Even so, the internet predictably bayed in anger.
Thats not a wolf man!
many seemed to cry.
Its an old timey mountain man with really long hair and a bad dentist!
Four months later, the howling is gone and we now know what Whannell and Tuiten actually made.
Rest assured, it does not look like Halloween Horror NightsDeliverancereject.
Universal Pictures
The term is noticeably never used in the movie.
All of which raises the question of what exactly do viewers want from a big screen werewolf these days?
Well, there are two schools of thought…
The O.G.
Universal Pictures
Bipedal Werewolf
Few would argue John LandisAn American Werewolf in Londonremains the gold standard for lycanthrope cinema.
I always thought it was kind of interesting, that kind of combination of animal and person.
But John said, No, four-legged hound from hell!
That is, after all, what werewolves had looked like onscreen since the beginning of movies.
We imagine he and Leigh Whannell might have gotten along.
As a consequence, the werewolf inWerewolf of Londonhas more in common with Mr. Hyde in variousJekyll and Hydeflicks.
He even apparently retains the power of speech.
Largely however, the look was supplanted and forgotten after Pierces improvements in 41.
Perhaps more thrilling and amusing than scary, its still left an impression for a reason.
He experienced a much more elaboratefull body fur-jobin Hammer StudiosThe Curse of the Werewolf(1961).
Yet the design in the movie is pure Hollywood, if by way of the UKs Roy Ashton.
With blazing eyes, its wolfen features are twisted and demonic.
So reads John Landis screenplay forAn American Werewolf in London.
It was a shrewd choice.
By the 80s, the bipedal werewolf was a costume that kids went trick r treating in.
It also created a boom industry for prosthetic-heavy creature features.
Ironically, it was also not the only groundbreaking werewolf movie of 1981.
Ultimately, Baker awkwardly pulled out ofThe Howlingand left his protege Rob Bottin to design that movies werewolves.
In truth, they are closer to a hybrid of what became Pierce and Bakers calling cards.
While still bipedal, Dante and Bottins werewolves stand upright at a towering seven feet.
Theyre every bit as terrifying to look at as Landis hound from hell.
Still, the hound seemed to mostly win out in the short term.
There have been throwbacks that went the other way like the aforementioned 2010s TV series,Penny Dreadful.
And yet, audiences rejected it then.
The Best of Both Worlds?
Perhaps the best werewolves are the ones who are caught forever dead in the middle between man and beast?
