The Bite #37

7 Game-Changing Werewolf Movies, STRANGER THINGS Teaser Trailer, and More!

December 18, 2018

In this Issue:

Horror History: Horror Moon Monsters
Image of the Week: Double Trouble
Tiny Bites – This Week’s Best Horror Headlines
The States of Horror: Massachusetts
Things We Love: Creepy Concepts
Hey, That’s Us! – Shudder in the News

HORROR HISTORY: MOON MONSTERS

Ask anyone how to kill a werewolf and the answer you’ll invariably get is, with a silver bullet. It’s knowledge so deeply ingrained in us that “silver bullet” is an entry found in most dictionaries, and its use has grown to cover more than just lycanthropy. Merriam-Webster defines “silver bullet” as “a bullet made of silver, used in fiction as a supposedly magical method of killing werewolves” but secondarily as “a simple and seemingly magical solution to a complicated problem.”

But it wasn’t always that way. Silver weapons are a conceit created by Donovan’s Brain author Curt Siodmak, who introduced the idea in his screenplay for Universal’s The Wolfman, which was released this week in 1941. It’s a movie that introduced key aspects of modern werewolf mythology, such as lycanthropy being treated as an affliction (though the idea that werewolves changed during any full moon rather than just “when the wolfbane blooms and the Autumn moon is bright” wasn’t introduced until the sequel). The film is so iconic that it’s continued to influence its successors to this day.

The idea of a werewolf being a tortured beastman was continued by real-life tortured beastman Oliver Reed, who made Terence Fischer’s Curse of the Werewolf such a classic. Here, lycanthropy is the result of abuse and a lack of love, adding a tragic air to the movie. (Side note: Roy Ashton’s make-up is astonishing.)

Anxieties over the hirsute bodily changes of adolescence simmer under the surface of AIP’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf, in which nice boy Michael Landon is programmed to get furry and full of fury whenever the class bell rings in his school. Another standout is Ginger Snaps, a brilliant satire of a suburban teen girl coming of age, where lycanthropy is used as a metaphor for puberty.

Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers, about soldiers facing werewolves in the Scottish Highlands, is a glorious pastiche of manly macho action movies that’s a must-see entry in the genre. Apocalypse Now, Rio Bravo,Zulu, Wrath of Khan, Straw Dogs, and dozens of others get shoutouts in this deliciously frantic flick.

Two from the early ’80s were game-changers: John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London and Joe Dante’s The Howling, each with groundbreaking make-up effects by Rick Baker and Rob Bottin, respectively. Previously, slow dissolves had been used to show on-screen transformations. With these two movies, hair-sprouting, bone-shifting transformations were achieved for the first time using practical effects. Healthy doses of humor in both flicks nicely balance the throat-ripping scares.

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Double Trouble

Nick Castle — the original Michael Myers — recreated his famous 1978 behind-the-scenes photo when he returned to film this year’s Halloween.

TINY BITES

ROB ZOMBIE‘S THE BLOB, H. P. LOVECRAFT’S INFLUENCE& MORE

A new Stranger Things teaser trailer reveals the titles to every Season 3 episode … one of which is “The Bite.” (Hmmm.)

The BBC’s list of seven ways H. P. Lovecraft influenced pop culture goes into everything from horror hip hop to Scooby-Doo.

Tony Todd has “mixed feelings” about Candyman‘s coming reboot.

It took Guillermo del Toro seven years to convince a studio to cast Ron Perlman as Hellboy.

Hereditary and Halloween make The AV Club‘s list of the best film soundtracks of 2018.

HBO ordered a series adapted from Stephen King’s most recent novel, The Outsider.

Rob Zombie’s unmade remake of The Blob was going to include zombies. (Hmmm.)

We’re looking forward to the 15 most anticipated horror books of 2019.

David Gordon Green, director of the Halloweenreboot, wants to remake Ghoulies or Critters next.

The Ringer rounds up the scariest monsters from this year’s TV.

Into the Dark‘s Christmas episode is like “a prequel about the person in the furry costume at the end ofThe Shining.”

Celebrate the season with the 5 best and 5 worst Christmas horror movies.

How Jennifer’s Body‘s misguided marketing plan sabotaged any chance it had of finding the right audience.

Here’s an A-Z guide to women filmmakers and their work in horror.

The trailer for Brightburn asks the question: “What if Superman were a monster?

THE STATES OF HORROR: MASSACHUSETTS

By Sam Zimmerman

There’s no shortage of options in States of Horror this time around, which brings us to Lovecraft Country and a state so deep in the genre, it gets a single focus.

Massachusetts holds a legacy of terror. Since the true horror of the Salem Witch Trials, this New England state has remained a place of dark sensibility, the fictional root of which likely lies in H. P. Lovecraft, but extends back to Nathaniel Hawthorne and more. Lovecraft’s Massachusetts town of Arkham (where Miskatonic University stands) is a cornerstone of Lovecraft Country, and many of the author’s stories take place in the state, including “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” “The Dunwich Horror” and “Herbert West — Reanimator.” This, along with that specifically haunting New England atmosphere, has likely contributed to now hundreds of years of Massachusetts macabre.

The Hill House of Robert Wise’s immortal 1963 film The Haunting is set in Massachusetts, as is the very real Danvers State Hospital, a psychiatric institution which served as the setting for Brad Anderson’s still-frightening Session 9. Speaking of hospitals, Martin Scorsese’s underrated psychothriller Shutter Island is set at one for the criminally insane in Boston Harbor.

And then of course there’s only one of the biggest movies ever, Jaws, which shot on Martha’s Vineyard and boasts a Massachusetts personality. The horror influence of Massachusetts even extended overseas, bringing Lucio Fulci to set two of his three Gates of Hell films, City of the Living Dead and The House by The Cemetery, there. It also brought Christopher Lee-starring UK production, The City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel). Rob Zombie stepped out of his more sun-scorched southern fried comfort zone to film Lords of Salem, which also hosted the 1993 cult Halloween favorite, Hocus Pocus.

For a Massachusetts gem hidden in its long canon, however, allow me to recommend the 1975 creeper The Reincarnation of Peter Proud.

THINGS WE LOVE: CREEPY CONCEPTS

Long before any movie or game gets made comes the concept art, and Concept Art World, a site showcasing thousands of images from hundreds of projects, offers a peek at how the visual magic begins. Not only can you find the earliest imaginings of monsters from films like The Predator and Pacific Rim, but from unrealized projects such as Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5 as well.