I've said it again and again on the HFC: the werewolf is my favourite cinematic monster.
I think there's something about a person (good or evil) who becomes a hairy, deadly creature of the night, impossible to reason with, practically impossible to stop, that has always appealed to me. Obviously, the most famous cinematic werewolf was Lon Chaney Junior, whose sad, suicidal Larry Talbot character became a snarling, vicious monster resonated with me years before I even saw the film.
There are a lot of vampire movies out there (and a lot of mad doctor and alien and serial killer and undead movies), but there aren't a lot of werewolf ones. That probably has much to do with the difficulty of pulling off an effective lycanthrope through makeup or costumes or puppetry or computer effects or . . . well, simply using a dog.
But, for better or worse, this is my list of Five Favourite Werewolf Movies:
1. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
2. Dog Soldiers (2002)
3. Underworld (2003)
4. The Wolf Man (1941)*
5. House of Frankenstein (1944)
And this is tyranist's list:
1. The Wolf Man (1941)
2. Dog Soldiers (2002)
3. American Werewolf in London (1981)
4. Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
5. Underworld (2003)
This list also reminds me that I ought to seek out more werewolf movies. All in all, I counted maybe thirty-three films with werewolves in them that I have seen, and that includes Teen Wolf, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and Harry Potter 3 (which I sort of intentionally neglected to list here)!
I promise you that before the year is out, I'll add a thirty-fourth movie to my list.
Rish Outfield
*I both look forard to and dread the day in 2009 when Andrew Kevin Walker and Mark Romanek remake The Wolf Man with Benicio Del Toro. Hopefully, I can add it to my list, but then again, as it's a remake, if I love it, it will turn me into what I most despise. Not a werewolf, of course, but a half-man, half-butthole.
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