16 years old and is the daughter of David Price and Alex Kessler from An American Werewolf in London?  She don't LOOK 16.  Or act it.  I think somebody got their calendars all messed up.  Anyway, NOW Andy is turning into a werewolf and he can see ghosts and shit.  Ghosts like Alex, which really weirds him out.  His buddy Brad explains that he now has to eat the heart of the werewolf that turned him to be normal again AND kill the werewolf that killed him so he can go rest and shit.  In the meantime, Andy gets all wolfy with a really fucking annoying American chick named Amy and she's pissed that he killed her so she's actively trying to murder him in the face.

She's pissed because this is the ugliest werewolf EVER.

Claude tries to get Andy to join their big, secret, werewolf club with the secret handshake and the t-shirts and the geflavin.  Serafin explains, way too late in the damn movie, that her stepfather had been working on a drug that would control the transformation but, because her stepfather was an idiot, the stuff only causes the transformation to occur immediately.  Claude steals it and holds a big Fourth of July party.

What?

There's shooting, there's a subway train fight, Andy eats Claude's heart, Serafine knows exactly where Andy is at all times, happy fucking ending, blargy-blargy-bloo-bloo.

Yeah, 'cause THIS didn't blow the whole "werewolf conspiracy" wide open or anything...

Ummmm, that SFX budget I mentioned in the previous post?  Spent on hookers and blow, this time around.  French hookers.  I know it might sound cool to call them demi-mondes but they're still hookers.  Hookers in corsets and Can-Can skirts.

I MIGHT not have had as much of a problem with this movie if everything hadn't been green screen or CGI.  The script was kind of insane and could have been pared down A LOT, or at least rearranged so that it made more sense but everything else in this movie was so fucking distracting that I almost didn't care about the runaway plot bunnies.

The people behind the werewolf effects need to maybe do a little more studying of anatomy before trying to animate werewolves.  If you're GOING to use green screen, learn how to blend your edges.  Same for your CGI monsters.  Oh, and try to make the lighting match the environment, too. 

And, you know what?  I lied.  I would still have had PLENTY to be pissed about with this movie even if they DID use practical effects because they'd probably fuck those up, too.  I mean, did these guys even WATCH the first movie?  These monsters looked NOTHING like the monster in London. I swear they just spent half of the time fapping over the 6 nipples they gave Julie Delpy.  SFX people?  Your dicks are not that important.

I seriously think that there are times when destroying media is an OK thing but only when it's just fucking abyssmal.

DO NOT SURRENDER TO THE TITLE! 

Don't be all French like that.

Howl

Since 1912's The Werewolf, werewolves have had an extremely strong presence on the silver screen.  Which is strange considering their aversion to silver...

Not a lot of werewolf movies get made but, as compared to vampire flicks or slashers, whose prolific presence wears me the fuck out, sometimes, most of them are pretty good, even considering that the makeup is normally cheesy as fuck.  Even so, though, it seems that the special effects budget in werewolf movies generally guarantees a better quality film.  It's almost like the directors go, "Hmmm.  I have a metric shit ton of money that I have to spend on making a dude turn into an anthropomorphic wolf.  I had better make this shit look good or I will never have this kind of budget again."

That being said, I'm declaring this Werewolf Week.  Because I said so and you will sit down and ENJOY it, Missy.

Anyhoo.  First up?  One of my FAVORITES.  In fact, my second favorite after An American Werewolf in London.

The Howling.

Based (extremely loosely) on the 1977 novel by Gary Brandner, Joe Dante, in one of his better turns as a director, brings us a tale of feminist media gone horribly wrong.

Karen White (Dee Wallace) is an LA news achor who's being stalked by Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo), a local serial killer.  Because she's kind of dumb, even for 1980's standards, she agrees to be bait for Quist in an extra-sleazy adult bookstore.  Quist forces her to watch a video of a rape and when she turns around to look at him she screams, he gets shot and gets away and she gets a handy case of amnesia.

OMG!  Creeper's touchin' me!!

As part of her therapy, Karen gets sent to The Colony, a retreat that her therapist, George (Patrick MacNee) owns, for some west and wewaxation at wast.  There, she meets such interesting characters as the nymphomaniac, Marsha Quist (Elizabeth Brooks), which should tell you something and who immediately tries to seduce Karen's husband Bill (Christopher Stone, Wallace's real-life husband until his death in 1995).  He resists, of course, and gets bitten by a wolf for his trouble.  Payback's a bitch, I guess.

HA!  Bitch.  I slay me.

So, then he goes back and bones (I did it again) Marsha as they transform into werewolves in the corniest  animated sex scene, EVER.

So, yeah, because of Bill's bite, Karen gets her friend Terri to come to The Colony for some moral support.  Terri manages to connect The Colony to Eddie Quist via a sketch he made and left there.  Because best friends are ALWAYS forensic scientists.  Karen also turns on her wifely ESP and begins to suspect that not only is Bill cheating on her but there's a bigger secret in play, here.  

And then, Terri gets attacked by Quist.  Terri manages to cut the monster's arm off and get to the main office where she places a call to her boyfriend, Chris, and tells him what's going on but gets munched on by Quist while she's on the phone.  Chris sets off for The Colony with a buttload of silver bullets.

Karen gets accosted by Quist again who transforms in front of her, which is AWESOME!!  No, seriously, this is on par with American Werewolf in London (which Rik Baker left this project to work on).

Check the manicure, bitch.

Chris manages to shoot Quist but, DUNDundunnnnnnnn, EVERYBODY in The Colony is a werewolf.  They don't need none of that "full moon" shit, neither.  They can change at will.  Karen and Chris survive and burn the camp to the ground.  I do not know if they sowed salt on the ashes.  

Karen then decides to expose the truth about werewolves, because who believes that shit?  It starts like this:

KILL MEEEEEE!!

And ends like this:

Great.  I'm a fucking teddy bear.

Chris shoots her, the public questions whether or not the live transformation is special effects and Marsha is revealed to have survived and a slew of truly awful sequels are born.

As I've said before, Joe Dante is almost a master of combining comedy and horror and while this is one of his darker pieces, there's a WHOLE lot of self-referential humor in The Howling by way of background characters and character names. If you look closely, you can find the mummified grandmother from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

If only the rest of Dante's work was this good.  Dante just isn't consistent and that's why I have a problem with him.  He's directed some of my favorites but he's also directed some real barkers (snrk).

Anyway, this movie is one of my favorites for a reason.  It's slick and funny and it kind of embraces its silliness.  Dee Wallace isn't quite at the top of her game, here (the top being her performance in Cujo which, seriously, should have at LEAST gotten her an Oscar™ nod), but she's still pretty damn good.  The state-of-the-art werewolf transformation is delightfully gory and a whole lot of fun to watch.  Plus, that whole idea of "psychiatric retreat as werewolf pack" just tickles me pink.

If you've never seen this, SHAME ON YOU!!

It's a classic.

Go.

Watch.

Now.