Pom Klementieff has been cast as a key character in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The article states that Marvel conducted a wide search for its mystery part, which called for an Asian actress, and did several rounds of chemistry reads.
Who is this key character that Klementieff will play? Director James Gunn has admitted several times that he is a huge fan of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s reinvention of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The two characters that immediately jump out as possibilities are Moondragon and Mantis.
UPDATE: Deadline is reporting that Klementieff has been cast as Mantis.
Moondragon has a similar origin to Star-Lord:
Heather Douglas was born in Los Angeles, California, daughter of Arthur and Yvette Steckley Douglas. When Heather was still a girl, her father was driving her and her mother through the desert when they accidentally happened to see the spaceship of Thanos land; the space villain did not want any witnesses, so he destroyed their car. Heather was thrown clear and survived, but her parents were killed. (She would later discover that her father’s soul was bound into a new body, becoming Drax the Destroyer.) She was found by Thanos’ father, Mentor, who took her to his home world, Titan, to be raised by the monks of Shao-Lom.
From the monks, Heather develops her body to its full potential, becoming a formidable martial artist. They teach Heather various scientific disciplines such as chemistry and genetic engineering; but most significantly, they help Heather tap into her latent psionic powers, present within all humans. Heather is able to develop her mental powers far beyond even those of her teachers, so much so that she eventually mentally contacts a powerful entity called the Dragon of the Moon. The Dragon immediately tries to corrupt and take her over, but she fights back, driving the Dragon away. This fills her with pride and an overwhelming sense of superiority. To commemorate her victory, she takes the name Moondragon. Unknown to Heather, the Dragon subtly continues to influence her on a subconscious level. (Wikipedia)
The origin of Mantis is a bit more complicated:
Mantis is the half-Vietnamese, half-German daughter of Gustav Brandt—Libra—and was born in Huế, Vietnam. In her childhood, her father leaves her in Vietnam at the Temple of the alien Priests of Pama, a sect of the Kree. The Kree believe she might become the Celestial Madonna and mate with the eldest Cotati on Earth to become the mother of the Celestial Messiah, “the most important being in the universe.”
She excels in her martial arts studies, but when she reaches adulthood, she is mind-wiped and sent into the world to gain life experience. She becomes a prostitute and barmaid in a Vietnamese bar, where she meets the Swordsman. She helps him regain his self-respect and follows him when the former villain attempts to rejoin the Avengers. She became an Avengers ally when the Swordsman rejoined the Avengers, and she battled the Lion God alongside them. (Wikipedia)
After reading the report that, Marvel was looking for an Asian actress, Mantis sounds like an easy call. Gunn loves his aliens and Mantis is a fun character that could provide comic relief.
But…
The casting call that when out earlier this week for the film mentioned that they were looking for beautiful bald women. Moondragon is bald, arrogant, and the long lost daughter of Drax. This dynamic practically writes its self. Who doesn’t want to see Peter Quil try to sleep with Drax’s daughter?
What character do you want to see in Guardians of the Galaxy 2?
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is written and directed by James Gunn and stars Bradley Cooper, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Michael Rooker, Vin Diesel, and Zoe Saldana.
The show takes places after a tragic end to her short-lived Super hero career. The series follows Jessica as she rebuilds her personal life and career as a detective who seems to get cases involving people with super abilities in New York City. Marvel’s Jessica Jones premieres on November 20th on Netflix.
The series stars Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, David Tennant as Kilgrave, Mike Colter as Luke Cage, Rachael Taylor as Patricia “Trish” Walker, and Carrie-Anne Moss. Marvel’s Jessica Jones is Executive Produced by series Showrunner Melissa Rosenberg and Liz Friedman, along with Jeph Loeb, who also serves as Marvel’s Head of Television.
Marvel’s Jessica Jones is produced by Marvel Television in association with ABC Studios for Netflix. The series premieres on Netflix November 20.
The “All-New, All-Different” Marvel is set to reunite a classic creative team from the past – Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. Together, Bendis and Maleev revolutionized Daredevil, crafting a unique and powerful run comparable only to Frank Miller’s seminal work. Now these two creators have set their sights on Marvel’s Armored Avenger.
Late last week, Marvel announced Bendis’ second ongoing title staring the character, International Iron Man. The series will see Tony Stark take his futurist philosophy and high-tech superheroics across the globe. Marvel plans to make this series truly international by translating and publishing the title in over 20 different countries.
I will inform you right now, if you haven’t seen Season 6, Episode 3 of The Walking Dead, this is a ginormous SPOILER ALLERT!!! And I can’t believe you have yet to watch it. Episode 3: Thank You is shocking and heart-wrenching.
I thought about writing this review Sunday night and posting it first thing Monday morning, but I needed a minute to pause and absorb what happened. I HAD to process. It was definitely an emotional night for me and I was stunned into silence.
I watch The Walking Dead every week, at pool hall called the Green Room, with a group of friends who are dedicated, and sometimes rabid, fans. I am an enthusiastic watcher. I L.O.V. E the damned show. The suspense, the gore, the action, it is right down my alley of things that excite the gore-monger within me. We have a Mystery Science Theater 3000 type of atmosphere where clever remarks are thrown into the mix as the show plays. We don’t speak over the dialogue; we just add our own special brand of commentary. RULE: If you don’t get that, then don’t come out to play when the “stories” are on. Shut up!
Sunday night started off in the usual fashion. We all gathered around the bar to watch the episode. As it began we sat in almost complete silence for the lead-in. The previous week was filled with Wolves and more “dead walking” than you could shake a stick at. The sheer size of the herd that had amassed was enough to take your breath away.
Rick’s plan to lead them away was a solid one until the damned Wolves showed up and started killing folks. Our ever steady Carol (Melissa McBride) kept her head and came up with a plan to infiltrate the aggressors. Morgan (Lennie James) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) took care of business and rallied the troops that were left to defend and keep their home. The stage was set for the more Walker wrangling and near-death experiences.
The group outside the wall runs toward the sound of the horn blaring from home. The second half of the herd had broken off and was now following the sound of the truck horn and were close on the hills of Rick, Michonne, Glenn, and the rest. As they fled they lost an Alexandrian fairly quickly after stopping to take a break and regroup. He wasn’t paying attention and a walker snuck up on him. The Alexandrian woman fell and injured herself and was now a burden.
We can see quite clearly that these sheltered people from Alexandria have no idea how to survive in the wilderness and will slow our core team down. What I hoped to see was that some among them would step up and show us what they were made of – besides Heath (Corey Hawkins), the new T-Dog/Tyreese replacement. Rick was right to tell his team to save them if they could, but to leave them if they couldn’t – Just Survive Somehow (Episode 2, Season 6).
The battered and bruised second team.
With two members of the team injured and another bitten, it did not look good for their survival. But Glenn, OH Glenn, our moral center since the demise of our beloved Hershel and Dale , is determined to leave NO ONE behind in spite of Rick’s words. His determination to keep his humanity in check and still do what he needs to do to survive is both admirable and frustrating. But we trust/trusted in Glenn to lead as many in the team he was leading back to safety. That’s what he does…or did.
I mean, we knew people were going to die. What they were attempting was a dangerous feat. But it needed to be done. If horde of Walkers broke through the truck barrier in that valet without warning there was no way the community could have survived. The walls of the Alexandria would have come tumbling down around them.
I am not naïve enough to think that everything was going to be OK during “Operation Steer the Dead Away from Alexandria,” but I was not expecting all that took place on Sunday. If you are a follower of the graphic novels you knew that Glenn is living on borrowed time. His death is imminent, but it’s not supposed to happen yet.
Glenn is a lynchpin in the group dynamic of the show. His strong character and his steadfast decency are needed. It keeps a healthy balance in the family. And really, are they going to play the Hershel/Tyreese switch-a-roo again? Or, are they attempting to distract us from the possibility of killing another Season 1 character? Maybe Daryl? We all know he is not tied to the comics, but his level of popularity is through the roof!
The thing about the character is also that his inherent goodness was bound to get him into trouble. He has often risked too much of his own safety in order to follow a “righteous” path and “save” people. In Episode 3 of Season 6 Glenn did not stray from his self. His need to save and rehabilitate those that we, as the audience, just don’t have the ability to make it on the outside is admirable if not just damned naïve!
When Glenn sets off with that coward Nicholas, we all knew it was a bad idea. But the closeted optimist in me wanted to believe that perhaps this would be a turning point for Nicholas. I hoped, for once, he would nut up and be the man who Glenn hoped he could be. But you could see it in his beady little eyes. He just didn’t have IT!
When that coward shot himself in the head and took Glenn down with him into a pool of the undead to be eaten alive, I was stunned into silence and disbelief. Actually, we were all stunned into silence.
Room for hope?
There are some conspiracy theorists out there who think that Glenn may be alive just yet. The last time we see him he is surrounded my sea of Walkers with blood gushing around him, but not out of his mouth. It appears that the dead are making a buffet out of our beloved Glenn. But did he fall under Nicholas? Was that actually Nicholas that the undead were feasting on? Did they lose his scent in all the gore? Like Michonne used her walkers or when the team covered themselves in dead goo to get through the city.
I mean, for those of you that watch The Talking Dead wrap-up on a regs, you know that when a major character dies on The Walking Dead, they are usually featured on that show afterwards. But there was no Steven Yeun on the show. Yvette Nicole Brown was there, but no Steven Yeun. Glenn was also noticeable left out of the post-mortem wrap-up of the characters that died during the show. The statement that Scott Gimple gave about Glenn’s fate was also VERY vague.
We just don’t really know what has happened. I will give it to the show’s writers though; they definitely got me on that one. I had to take a minute to myself to “get over” that one and I continue to need a pause. If our fair Glenn survives this, I will start my own Facebook page entitled: If Glenn Dies, We Riot Up In This BITCH!! – I’m already a member of the Daryl one.
The Horror Advocate makes cases for the under-appreciated cinematic treasures that lurk just beneath your bed. If your horror film is publicly derided, undeservedly ridiculed or generally forgotten, you may find yourself in need of… The Horror Advocate.
Resolved: Sometimes, being batshit crazy is a good thing and House on Haunted Hill (1999) is exactly that.
The original House on Haunted Hill is a seminal classic of 50s B-horror. William Castle was no stranger to movies by the time he directed the 1959 classic, having produced and directed over 40 movies prior. House on Haunted Hill, starring the legend, Vincent Price, represented Castle’s great foray into absurd film exhibition. Castle wanted to make the experience of watching a movie something visceral; a great magic trick that descended upon the audience and touched them in their seats. Literally. The movie’s plot about a millionaire inviting complete strangers to his mansion daring them to survive a night in his esteemed house and, in doing so, earning themselves $10,000, is just as well a dare to the audience. Castle knew that he’d have to up the ante during these screenings so he instituted a feature called, Emergo. When a skeleton arose from the events on screen, an actual fake skeleton would fly over the audience in the theater attached to a wire (3D eat your heart out). Castle continued these gimmicks in movies like The Tingler and 13 Ghosts using vibrating seats and hide-and-seek glasses features, respectively. Castle wasn’t just shameless in creating an immersive experience for his audience, he was downright crazy in his efforts.
The 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill represents the best and worst of Castle’s intentions and is a deliciously crazy movie as a result.
As the first film produced by Dark Castle Entertainment (the production company put together by Robert Zemeckis to remake Castle’s films), House on Haunted Hill is very much aware of its source material and the spirit behind it. The movie closely follows the plot of the original, this time the winner’s purse is up to $1 million for surviving the night. The strangeness (and admittedly, a little bit of unbelievability) begins as we learn the house is the one who has written, signed and mailed the invitations to each of its guests. Taking up the reins from Vincent Price here is Geoffrey Rush starring as a Castle-esque showman named, get this, Stephen PRICE. Rush is wonderful in the role, relishing the chance to play a rendition of two horror legends. The rest of the cast is filled-out by millennial favorites such as Taye Diggs, Famke Janssen, Ali Larter, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan and Jeffrey Combs. Most are fairly aware of the movie they’re in and play each scene accordingly. Famke Janssen, in particular, vamps it up as the sensually seedy wife of Price.
The tongue-in-cheek humor is wonderfully undercut by the absolute absurdity of the horror that takes place. When House on Haunted Hill gets mean, it gets really, strangely mean. A flashback detailing why the house is now a legendarily haunted establishment shows the once mental institution in the middle of a takeover by the interred. The sequence is off-putting and brutal as nurses are killed with pencils and put through the tests that the patients once had to endure. This scene establishes techniques that have come to haunt the genre for years after, never having been employed better than here.
Director, William Malone uses quick cuts and jump cuts in action to show how these ghosts move with violent immediacy. The technique is jarring and useful in jump scares that are telegraphed but effective. The style matches the substance of the characters and ghosts within the story. This is an insane asylum that was run by a sadistic, insane, doctor who performed unspeakable acts. The story sets up the style used throughout which made me genuinely nervous whenever one of the house’s shifty inhabitants threatened their presence.
The strangeness doesn’t stop there as Price learns each of the evening’s attendees aren’t guests of his or his wife’s choosing and are actually descendants of those who once worked at the insane asylum. The house is taking revenge on those who had caused its demise.
The house and the spirits within are the protagonists and our lead group of characters are the antagonists, even if they’re innocent and merely paying for the “sins of the father”.
The movie and its success are responsible for a lot of what made studio horror nigh unbearable in the early 00’s. From the emo/hard rock soaked soundtracks (though I personally dig the hell out of Marilyn Manson’s version of “Sweet Dreams“) to the bloated CGI finales, House on Haunted Hill has a lot to answer for. And it’s not that House is a perfect movie either! The plot is ridiculous, the dialogue is atrocious and the movie ends in one of the biggest, ugliest CGI finales I’ve ever seen.
But it has charm. Movies in all genres are able to get away with a lot of plot holes and character discrepancies if its genuinely fun to watch. Go back and try to explain to me the geography of the T-Rex paddock scene in Jurassic Park. You can’t but no one cares because it’s so much fun. In horror, if you establish characters that you’d like to see offed in a situation that is unique and intense, we tend to let those things go as well. House on Haunted Hill is a love letter to William Castle’s exhibitionism. Instead of skeletons flying from the theater rafters, Geoffrey Rush lets a roller coaster literally fly off its rails. Sure, the trick may really only work once, but that charm and effort remain forever.
Captain America: Civil War comes out next summer and with filming wrapped on the project fans are anticipating the first trailer. If you went to D23, then you got a glimpse of the trailer and footage from the film. If you didn’t attend the convention then you watched a bootleg version of the footage with not sound.
Collider is reporting that the Captain America: Civil War trailer will appear before Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This move makes sense because The Force Awakes will be the most watched film of 2015-2016 and the fact Disney owns both properties makes business sense too.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be in theaters on December 18, 2015 Captain America: Civil War will be in theaters on May 6, 2016.
The first trailer for Dirty Grandpa, the comedy starring Robert De Niro and Zac Efron, shows the very predictable road-trip formula at work.
Despite what you may think, Dirty Grandpa is not a sequel to Johnny Knoxville’s Bad Grandpa. De Niro plays Efron’s perverted, newly-widowered gramps, and a road trip sends them to South Beach for spring break hijinks.
Jason Kelly [Zac Efron] is one week away from marrying his boss’s uber-controlling daughter, putting him on the fast track for a partnership at the law firm. However, when the straight-laced Jason is tricked into driving his foul-mouthed grandfather, Dick [Robert De Niro], to Daytona for spring break, his pending nuptials are suddenly in jeopardy. Between riotous frat parties, bar fights, and an epic night of karaoke, Dick is on a quest to live his life to the fullest and bring Jason along for the ride. Ultimately, on the wildest journey of their lives, “dirty” Grandpa and his uptight grandson discover they can learn from one another and form the bond they never had.
I can’t do much more than shrug. I’m sure there will be a few laughs, but the trope is tired. Dirty Grandpa hits theaters in January, so that should be an indication to its quality.
The production team behind Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 just announced an opening casting call for extras to play aliens. The announcement states that the casting company is looking for deformed, tall, skinny people, bald women, and beautiful people. So, if you’re an average look person, you’re out of luck.
The open casting call will take place at the Georgia International Convention Center on Saturday, November 7 and Sunday, November 8th from 12 to 6 PM.
Georgia International Convention Center
1902 Sullivan Rd.
Atlanta, Georgia
For more information, or if you cannot attend the open casting call, and you would still like to submit your information, click here.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is written and directed by James Gunn and stars Bradley Cooper, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Michael Rooker, Vin Diesel, and Zoe Saldana.
Truth is one of those movies that’s going to get people talking for all the wrong reasons, mainly because it’s going to re-open a lot of old wounds. Because the story it focuses on — the journalistic scandal that rocked CBS News in 2004, whose aftermath led in part to venerable CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather stepping down early the following year — is so close in recent memory, and because what’s “true” in regards to that story and the story behind it is still very hotly contended by the parties involved and the nation as a whole, the quality of the film and the performances within it might get lost in the din of voices raised once again, pointing fingers and making accusations about personal agendas, political biases, and conspiracies. Be that as it may, strictly speaking on its merits as a film, it’s a well-executed and intense (though conventional) behind-the-scenes newsroom drama brought to life by an A-list cast at the top of their games. The work turned in here by Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford in particular is tremendous and worthy of attention; if anything, its because what they turn in here is so good that people are going to be arguing and debating over the underlying issues that the film examines all over again. Suffice to say that regardless of what side of the political spectrum you ally yourself with, if you care at all about the news, about who’s reporting it, what they choose to report and why, then Truth will get into your head and under your skin.
Blanchett plays 20-year veteran CBS News producer Mary Mapes, who in April 2004, along with Dan Rather (Robert Redford) and a crack team of investigators, brought to light on prime time television the abuses by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq. On the heels of that particular journalistic triumph, Mapes asks for and receives permission from the execs in charge of “60 Minutes II” to run down leads on a story involving then-President George W. Bush’s Vietnam War-era military service in the Texas Air National Guard, whose pilots and officers were not compelled to fly missions in Vietnam. To run down those leads, she puts together an investigative team comprised of Lt. Col. Roger Charles (Dennis Quaid), a military consultant who helped her investigate and assemble the Abu Ghraib story; Lucy Scott (Elisabeth Moss), a journalism professor and freelance researcher; and Mike Smith (Topher Grace), a freelance reporter who had already been compiling information about Bush and his service in the Texas Air National Guard for several years. Their research into Bush’s service record, specifically how he got into the Texas Air National Guard and certain gaps in his attendance while performing equivalent duty in the Alabama Air National Guard, points to not only preferential treatment but also potentially dereliction of duty, occurrences that could be devastating to the President’s image in an election year should they become public knowledge.
After months of tracking down leads, corroborating reports, and attempting to authenticate to the best of their ability with time running out documents provided to the team by a retired Texas Air National Guard Lt. Colonel, Bill Burkett (Stacy Keach) that provide the most compelling evidence to their story, Rather takes the story on-air on September 8th, 2004. Mapes, Rather, and her team are all proud of the story they’ve put together and confident of its findings and the air-tightness of their evidence and sources. But within hours of the broadcast, they find their work being questioned first by conservative bloggers and later by the mainstream media. The documents provided by Burkett are called forgeries, the sources that corroborated the veracity of those documents’ contents change their stories, and suddenly Mapes finds her own producers as well as CBS News president Andrew Heyward (Bruce Greenwood) questioning not only the story, but her own journalistic judgement in putting it forward, as it seems she’s put the very credibility of CBS News at risk.
A tenacious fighter by nature, Mapes, with Rather’s full support, rallies her team to do all they can to push back and set the record straight. But the harder they fight to shore up their story, the more things seem to unravel and their support among their colleagues seems to erode, until it becomes clear that in the wake of what they put their names and Rather’s to, no one’s credibility or career is safe, not even Rather’s, who at that time was one of America’s most trusted news reporters.
Director James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) based his screenplay for Truth on Mary Mapes’s 2005 book “Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power.” Thus, in effect the film is built upon Mapes’ side of the story. She and Rather, to this day, still stand by the truth of what they uncovered, and maintain that they, along with Roger Charles, Lucy Scott, and Mike Smith, did their due diligence to the best of their ability and presented their case with no agenda aside from uncovering the truth, while at the same acknowledging that mistakes were made in terms of how and when the story they put together came to be broadcast. Vanderbilt’s narrative approach to Mapes’ story, both as screenwriter and director, is solid, if not spectacular; what you get on-screen in terms of sequence and pacing isn’t a whole lot different that what you might in an episode of HBO’s “The Newsroom“, and certainly reminiscent of past journalism dramas such as All the President’s Men. There’s plenty of tension, moments of triumph immediately followed by more plot complications and “uh-oh … things just got worse” moments, and on the whole the film never once drags or feels rote.
But really it’s the talent in the cast of Truth that keeps the film as engrossing as it is. Blanchett is compelling and charismatic in her every scene as Mary Mapes: fiery, driven, passionate about her craft and the stories she takes on, admittedly an avowed antagonist to bullies in the political establishment and elsewhere. But her work isn’t all there is to Mapes — the film is careful to show how that work and the scrutiny she comes under affect her life as a wife and mother, and its during those scenes that Blanchett projects palpable anxiety and vulnerability. She and Redford play off of each other very well in their shared scenes as they depict the long friendship and working relationship shared by Mapes and Dan Rather, as they both share an idealism about their role in reporting the news that inspires their colleagues and paints a target on their backs for their adversaries. Speaking of Redford, his efforts to channel Rather is subtle yet noticeable; while he looks nothing like Rather even with a little extra grey added to his hair, he adopts just enough of the veteran newsman’s on-camera mannerisms and vocal cadence to be convincing. Especially if you watched the real Rather deliver the CBS Evening News during any of his 24 years in that anchor chair, you might be surprised by the end of Truth just how successful Redford is delivering the gravitas and conviction of one of America’s most well-known and respected journalists.
All that said, where audiences fall in terms of their politics and their relative trust of the media in this day and age is sure to affect just how much they enjoy or even buy into Truth. There’s definitely a message here that Vanderbilt, Blanchett, Redford, and the rest of this talented production are trying to convey, about the direction in which broadcast journalism has turned in response to factors such as a polarized and adversarial political climate, corporate politics, and the ever-growing influence of the blogosphere and the Internet and their effect on mainstream media trust and credibility. In all honesty, there’s truth to what they’re saying, but as many critics have pointed out in the years since the scandal and its aftermath, Mapes’ book and the effort to get her story out there can easily be seen as self-serving and manipulative, a charge that can potentially be just as easily laid upon this film considering it uses “Truth and Duty” as its primary source. So in terms of any message that this film — and Mapes and Rather, by proxy — might be trying to send, there’s still a question of credibility, at least in some people’s minds.
But, to be clear: Truth IS a film worth taking the time to see, if for no other reason than for the strength of the dramatic performances turned in by its leads. Praise it, recommend it, dismiss it, or decry it once you see it if it doesn’t fit your particular view of “the truth”, for truth, regardless of what anyone anywhere says, is always subjective.
At the very least, just see it. As a finely-acted piece of celluloid, it deserves that much.
Truth
Starring Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Topher Grace, Elisabeth Moss, Bruce Greenwood, Stacy Keach, and Dennis Quaid. Directed by James Vanderbilt.
Running Time: 121 minutes
Rated R for language and a brief nude photo.
The werewolf has always felt like the stepchild of the monster universe. Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Invisible Man all have classic literature as their backbone. The Mummy is a tale as old as time. The Creature from The Black Lagoon is a product of the mid-20th-century fascination with science and evolution. In the midst of it all is the werewolf, the only original cinematic monster who is tortured by transformation. It is unique in that way, and despite its distinctiveness, werewolf movies have struggled to find their footing more than any other classic monster.
There have been some wonderful werewolf movies throughout film history, but they haven’t inundated pop culture the same way as Dracula, Frankenstein, even The Mummy (thanks to Brendan Fraser’s terrible flicks raking in cash at the box office). It seems to be more difficult to individualize the werewolf film, and even remakes of the 1941 classic haven’t worked for a myriad of reasons. So what are the best werewolf movies out there? Here are my selections:
10) Ginger Snaps (2000) – The story of two suburban outcasts obsessed with death and the macabre is a hidden gem in the werewolf timeline. One sister is bitten by the werewolf and the other must decide whether or not to join her or save herself from the madness. The opening act of Ginger Snaps is a brilliant piece of small indie filmmaking. While it does manage to unravel in a more conventional end, the story of suburban outcasts is an interesting setting for a lycanthropic narrative.
9) Teen Wolf (1985) – Okay this isn’t really a traditional, horror-based werewolf movie, but it still belongs here. Michael J. Fox’s other 1985 film is a sideways remake of Michael Landon’s I was a Teenage Werewolf, and is a film I will forever defend. Sure, the basketball scenes are maybe the worst sports scenes in any movie ever, but the wolf makeup, the dynamic of the small-town high school, and the inclusion of the great Stiles (Jerry Levine) make this a wholly enjoyable teen comedy with a little body horror on the side.
8) Silver Bullet (1985) – I never know whether or not to take this seriously. Silver Bullet is a Stephen King adaptation about a small town terrorized by werewolves, and a young handicapped boy (Cory Haim) who takes them on, with the help of his lush of an uncle (Gary Busey), who makes a supercharged wheelchair to kill the lycanthropes. The film bounces from gruesome horror to cornball comedy in individual scenes, and Busey is the very definition of the drunk uncle.
7) Wolf (1994) – Mike Nichols’ elegant werewolf tale, told within the highfalutin world of book editors and New York socialites, is often derided. But it has plenty to offer. Jack Nicholson chews the scenery (pun intended) as the man bitten by the werewolf, and as he romances Michelle Pfeiffer and takes on his adversary – played gleefully by James Spader – Nicholson’s transformation intensifies until the final showdown. Some of the strange floating jumps between Nicholson and Spader have always felt strange, but the performances and Nichols’ direction elevate the film considerably.
6) Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) – In the expansive world of Universal Monster collaborations, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man is easily the most entertaining mashup. Bela Lugosi takes over as the Monster, and Lon Chaney Jr. returns as Larry Talbot, who is searching for Dr. Frankenstein but finds the monster frozen in ice instead. Aside from one of the best posters in the Universal Monster collection, the showdown between The Wolf Man and the Monster is one of the best in the catalogue. The return of Maleva the gypsy (the great Maria Ouspenskaya) from the original Wolf Man is an added bonus for horror fans.
5) The Company of Wolves (1984) – Neil Jordan tried his hand at the werewolf story in the early 80s, and the result is a wildly entertaining and genuinely frightening spin on Little Red Riding Hood. The melding of dreams and reality and the truly fascinating transformations make this film stand out from those surrounding it in the 80s (except for one, of course). Part gothic fantasy, part fairy-tale gone awry, The Company of Wolves is the perfect flick to see this time of year.
4) Curse of The Werewolf (1961) – This has always been a personal favorite of mine, a fascinating technicolor werewolf film with vibrant blood and one of the more unique looking werewolves in the mythos. This Hammer horror, in the midst of the Christopher Lee Dracula films, doesn’t follow the traditional tropes of the werewolf mythology, with a rape involving a haggard old man and a Spanish woman, and the offspring eventually turning into the wolf of the story. The picture is wonderful looking, perhaps the prettiest of the Hammer films, and Oliver Reed delivers an excellent, hammy performance in the title role.
3) The Howling (1981) – Genre master Joe Dante took his turn at the werewolf story in 1981 with one of the finest, most bizarre horror films in the genre. A news anchor (Dee Wallace) takes time off after a horrific situation involving a serial killer, only to find herself in an even more horrific scene involving a cult and strange screams in the night. The Howling kicked off the early-80s werewolf craze and spawned too many sequels to count, and the mix of spiritual horror and lycanthropy set it apart; that, and the work of the great Joe Dante.
2) The Wolf Man (1941) – It was tough to decide between these top two. Perhaps on another day this pair of werewolf movies may be switched, but today The Wolf Man is in the second slot. Lon Chaney Jr., forever suppressing a cry it seems, is wonderful in the lead role as a man tortured by his new body issue. The makeup of the wolf, groundbreaking at the time, is still the most indelible werewolf makeup in the history of the genre. The Wolf Man wasn’t the first werewolf tale, but is easily the most iconic.
1) An American Werewolf in London (1981) – The most re-watchable werewolf movie of all time, John Landis’s horror comedy throws things at the screen with reckless abandon, creating an eclectic and energetic thriller with cheeky humor to boot. Once bitten, David Kessler (David Naughton) sees his dead friend everywhere, decaying steadily, and romances his randy nurse. He also manages to have an insane dream about Nazi zombies murdering his family. Weird. Beyond these idiosyncrasies in the plot, the transformation in the second act is the best, most horrifying in the entire genre. Landis knew the transformation was the key element of the story, and he went all in with stunning results.
