When it comes to werewolf movies, the list of good ones is really short. There are bunches of good vampire movies, decent zombie flicks aren't hard to find, and you could almost argue that good mummy flicks come along more often than a good werewolf flick does.
Honestly, go and Google werewolf movies, and then take a look at the results. If there have been 50 werewolf flicks since 1980, then probably 40 or so have been sub-par to downright horrendous. It's a timeless, beloved sub-genre that Filmmakers just can't seem to get right.
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| This is not right. |
When it comes to top of the "good" list though, most of the best ones come from the 80's. Yes, there have been a few decent ones since then, but if you're talking seminal, then it's back to yesteryear that you must go.
An American Werewolf in London may be the all time best of them, but for our money it's The Howling (1981) that wins our top spot. The transformation scenes in The Howling are just fantastic, and back in the day they had us mesmerized. It truly was state of the art type stuff back then, and even now it still looks amazing. Eddie's onscreen shape-shifting was a thing of beauty.
We loved how the Wargs felt real and their human counterparts weren't nice people at all, which made the movie all the more menacing. The movie definitely has elements of dark humor about it, but to us it was always scary way more than it was funny.
The word classic gets thrown around far too often in regards to movies (we probably do it too much ourselves), but The Howling truly is a classic horror flick, and one of the best werewolf movies ever committed to film.
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| Come on, bright boy... take your best shot! |
We're also sentimentally attached to Stephen King's Silver Bullet (1985); it's not the best werewolf flick we've seen, but as kids it just had the perfect feel to it. We're all about creepy flicks that capture that "Fall" feeling well, and this one does it perfectly. A small town, cold and blustery days, leaves blowing everywhere... it sucked us in back in 1985 and still has our hearts to this day.
It has also stuck with us for so long and so strongly because it has a kid hero. When we were kids, any flick that had "one of us" kicking ass and saving the day was tops in our books. We were them, and in this case, we were Corey Haim (sans cocaine abuse.) It's not the werewolf that made this such a good movie -it was alright, but not one of the best creatures we've seen- but the atmosphere and story that made the whole thing work so well.
I mean, come on; the kid had a wheelchair that he turned into a werewolf death machine! Kinda. But it was so rad! Anywho, for us this is a fun trip back to our middle school days, when things creeped us out far easier than they do today.
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| The star of the movie, |
We could have easily added Dog Soldiers, American Werewolf (in London, not Paris), or Wolfen to this list, but these two are the Lycanthrope flicks that we love the best. That's just how we roll.
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| Oh, and if you ever come across a movie called "Eyes of the Werewolf" you need to run. Run, and don't look back! |
Silver Bullet is by far one of my favorite childhood horror movies. I first saw this on vacation to the beach and it was storming so I waited it out with my dad in a hotel room. I never knew the title for many years but parts of the movie creeped me out for years. Then in my early twenties I found it on cable and purchased the dvd as quickly as I could.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to see this movie getting recognition. My all time favorite Gary Busey movie and it also features "Big Ed Hurley" from Twin Peaks and "John Locke" from Lost. Two shows that really kept me in intrigued and will always have places on my dvd shelf.