(*the only exception is i included the film adaptation of blood & chocolate even though it’s from after 2000 because it goes along with the book.)
“the were-wolf” (short story 1896)
by clemence housman
this story is styled as something rather like a fairytale, with a timeless and placeless quality to it. the titular werewolf (or were-wolf i guess) is a seductress who effortlessly bends people to her will while also being an absolutely terrifying combatant in both her human and wolf forms. this mirrors the way the story has room for both genuinely erotic tension and some downright gnarly violence.
i think the werewolf genre does just fine without one super obvious ur-text to hold up… but if you had to pick something to enjoy that honor, i think this would be a better fit than guy endore’s more widely-cited the werewolf of paris. b-rank
the werewolf of paris (novel 1933)
by guy endore
this is apparently considered by many to be the closest the werewolf genre has to a “dracula” or “frankenstein,” and i hadn’t even heard of it until i started researching for this project. i think a big part of that has to do with the universal monsters franchise, which really crystallized a lot of the popular culture “defaults” for horror movie monsters, not basing their werewolf movies on any specific source. and i imagine that had less to do with any perceived deficiency of quality in endorse’s book and more to do with the fact that he was blacklisted for being a communist sooooo yeah.
all of that being said i have to admit that i kinda thought the book was so-so? like, i guess that’s largely true of a lot of sort of seminal early works of horror, it’s just that with all the popular culture that’s built up around stuff like frankenstein and dracula i’m already bought in so even if the writing wouldn’t otherwise be my cup of tea, it makes the experience of reading them a lot more compelling than it might otherwise be? but yeah idk this is kind of meandering and oftentimes more interested in its politics than all the werewolf shit. and like… it’s for sure kinda refreshing to get straightforwardly leftist politics in something like this? but the politics are also by no means perfect, not that that’s ever really a fair expectation, it’s just that i don’t want anyone reading this and thinking “oh, okay, that’s what robin thinks.” like admittedly i oftentimes feel that way about things that were literally written by marx and other seminal communist theorists, so i guess it should go without saying but i kind of never assume things like this go without saying idk.
there’s a shit ton of bdsm-adjacent stuff in this that i think is actually pretty intentional so that was a pretty pleasant surprise for a book that was written almost fully 100 years ago? and yeah that is always stuff i’m gonna want in media i consume, but it’s like extra something i want in horror stuff? also the actual werewolf action when it does happen is fucking amazing, and by the end of the book the werewolf is in this weird kinky relationship where he’s just slashing up his girlfriend at night and she has all these scars and she’s kinda super fucking into it? but he’s all guilty and weird about it, so that’s a pretty big turnoff, but if you just kinda selectively ignore parts of it it’s pretty hot?
like again i wanna emphasize that in context it seems like a kinda fucked up situation and it’s not like actually inherently wish fulfilly or anything, but if you look at it kinda sideways then yeah, it would honestly be super hot. so, you know. just gonna continue fantasizing about werewolf boyfriends/girlfriends/enbyfriends/etc now. nbd. c-rank
i was a teenage werewolf (movie 1957)
this is bad in so many ways, and the worst way is that it’s just outright boring. we fully should’ve just watched the mst3k version.
distinct ways in which this movie is bad: not enough werewolf, the werewolf bits range from just okay to awful, the laziest werewolf transformation i’ve ever seen (they use that weird swimmy transition you usually use for flashbacks), the copaganda is laid on thick from the very beginning of the movie, there’s a godawful music performance towards the beginning that is pretty clearly just there to pad the runtime… when i say i don’t mind bad werewolf movies, this isn’t what i mean, folks!
in the positives column, the werewolf costume wasn’t terrible (it also wasn’t great, but still) and also i occasionally had fun clowning on the movie. like the movie opens with a schoolyard fight and the first intelligible line of dialogue is one of their girlfriends yelling, “hit him again! he’s been begging for it!” and i was like, oh, cool! i didn’t realize this was a consensual scene they were doing! that totally changes my understanding of this part of the movie!
but yeah, again, all of the fun i had with this movie was at its expense. it really wouldn’t have held my interest otherwise. d-rank
the curse of the werewolf (movie 1961)
i know a lot of people swear by them, but i just keep being thoroughly underwhelmed by hammer horror movies. i’ve watched all their dracula movies and quite a few of their frankenstein movies and i think i’ve seen like one, ever that wasn’t just an absolute chore to sit through. i really want to like them, but it just isn’t working out so far.
when this movie does eventually deign to get to the werewolf shit, it’s… fine, i guess? my favorite part are the first two on-screen kills which are both choking, which… yeah, i’m super into, but also isn’t typically what you come to a werewolf movie for? and regardless, it’s just super not worth the wait.
this is also loosely (very loosely) based on the werewolf of paris, and aside from like one conversation in a tavern at the very beginning of the movie, the novel’s marxism is just gone, as is all the bdsm-adjacent stuff. and it’s not like either of those things were perfect in the book, but they were interesting, and that’s more than i can say about basically anything in the movie. d-rank
werewolf in a girls’ dormitory (movie 1961)
the movie badly outstays its welcome, which is a shame because it has a pretty good creepy/moody atmosphere early on. it just starts to drag after a while, like it isn’t willing to fully commit to the dumb, sleezy fun that is clearly its highest possible destiny. i’m still left feeling like this was a better-looking werewolf costume away from being actually exactly what i wanted it to be, but keep in mind that i’m someone for whom “rapey werewolf strangling/mauling/unclothing a string of underwritten victims” actually sounds like a pretty good time if fully committed to. c-rank
the beast must die (movie 1974)
the description made this sound like basically a game of werewolf, and the ways in which it resembles that are just absolutely the best things about the movie. i love the dorky little intro and the “werewolf break” where you’re encouraged to guess which character is the werewolf.
i want to say the movie dragged at times due to a few overlong establishing shots & chase scenes, but the truth is it actually didn’t overstay its welcome in spite of those? like, i think this movie could be like 10x better than it is, it’s not hard to imagine making a genuinely amazing movie out of this concept. like i desperately want someone of a like jordan peele or rian johnson caliber to take a crack at something like this, because i think that would probably have a good chance of ending up being my favorite movie? like, ever?
so like, yeah this was just kinda okay and there’s nothing “wrong” with that per se, but it really doesn’t feel like it delivered on the promise of everything it had to work with. but i still am never gonna mind spending 90 minutes with hammer horror’s little brother telling a chill werewolf tale with the peter cushings of the world rounding out the cast.
my biggest substantive complaint is that i think to make this kind of thing truly work you need to lean a bit more heavily on character writing, like really agatha christie that shit up and make the cast a bit more vibrant. like what you really seem to be shooting for (pun intended & not apologized for) here is a cozy mystery but with werewolves, and you’re really missing one of the most essential elements there.
again, though, i’m probably just salty because i’ve recently grown quite fond of both the mystery genre and the werewolf genre, and this really seemed like a match made in heaven for me specifically, but instead it was just kinda okay. c-rank
the company of wolves (movie 1984)
i don’t hate the idea of expanding on the little red riding hood myth and really fleshing out the relationship between her and the granddaughter to one where she’s looking up to her benevolently witchy grandmother. there’s a lot to love there, actually. the problem is that it takes until literally the last stretch of the movie for the big, bad you-know-who to be remotely interesting, and the rest of the movie just feels frightfully wheel-spinny. also the werewolf effects are very hit-or-miss with the vast majority of them weighing the balance decisively in the latter category. ymmv, because this shit is hella subjective, but that’s where i’m at with it. d-rank
silver bullet (movie 1985)
if you made a supercut of this movie that was literally just all the werewolf shit, i would probably like it way better. the first few werewolf attacks are fucking hot, and the werewolf suit isn’t half-bad.
the non-werewolf parts of this movie are just a greatest hits collection of stephen king movie cliches, and it’s hard not to just roll your eyes at this shit when you’ve seen at least half a dozen or so adaptations of his books. it’s especially galling that the main characters’ awful parents aren’t supposed to be awful (you can tell because stephen king movie parents that are meant to be awful are a lot less subtle, there’s several examples in this movie even). i didn’t love the identity of the werewolf because that made the werewolf less hot by association, but the reveal itself was actually pretty damn fantastic?
but yeah, mostly i just loved all the hot werewolf kills. b-rank
scooby-doo and the ghoul school (tv movie 1988)
look, i was prepared for this to be kinda bad, but i was prepared for it to be kinda bad in the intentional, endearing way that a lot of scooby-doo stuff was. i was fully prepared to eat some cereal and watch some saturday morning toons.
and then i saw fucking scrappy-doo on the screen and me & my fiancx (who hadn’t seen this) simultaneously cried, “oh no!” and my boyfriend (who had) mournfully responded, “oh, yeah…” and i realized i was in for a much different time than i had planned.
look, i didn’t have much experience with scrappy before this, so i kinda secretly always thought y’all were exaggerating just a tiny bit about how bad he was… but by all the holy & unholy gods, he is literally the worst. i want to slam dunk him into a volcano. i want to give whoever thought he was a good idea an atomic fucking wedgie and while they’re hopping around helplessly kick them in the ass depositing them into a trash can. (for bullying. it’s my intention that they get out of the trashcan afterwards, i’m not saying we should dispose of a human being for doing something i don’t like, i’m not a fucking republican.)
it sucks because the titular ghoul school is populated by the most fucking adorable baby queer girl versions of all the classic monsters like (obviously) werewolves & vampires & mummies & whatnot. and that does occasionally break through & think “awww!” but then the camera just cuts back to scrappy so he can make some dumbass comment that no one cares about and you see red again.
i want to slam dunk him into a fucking volcano. d-rank
scooby-doo and the reluctant werewolf (tv movie 1988)
even a himbo who loves his dog & smokes his weed may become a wolf when the wacky race is monster-themed and the vampire’s plan is incredibly convoluted.
this is apparently scrappy’s last appearance in animated scooby-doo, and his role is so far scaled down compared to the previous outing that he was actually kinda almost tolerable? this is clearly the role he should’ve been slotted into all along, and it’s too little too late, but oh well.
i… didn’t expect this whole thing to be about racing? but it is? and that’s… something, i guess!
but like, the setting is so cool and dracula is such an over-the-top villain. this is “bad” in all the ways i want something like this to be “bad” in. and shaggy is an adorable werewolf omg, why did they have to change him back???
unlike the previous misfire, this is exactly the experience i wanted out of these. it feels the way i imagine eating all those halloween-themed cereals would be if i had any nostalgia for them. b-rank
wolf (movie 1994)
this isn’t a bad movie or anything, it’s actually pretty okay? it reminds me of like an american psycho or glengarry glen ross in that it’s like “this is about middle aged white guys being businessmen and i literally give zero shits but it’s well-written & well-directed if you’re into that shit i guess.” but like i like it better than both of those because at least it has a little bit of werewolf stuff in it, underwhelming and rare as it is.
even though jack nicholson isn’t my cup of werewolf piss the cast in this is phenomenal. like michelle pfeiffer & james spader make this totally worth watching. pfeiffer in particular gives this movie way more than it deserves given how little it gives her to work with.
look i just don’t really care about office politics between various white guy suits too much i wanted a fucking werewolf movie. if you liked the other movies i listed earlier you’ll probably like this way better than i did. c-rank
blood and chocolate (novel 1997)
by annette curtis klause
this is really messy ya fiction that goes to some fucking intense (and i think, occasionally, irresponsible) places. i know i say this a lot about books like this but it really does feel like a similar energy to the kinds of writing i always really vibed with in fanfic but never really intentionally seek out in profic and i really do need to do something about that because i frequently end up loving it.
also it does that super fanficcy thing where it refers back to characters’ backstories in a way that makes you wonder if you missed a previous book or something even though this is the only book in the series. perfect. exquisite. i’ll take three.
i just fucking adore this kind of heart-on-its-sleeve bullshit. and this one also does that thing where it feels like a pretty restrained, conventional narrative for a good long while and the intensity just very abruptly spikes and it’s like “oh! ok. we’re doing this now i guess!” for the rest of the book.
that kind of thing can frankly actually be detrimental if it just doesn’t land for you for whatever reason, and for me at least i find my reactions to this kind of thing to be pretty fickle, and in this particular case i actually found myself completely onboard with the abrupt shift (... heh, shift).
like there is for sure shit in here that i could be obstinate & complain about if i really wanted to, and i wouldn’t even be wrong because i actually do think a lot of it is big-P Problematic, but for whatever reason this particular book just really lulled me into enjoying it anyway, and i like liking things so i’m just gonna go ahead and let myself like this.
if you’ve followed my reviews for a while in one form/venue or another you might be thinking, “wait, robin, it sounds an awful lot like you’re describing a guilty pleasure, you said those aren’t a thing.” but i promise you that is not what’s happening here? nor am i “enjoying it ironically” (something i basically refuse to do, heck something i might be incapable of doing). my enjoyment is genuine. i will certainly allow that this is a “problematic fave,” which i suppose some people consider synonymous with a “guilty pleasure,” but i still think there’s an important distinction to be had there.
enjoying (or not enjoying) art is an inherently dialectical process and the meaning isn’t produced wholly in the media itself or wholly in you yourself, but rather in the relationship between those two things. i do not feel guilty about enjoying blood and chocolate. (wow that sounds like a whole thing out of context lmao.)
i am uncomfortable with some of the messages that can be derived about relationships from gabriel’s 180-degree turn from a guy made of literally nothing but red flags to the embodiment of gruff but tender masculinity, given the patriarchy-shaped patterns of abuse many women are subjected to in their searches for mates, and i think especially for a book marketed largely towards young women this does them a serious disservice.
but i’m an adult and i know better so i can separate my enjoyment of this from its problematic elements as long as i responsibly call them out when discussing the book. and against what i thought were pretty long odds when i realized where this story was going, i do like gabriel & vivian’s romance. i do like the guy he turns into later in the book, no matter how blatantly unearned that turn was. and i’m perfectly willing to just allow myself to enjoy that, in spite of all the fairly obvious reasons why i “shouldn’t.”
hell, his ideas about werewolves having an instinctive need to dominate & protect are fucking hot and i could easily see them being rewardingly incorporated into a power exchange relationship? and also like… even in the context where they came up in this book, they actually aren’t horrible? he’s basically explaining why relationships between werewolves & humans are inherently unsafe, but he’s doing it in a very empathetic, nonjudgmental way. and just… if that really is how things work in this world, i’m actually super behind his take?
but what really helped the most is that it wasn’t until vivian had been through something similar to what gabriel had been through, and he shared his story with her, helping her begin to recover from her trauma, that i was really sold on them. because their relationship really is built on them being kindred spirits.
i’m deliberately ignoring something rather huge here, and that’s the fact that vivian is 16 and gabriel is 24. and, i mean… some of the discourse about age gaps in romantic & sexual relationships can be overly rigid. like, as someone who was simultaneously being emotionally abused & manipulated by someone roughly my own age in a “romantic” relationship while also being in a much healthier fuckbuddies-shaped relationship with someone who was almost twice my age, i just don’t see how so many people can see this as such a one-size fits all kind of thing? but in the case of a 24-year old adult man and a 16-year old high school girl, i feel pretty fucking okay saying that this is one of the clearest-cut cases of “that shit is not okay.” and again this is an aspect of the story where i think the book pretty clearly fails its target audience, because holy shit should you never be drilling into people’s heads that that kind of thing is normal.
for the record, i also will briefly mention that i also don’t really think the way this book treats suicide is responsible at all, again especially in view of its target audience. i don’t super want to get into it in any more depth than that? and i am sorry if anyone feels let down by my bringing it up but not really feeling super comfy getting into it in depth, but i frankly just wouldn’t feel responsible if i didn’t mention it at all.
but, again, that really isn’t what decides whether i like a given story or not, it’s just context that i feel responsible to put out there. because in spite of all of that, i really like this book.
it really helps that vivian is actually super into being a werewolf? she isn’t all angsty & self-hating, she thinks her werewolf self is beautiful (because it fucking is) and she is hurt & confused & angry when aiden can’t see that. and gabriel seeing that & understanding it and talking her through it was a pretty huge breakthrough for me with that character. but really i just love vivian as a narrator, and i actually got pretty fucking miffed when a reviewer i usually like found her annoying because she really is my favorite thing about this book.
this is not only a problematic fave, it’s a problematic fave that has me excited to branch out and discover whole new problematic faves in this genre, because i understand that both a lot of the things that i found uncomfy in this book and a lot of the things i liked about it are basically genre staples. and yeah, i can for sure deal with more of this. a-rank
blood & chocolate (movie 2007)
hey what if we took a really cool book and turned it into an extremely cheap & extremely generic movie that has absolutely nothing to do with the book except for character names? and just drastically alter the relationships almost every character has with each other? like, obviously flipping the narrative roles of the romantic interests is the most eye-catching one, but also combining vivian’s mother figure with her biggest enemy in the book is just wild??? and like, basically deleting the narrative significance of both of them???
and like, it would be one thing if you made an adaptation in name only and just totally did your own thing with it and that thing was fun, but the thing they did make out of it just totally sucked???
vivian & aiden’s relationship in the book obviously wasn’t perfect, but at least she was the one that expressed interest in him and kind of got to be a badass in pursuing it? the movie’s version of this has him being a fucking stalker and then getting narratively rewarded for it??? and mansplaining werewolf lore to her??? who thought this was a good idea?
i would’ve actually been super okay with vivian ending up with the aiden from the book if you cut off their story right at the point that she revealed her lycanthropy to him and just write an alternate ending where he doesn’t suddenly turn into a dick. at no point was her ending up with movie aiden a remotely good idea??? just… no. all of the no. no no no. nope. thank you, no.
if you took all the parkour out of this movie i think it would be about five minutes long. also i actually had no choice but to laugh out loud when i saw how they handled visually conveying werewolf transformation in this movie? like, that was the point where i realized, “oh, okay, cool. not only is this not going to have any of the good stuff from the book, it’s also not just gonna be a remotely fun werewolf movie either. awesome.”
what a waste of time. d-rank
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