{"id":6051,"date":"2009-11-16T11:46:40","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T16:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=6051"},"modified":"2009-11-16T11:46:40","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T16:46:40","slug":"when-the-vampires-have-finally-all-flitted-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/when-the-vampires-have-finally-all-flitted-away\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Vampires Have Finally All Flitted Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>…at least until the next revival: are werewolves the next It<\/em> Creatures?<\/p>\n

I have not read the Twilight<\/em> series of books. But as I understand it, the new film, New Moon<\/em>, features some sort of apocalyptic face-off between the vampires — brooding Edward and his ilk — and the werewolves.<\/p>\n

(This premise seems to me to have been lifted from the Underworld<\/em> series, starring Kate Beckinsale — but those films no doubt lifted from some other source, and so on, and so on. For a genre so heavily featuring the uselessness of mirrors, the supernatural-near-human-monster films seem to indulge in an awful lot of self-reflection.)<\/p>\n

Anyway<\/em>, I just learned of the impending (February 2010) release of a remake of the old Universal Horror film The Wolf Man<\/em>, starring Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and Hugo Weaving.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Wolf Man<\/em> has always seemed to me a sort of black sheep among Universal Horror’s unholy family from that era, its main siblings being Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein<\/em> and Bela Lugois’s Dracula<\/em>. It never seems to have acquired the iconic stature of the other two, maybe because no single literary work served as its source material. Even the supposed “ancient poem” which the villagers recite:<\/p>\n

Even a man who is pure in heart
\nand says his prayers by night
\nmay become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
\nand the autumn moon is bright.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— even that was, in fact, composed by the 1941 film’s director, Robert Siodmak. Consequently, The Wolf Man<\/em> seems to have sprung from nothing weightier than the Hollywood Dream Machine: the stereotypical backlot production, with a screenplay by a writer who was probably drunk more often than not.<\/p>\n[Aside: I don’t know who wrote The Wolf Man<\/em>‘s screenplay, so I don’t mean the preceding sentence to be taken literally. That’s just the stereotype. No hate mail from descendants, please!]\n

Interestingly, though — and again, speaking just for myself — I think the legacy<\/em> of The Wolf Man<\/em> easily matches, even bests, that of Frankenstein<\/em> and Dracula<\/em>. (To take one example: I don’t think many, maybe even any<\/em>, horror film in the supernatural-near-human-monster sub-genre has ever improved on the giddy flat-out horror of An American Werewolf in London<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Obviously, I have no idea if this remake will be any good. (For whatever reason, the filmmakers have opted to alter the title to use the one-word Wolfman<\/em>.) Apparently, del Toro (who plays the title character) is a major fan of the original and pushed to have it redone, and — according to Wikipedia<\/a>, anyhow — “the film keeps the plotline of the original.” But my favorite tidbit I found while reading up on it was a quote<\/a> from makeup wizard Rick Baker. The interviewer comments that Benicio del Toro already seems somewhat wolfish, and wonders if that will make it easier to do the makeup. (The interview took place shortly after production began.) Baker says:<\/p>\n

In a way, it almost makes it harder. Where do you go from there? He’s practically there as it is! [Laughs<\/em>] I think what’s going to make it be harder is when we get into the transformation scenes; going from Benicio to Benicio as the Wolfman isn’t a really extreme difference. Like when I did An American Werewolf in London<\/em>, we went from this naked man to a four-legged hound from hell, and we had a lot of room to go from the transformation and do a lot of really extreme things. Here we have Benicio del Toro, who’s practically the Wolfman already, to Benicio del Toro with more hair and bigger teeth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ha! No word on how del Toro might have reacted on reading this quote. But I like to think he bared his teeth.<\/p>\n

Below, the trailer for the new film:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

…and, just for the heck of it, the trailer for An American Werewolf in London<\/em>, too. (When it comes to trailers, as in fiction, showing is always better than telling. But hinting at<\/em> what will be shown? Even better!)<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…at least until the next revival: are werewolves the next It Creatures? I have not read the Twilight series of books. But as I understand it, the new film, New Moon, features some sort of apocalyptic face-off between the vampires — brooding Edward and his ilk — and the werewolves. (This premise seems to me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,53],"tags":[1482,1483,1484,1485,1486,1487],"class_list":{"0":"post-6051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-02_in-the-news","7":"category-movies-media","8":"tag-the-wolf-man","9":"tag-the-wolfman","10":"tag-benicio-del-toro","11":"tag-rick-baker","12":"tag-werewolves","13":"tag-american-werewolf-in-london","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1zB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6051"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6060,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6051\/revisions\/6060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}