Michael May's Blog, page 172
October 18, 2013
31 Werewolves | The Wolf's Hour
Michael Gallatin from Robert R. McCammon's The Wolf's Hour isn't one of the best-known werewolves of all time. He isn't even one of my favorites, since I've never read the book. But one of my roommates from back in the day sure had and it was his all-time favorite book. We agreed about enough other stuff - and the premise of a Nazi-fighting werewolf is intriguing enough - that I bought myself a copy.
I've never gotten around to reading it, but I will one of these days and the subject of werewolves never comes up without my thinking about this novel and how I need to check it out.
From the back cover:
He is Michael Gallatin, master spy, lover - and werewolf. Able to change shape with lightning speed, to kill silently or with savage, snarling fury, he proved his talents against Rommel in Africa. Now he faces his most delicate, dangerous mission: to unravel the secret Nazi plan known as Iron Fist. From a parachute jump into occupied France to the lush corruption of Berlin, from the arms of a beautiful spy to the cold embrace of a madman's death machine, Gallatin draws ever closer to the ghastly truth about Iron Fist. But with only hours to D-Day, he is trapped in the Nazi's web of destruction...
Robert R. McCammon breaks the mold of the werewolf novel with The Wolf's Hour, combining a remarkable tale of pulse-pounding excitement with a uniquely sympathetic, fascinating portrait of the werewolf as noble warrior - and conflicted being. Complex, compelling and utterly real, Michael Gallatin deserves a place of honor in the pantheon of great fictional heroes.
McCammon also wrote a prequel, The Hunter from the Woods, which is actually a collection of novellas and short stories about Gallatin's life and adventures prior to The Wolf's Hour.
October 17, 2013
31 Werewolves | "Hungry Like the Wolf"
When I first considered including "Hungry Like the Wolf" in this list, I thought I was kidding myself. I love Duran Duran and this is one of my favorite songs of theirs, but I didn't seriously think it was appropriate. The video, which is always in my head when I hear the song, has lead singer Simon Le Bon in an Indiana Jones-like adventure (it was filmed in Sri Lanka) as he hunts a woman. There are hints that she's some kind of werecreature, but even if that part's meant to be taken literally, she's a cat, not a wolf. The wolf refers to LeBon and - in the video, at least - it's metaphorical.
But... according to an interview that guitarist Andy Taylor gave Blender magazine, Le Bon's inspiration for the song's lyrics was "Little Red Riding Hood." Reading them in that light, it makes a lot of sense. It's all about lust and losing yourself to your passions; exactly the kind of thing that "Little Red Riding Hood" and werewolves in general are about.
Dark in the city; night is a wire.
Steam in the subway; earth is afire.
Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do
Woman, you want me; give me a sign
And catch my breathing even closer behind.
Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do
In touch with the ground,
I'm on the hunt I'm after you.
Smell like I sound. I'm lost in a crowd
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Straddle the line in discord and rhyme.
I'm on the hunt I'm after you.
Mouth is alive with juices like wine
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Stalked in the forest; too close to hide.
I'll be upon you by the moonlight side.
Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do
High blood drumming on your skin it's so tight.
You feel my heat; I'm just a moment behind.
Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do
In touch with the ground,
I'm on the hunt I'm after you.
Scent and a sound; I'm lost and I'm found
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Strut on a line. It's discord and rhyme.
I howl and I whine I'm after you.
Mouth is alive, all running inside
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Hungry like the wolf
Hungry like the wolf
Hungry like the wolf
Burning the ground, I break from the crowd.
I'm on the hunt I'm after you.
I smell like I sound. I'm lost and I'm found
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Strut on a line, it's discord and rhyme.
I'm on the hunt I'm after you.
Mouth is alive with juices like wine
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Burning the ground, I break from the crowd.
I'm on the hunt I'm after you.
Scent and a sound; I'm lost and I'm found
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Strut on a line, it's discord and rhyme.
I howl and I whine I'm after you...
October 16, 2013
31 Werewolves | An American Werewolf in London
The third werewolf movie to come out in 1981 (the others being Wolfen and The Howling ) was of course An American Werewolf in London. As I mentioned yesterday, makeup artist Rick Baker was actually supposed to work on The Howling, but left that production to do American Werewolf instead. Since American Werewolf is especially well-known for Baker's effects (he even won the first ever Oscar for makeup from this movie), that was an excellent get for writer/director John Landis (Animal House, Blues Brothers).
Landis came up with the idea when he met a group of Yugoslavian gypsies while working as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes. Watching them perform a funeral ritual that involved preventing the deceased from returning, Landis was struck by the idea of the undead and wrote the script for American Werewolf about that same time. It would be over a decade though before he had enough clout in Hollywood to get it made, and even then his backers were uncomfortable with the blend of humor and horror. It was a hit though - both critically and financially - and remains one of the most popular werewolf films of all time.
It has one sequel, 1997's An American Werewolf in Paris, but that film was made by none of the same people and featured new characters (though one is the daughter of David and Alex from the first film). It also used cheap CGI for its werewolves, so it doesn't even have good special effects in common with the original. It was a critical and popular failure.
October 15, 2013
31 Werewolves | The Howling
1981 was a big year for werewolf movies. It saw the movie version of Whitley Strieber's The Wolfen, it gave us this film, and there was a third one that we'll talk about tomorrow.
Like Wolfen, The Howling is based on a novel, this one by Gary Brandner. In the book, a woman is trying to recover from an extremely traumatic event and moves with her husband to a small town in northern California that unfortunately is populated entirely by werewolves. The film more of less follows the book's plot, but details are very different, including the nature of the lead character's (Dee Wallace) trauma and the community in which the werewolves live. In the movie, it's a resort instead of a small town. The film also includes a final, sequel-teasing act in which the main characters attempt to prove the existence of werewolves.
It's been decades since I've seen it, so I don't remember much, but it gets mixed reviews from critics and fans who either find it clever or silly. The Howling borders on camp, but it's intentional with tons of visual jokes and references to other werewolf movies. A lot of characters are named after directors of werewolf films from Wallace's therapist George Waggner (The Wolf Man) to her friend Terri Fisher (Curse of the Werewolf) and TV anchorman Lew Landers (The Return of the Vampire). The movie even makes room for cameos by Forrest J. Ackerman and Roger Corman, if that helps identify the tone it's going for.
The special effects were pretty remarkable for their day and would probably be more praised had their developer, Rick Baker, not left the film to work on the project we'll talk about tomorrow. Still, Baker's protege Rob Bottin took over and did a great job with the air bladders and latex faces to create the transformations.
One other bit of trivia: The Howling apparently takes place in the same universe as Gremlins. Both were directed by Joe Dante and include the role of the anchorman Landers played by Jim McKrell (who was also in Michael J. Fox's Teen Wolf). Gremlins also features a refrigerator decorated with the smiley face sticker that The Howling's serial killer character (Star Trek: Voyager's Robert Picardo) used as his calling card.
The Howling did well enough to warrant a bunch of sequels, though all but the first were direct-to-video:
Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985) - Wallace's brother investigates the events of the first movie and is talked by Christopher Lee into going to Transylvania to fight werewolf queen Sybil Danning.
Howling III: The Marsupials (1987) - Doesn't really connect to the previous movies, focusing instead on female werewolves in Australia who've evolved separately from other werewolves. It also makes the werewolves into sympathetic characters by having one of them as the lead.
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) - The first direct-to-video release of the series returns to Brandner's novel for inspiration and actually gets closer to it than the first film did.
Howling V: The Rebirth (1989) - A diverse group of tourists visit a newly opened castle in Hungary and suffer the werewolfy consequences.
Howling VI: The Freaks (1991) - Returning to the idea of sympathetic werewolves, this one has a wolf boy captured by a vampire as an exhibit in a traveling carnival.
Howling VII: New Moon Rising (1995) - Tying together characters and events from Howlings IV - VI, this one is set in a Western town that begins to suffer animal attacks when a stranger from Australia arrives.
The Howling: Reborn (2011) - A boarding school student has to defend his girlfriend from his werewolf mother.
Brandner also wrote a couple of sequels to his novel, though neither was used as source material for the other movies. His Howling II is about the main character from the first book, now living in Seattle until werewolves from her past return to stalk her. The final novel in the series, The Howling III: Echoes, doesn't include any characters from the first two and instead follows a werewolf kid from a town close to the one from the first book.
