Lune de sang

Despite what you might think after reading my title, I quite liked Bad Moon. It's good for a werewolf movie even though I sometimes had the feeling I was watching an episode of "Lassie" rather than a movie about a werewolf.

A man and his girlfriend, both American scientists on an expedition somewhere in the jungle of India, were attacked by a werewolf. He manages to survive the attack and knows to kill the animal, but his girlfriend has already been ripped to pieces and died a horrible death. Even though he survived the werewolf wounded him badly and now he's a werewolf himself. Despite popular believe, the man doesn't only turn into a werewolf at full moon. He becomes one every night and there is no cure. His only hope is his sister and her son. He hopes that the love of his family will cure him from his "disease".

As I already said Bad Moon is an enjoyable movie. Especially the morphing technique (when you actually see him turn into a werewolf) is cool to watch. The story may not always be the very original, it still does the trick. The same for the acting. There is nothing spectacular about it, but it is very decent and believable. I give this movie a 6,5/10.

Despite useless to say but somehow how I've really enjoy the Werewolf legendary tales, even it was been made recently, almost without any help from those graphic computers usually done on latest, this picture was saw in my early Cable TV experience and impact me deeply, mainly over such priceless sequence thru Dog's look, almost freeze, how it was done is quite insane, many hours shooting to catch a three seconds or something, what a gorgeous takes!!!

The storyline is another meaningful thing to expose, quite often has a romantic pair on the plot, in this it wasn't happened, Mariel Hemingway and Paré are brothers, offering a different plate to savour for a change, further the werewolf supply my taste in another point, as on golden days the Werewolf was made by animatronic process on the wolf's head, inside a stunts making all body moves, just in the mutation was used graphic computer, pretty bad by the way, but enough for me, this picture has just 5,7 from IMDB's users, very underrated !!!

Resume:

First watch: 1998 / How many: 2 / Source: Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5.

This is quite a unique movie because it's based on the book Thor which tells it's story from the perspective of a dog called Thor. The movie doesn't do this for the most part, but the dog Thor remains an important character in the story. So sometimes it feels almost like a horror movie interpretation of Lassie.

The cinematography, acting, directing is top notch for a 90s horror and I'd say those elements are actually superior to many newer, more recent, horror movies. One early birds eye view shot for example is just as good as the opening shot of the classic movie The Shining.

The monster, obviously a big werewolf, is at times quite menacing and horrific and not the predictable CGI that we often see in modern films but instead the old school animatronics/puppet type. I'm not sure how younger audiences will react to it since they're so accustomed to CGI these days. To me, CGI often looks fake and lacking substance, density and textural reality. But with a puppet of this nature, while you can easily tell it's fake, it just has more substance to it because it's made of real material, moving in real space, as opposed to CGI emptiness.

This movie is only let down by a slightly weak story. It starts off very well and carries on being fairly gripping up until the third act when certain plot holes and weaknesses in the script come into play. The final scenes unfortunately are probably the biggest let down and that's where this movie loses most of it's points for me. If it had a stronger third act and much better ending I think it would have possibly been regarded as an all-time horror classic instead of the cult classic that it still remains. But it's still very much worth watching for any horror movie fan and I'd definitely recommend it for some guaranteed horror movie fun.

You have a good life. Nice home, nice yard. But one day a relative comes to visit, and you know something's not right about him. You come to find out he's a werewolf. The only problem is, you're the only one who knows. And you're a dog.

Werewolves are one of those monsters that come and go in films. After a decade which saw the release of many good werewolf films (the 1980s), there just weren't many films about them in the 1990s. Bad Moon is one of the few good ones that were made during this period. Not an outstanding film by any stretch, but a fun film nonetheless. It features an excellent performance by a German Shepherd as the protagonist, Thor. Worth a look if you're a fan of the genre. Probably not very exciting if you're not.

Bad Moon (1996)

*** (out of 4)

Highly entertaining film from writer-director Eric Red has Janet (Mariel Hemingway) allowing her brother Ted (Michael Pare) to move in with her and her young son Brett (Mason Gamble). Everyone is happy about the idea except for her German Shepard dog who seems to have something against Ted. What Janet doesn't realize is that her brother was attacked by a werewolf and is now one himself.

I didn't see BAD MOON when it was originally released even though I love werewolf movies. I finally caught up with it on DVD and really enjoyed the movie so I decided to revisit it yet again on Blu-ray and I think it has gotten even better. Is the movie flawless? Of course not but at the same time there's no question that it's an entertaining horror film.

What I enjoyed most about the film is that there's not a tremendous amount of dialogue as the main "action" takes place between the uncle and the dog. I really loved this aspect of the story and it was fascinating watching the dog and his reaction to the Uncle. I loved the way the dog could see the dnager that his owners were in and this aspect of the film brought an original touch to a genre that has had countless movies in it.

The werewolf effects were quite good and I'd consider them old-fashion, which certainly isn't a bad thing. Some of the violence is quite graphic for its time and there's no question that the three leads are a lot of fun and work well together. The real star has to be Primo the dog who plays THor. He is such a great dog actor and you can't help but say he's one of the best in the history of cinema. Yeah, that's high praise but he's really that great and his reactions to things going on around here was just flawless.

BAD MOON isn't going to win any major awards but there's no doubt that it's a very good and highly entertaining film.