THE PACK Message Boards

Kaebora wrote:

Scott Gardener wrote:Still, you young whipper-snappers have no idea how important some of these works are. Kids these days, calling the original Star Wars slow-paced, with cheesy effects...

Indeed. A friend told me that the original Battlestar Galactica was crap. In fact, the acting wasn't half bad, and it was one of the best Sci-Fi TV shows of its time. Without BG, there wouldn't have been a Star Wars, or a Star Trek.

The same can be said of the original Wolf Man. The effects showing the transformation were good back when it was made. Lets face it, the Wolf Man TF was still more impressive than the one in Blood and Chocolate (rainbowy effects or camera cuts hiding all the shifting).

Star Trek predated BG, and Star Wars was a motion picture release, rather than a television show. My only beef with Battlestar Galactica (first version) was the fact that nobody told Lorne Greene (Adama) that this wasn't Bonanza. He played exactly the same character. Then there was "Battlestar Firetruck," the late and unlamented "Firehouse" where the whole BG ensemble tried being firemen...with Lorne Greene, again.
Something to keep in mind with the Original Wolf-Man...Lon Chaney had to freeze while the makeup was applied in front of the camera, in what was literally stop-action filming. It took almost two hours for the makeup to be applied, one layer at a time; and he had to stay stock still in position while it was done.
If CG had been available back then, he's have welcomed it with open arms!

Irish Wolf wrote:

MattSullivan wrote:Young kids these days all have ADD. That's why they would see STAR WARS as "slow" Yeesh.

I'm 13 and when i watched A New Hope i never thought it was slow paced.

Moving on. I know that Harry Potter isn't a werewolf movie but still the comb-over werewolf was horrible.

I read the Harry Potter books. The werewolves are just barely distiguishable from real wolves. The movie made them look like crap.
A New Hope was excellent. Better than the prequels, which all sucked.

There was Goosebumps (live-adaptation). They had the gorilla werewolf thing. (Yes, I actually watched that.)

Noir-Okami wrote:

Irish Wolf wrote:
There was Goosebumps (live-adaptation). They had the gorilla werewolf thing. (Yes, I actually watched that.)

I have the book around here somewhere, it doesn't really go into much detail about the werewolf though...

Bloodyredbaron wrote: I have the book around here somewhere, it doesn't really go into much detail about the werewolf though...

I remember reading it. No, it doesn't go into detail. But they did go into more visuals in the live-action adaptation. In the book, the main dude recognized his friend, even though he was transformed. In a case of Viewers Are Morons, they put (in the live-action version) in an eclipse. That was to show who the werewolf was.
That...And you couldn't tell that it was him that was the werewolf, when the full costume was on.

But there was Teen Wolf. Sorry, the dude looked (with the browline) like a gorilla/caveman thing. When he finally finished (my brother pointed this out; and it's true), he looked like an extra from the Planet of the Apes. With fangs.

Not to mention about Buffy, the werewolf was actually scary little monkey...

Werewolf in Buffy actually looked decent in the 1st season. Not sure why they changed the design.

Howling 4: You have to MELT to change. BE the werewolf soup!

From the same movie: Doctors turn into special gremlin type werewolves with extra large heads. Why? Uh, beats me!

Bad Moon: Asymmetrical transformations. Wtf?! I really enjoyed the movie, and the final white (rare) werewolf, but boy he was silly looking in between.

The Wolf Man: Lets see - he gets bitten by what is clearly a 4 legged wolf (okay, a dog meant to be a wolf). But he doesn't turn into the same thing? Why does he turn into a pug faced hairy guy? (OMG, the reporter at the end of Howling was his love child!) I love this movie regardless, but this has always irritated me. I know why they did it for the movie, for logistical reasons and so they could have a real 'monster', but it doesn't make much sense.

Werewolf (TV Series): Hey, they look cool, but imagine the sea of drool not being able to close your mouth would generate. "I'd bite you, but I don't have fully articulating jaws, so you're just going to have to throw yourself against my teeth! Rrrah!"

Big Wolf on Campus: Hi-larious fun. But they went from a half mask in the pilot to the sideburns/fu-manchu get up. Then they went ballistic with the sideburns/fu-manchu from the second season on. Crrrraaazy!

Definitely agree with others about Teen Wolf. That there's a teeny Bigfoot! And his hair was perfect!

American werewolf in Paris: ok movie, but the werewolves looked like mutant hamster men.
Wild country: OMG manbearpig!

Not sure if anyone has mentioned Cursed?

I've never seen any of the howling movies to be honest...
(Yet...)

But Cursed... god they made it look like an overgrown bear or something. And if that wasn't bad enough, after they killed the head werewolf, he burnt to dust, like a VAMPIRE!

EH... i wasn't even scared... just... disappointed...

Harry Potter: {spits on ground} The book was good... the movie... well, all i have to say is,

Dun nu nu nu nu nu nu RATMAN! Dun nu nu nu nu nu nu RATMAN! Dun nu nu nu nu nu nu RATMAAAAAN!!!!!

Yes, i'm horrible... and no i'm not old enough to remember the 1960's batman series that i was using... it was on TV Land for a while...

Therein lies the problem, as noted above. For some reason, nobody can seem to manage a simple bi-pedal upright wolf!
Note: many artists do just fine that way, but not the movies; no sirree!

Perhaps, the standard wolf-type lacks the...uhhh...star quality that radioactive baboons in a fake-fur wolf suit generates. Perhaps the art director decides that just a plain old wolf doesn't get it.
Whatever the reason, ugly seems to be in.

Or perhaps there are some...ahhh...People who don't want the movie images to be too accurate...

RedEye wrote:Therein lies the problem, as noted above. For some reason, nobody can seem to manage a simple bi-pedal upright wolf!
Note: many artists do just fine that way, but not the movies; no sirree!

Perhaps, the standard wolf-type lacks the...uhhh...star quality that radioactive baboons in a fake-fur wolf suit generates. Perhaps the art director decides that just a plain old wolf doesn't get it.
Whatever the reason, ugly seems to be in.

Or perhaps there are some...ahhh...People who don't want the movie images to be too accurate...

Still, the ... people... could at least give us more of a decent werewolf the just VanHelsing. That is, to date, the best werewolf I've seen in a movie...

Windigo wrote:American werewolf in Paris: ok movie, but the werewolves looked like mutant hamster men.

Oooh, great example, completely blanked it out of my mind.

American Werewolf in Paris: Changing werewolves must snap their own necks, and blow their knees out whilst undergoing 'the change'.

Windigo wrote:
American werewolf in Paris: ok movie, but the werewolves looked like mutant hamster men.

Oooh, great example, completely blanked it out of my mind.

American Werewolf in Paris: Changing werewolves must snap their own necks, and blow their knees out whilst undergoing 'the change'.

That sounds hilarious, I might have to watch that just for the pure cheesy goodness of it.

Yea the movie was more funny than scary.

You've already covered most of the more memorable ones. Actually, I'm hard-pressed to think of more than half a dozen really good ones. It's a lot easier to think of bad transformations.

However, I'm with WolfMontana in that Howling IV has quite probably the worst transformation method I've seen, not counting the stock stop-motion fur patches copied from The Wolf Man, that we see in so many B-movies that we've lost count. Melting into a puddle of protoplasmic goo, from which one's Gestalt form climbs out, is potentially pretty disturbing. But, the way the scene was done was so cheesy as to lack shock value and instead come off merely as annoying.

(Sorta like how, in the story that i will be working on... a character climbs out of a pool of blood, except... if it were a movie it'd look like he was climbing out of corn syrup?)