Saturday, March 19, 2011

There's a Bad Moon on the Rise.



Over the last couple of days I've seen a couple of werewolf movies on Blu-ray, the first was the classic movie An American Werewolf in London, I love this movie but it's pretty grainy in places especially in the beginning so I was worried that Universal would go mad trying to remove the film grain and compromise the picture quality in the process but thankfully that wasn't the case, I'm sure there will be a group of sad misguided people who will complain about this Blu-ray release of the movie but it looked great for a movie of it's age and the Blu-ray was cheap as well a great purchase if you are a fan of the film.

I also saw the recent remake of The Wolfman, I'm a big fan of the Universal monster movies and the original version of The Wolfman is one of my favorites so I was a little upset when the remake was first announced, then I heard Rick Backer would be doing the werewolf makeup effects ( as he has done in An American Werewolf in London ) and then Benicio Del Toro was cast as Lawrence Talbot and I though this movie suddenly had potential.

If only they had just shot the original script the movie could have been great but the studio had to change and  things and in the process spoiling the movie ( at least for me ), Rick Baker did an excellent job with the werewolf makeup but they did the transformations in CG and they were less effective than the work Baker did in An American Werewolf in London decades earlier.

The remake of The Wolfman isn't a terrible movie but it is a badly missed opportunity to create a classic horror movie.