Werewolves fascinate me. Of course, I loved the cool idea of seeing a man sprout fur on his back at the sight of a full moon. But it was also this deeper idea of man transforming into beast, the primitive side of man being allowed to burst from the inside and roam free.
When I was young, I read these pamphlets about the making of horror movies, and one of them was about The Wolf Man, that classic starring Lon Chaney Jr. as a man who is bitten by a werewolf and becomes one himself. Amid the camp was a tragedy. We see a good man who against his better nature commits murder every time the moon is full.
A gypsy tells him what he has become and that he is destined to harm the very thing he loves. The only way he can end it all is to kill himself.
Years later, I watched An American Werewolf in London, by far my favorite of the genre. Masterfully directed by John Landis, the movie centers on two American students backpacking through Europe. A trip through the foggy and dark moors leaves one dead and another cursed with a need to feast on human flesh. The make-up effects by Rick Baker are a highlight, and the transformation scene is one of the best I have ever seen in a werewolf movie. Landis mixed in wonderful degrees humor and horror. I laughed and covered my eyes simultaneously.
But beyond The Howling, there hasn't been a decent werewolf movie in years. The Howling produced increasingly non-sensical sequels, and then there was that unfortunate sequel to An American Werewolf in London, which simply moved the horrific proceedings to Paris.
A few years ago, director Wes Craven, creator of that hilarious knife-fingered menace to teenage dreams Freddy Kruger, attempted to revive the genre with Cursed. Even with popular stars such as Christina Ricci and Jonathan Jackson, the movie more than lived up to its title, flopping at the box office. Critics thrashed it, deservedly so. The fact that it was PG-13 didn't help matters, and the special effects were horrid.
I held out hope, however small it may have been, that the recent release Skinwalkers might be the werewolf movie I have been waiting for since An American Werewolf in London. The trailers looked good, and the werewolves looked hairy and scary enough.
How wrong I was. This is worse than Cursed. The dialogue stinks and the acting, except for Elias Koteas, is awful. And the werewolves themselves look ridiculous. Instead of werewolves, they look like fur-bodied actors wearing hideous dog masks.
The story, if you can call it that, is that werewolves, here called skinwalkers, are rooted in American Indian culture. Two groups of werewolves have been battling each other for years. One group loves being werewolves while the other sees being skinwalkers as a curse.
A boy who is half-skinwalker and half-human will turn 13 at the time of the red full moon and it is he who holds the key to ending the curse of the skinwalkers.
The bad-boy skinwalkers want the kid dead, and the good ones attempt to protect him.
A potentially good werewolf movie, or a good movie period, is here somewhere in this mess. But with a clueless director (Jim Isaacs, whose last movie was the surprisingly entertaining Jason X) and a useless script full of cliche and no scares, finding that rough shape of a movie is really, really hard.
I still dream of seeing a good werewolf movie someday, one that's scary and has a cool transformation scene and a decent story. Until then, maybe I should go rent An American Werewolf of London and sing "Blue Moon" for old times sake.
