Teenager Eleanor Crane goes to visit her uncle Peter in a remote Eastern European village, and receives an unexpectedly cold welcome from the villagers, who are plagued by a deadly curse. That’s because Peter just so happens to be a werewolf.

Director Jeff Burr had plans to make an entire series of movies based on the Universal monster films, with only this movie and Frankenstein Reborn ever getting made. However, there were posters designed for the Dracula and Mummy installments, as Full Moon wanted an entire series they were going to call Filmonsters!

Burr would also co-direct Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy and direct the fourth and fifth Puppet Master films, as well as Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and Stepfather II. Plus, he was also the director for From a Whisper to a Scream.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Will Randall (Jack Nicholson) once ran the New York publishing world, but now he’s been demoted by his new boss Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer) and has lost his wife and title to Stewart Swinton (James Spader). At least he’s been bit by a black wolf and has started to become something more than just a normal person, because otherwise, his life is pretty rough.

He soon begins to romance Alden’s daughter Laura (Michelle Pfeiffer) as he tries to control the wolf inside him. Of course, his rival is also a wolf and tries to take everything away from him all over again, but this time, he’s able to best him before becoming a full-blown wolf and running into the woods.

Mike Nichols wouldn’t be my first choice for making a horror movie, what with a resume of The Graduate, Working Girl and The Birdcage. At least the Ennio Morricone is pretty great. The make-up is awesome, too. If you’re going to make a werewolf movie, get the best. Get Rick Baker.

Nicholson had been trying to get this movie made with his friend, Jim Harrison, for more than a decade. The screenwriter and associate producer hated the result of the film so much that he left Hollywood.

The real problem, I think, is that no one could agree what the movie was about. Nichols thought it was about the death of God, the decline of Western civilization and A.I.D.S. Harrison wanted it to be a “celebration of oblivion and liberation.” And Morricone believed it was a story about a man trapped in a dream.

Directed, produced, starring and written by Clive Turner, this film attempts to unite Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, Howling V: The Rebirth and Howling VI: The Freaks.

Turner’s character arrives in a small western town and begins mingling with the people there at the very same time that a large animal is killing people. Meanwhile, a detective and a priest start connecting the past three films in this series, which allows plenty of stock footage to pad out the running time.

This is the worst of the Howling films, which really seems like a low bar to trip over. Everyone in the town where this was made used their real names in the film. That in itself is a crazy story, because Roger Nail (who made Hard Time and art directed Darkman) was the original director of this movie and he wanted to make a werewolf movie. Seeing as how this was called Howling 7, you have to applaud his creative vision. Instead, Turner wanted to make a character-driven take about the hillbilly community and less about furry monsters.

That’s why the credits say, “The events depicted in this town are fictitious. The characters depicted in Pioneer Town are real.”

I can’t tell you not to watch this. I will tell you that the scene with the song “Prescription Beer” is astounding and I also wonder why there ever needed to be a werewolf here, but again. I’m just writing about these movies, not making them.

Back before Neil Jordan made The Crying Game, he made an adaption of one of the stories in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. The author had already made a radio version of the story and worked with Jordan on the script.

This was Jordan’s second film and it was made on a very low budget. In fact, to get across the idea of multiple wolves in some scenes, most of the monsters shown in the film are actually Belgian Shepherd Dogs*.

The narrative device that drives this film concerns Rosaleen, a modern girl who dreams that she is in the past, a strange place where her sister Alice is hunted and killed by wolves. Her grandmother (Angela Lansbury!) warns her, as she gives her a red cloak, to beware men whose eyebrows meet. As the villagers soon hunt a wolf whose dead body reveals a man, this dire proclamation takes on some truth.

She soon meets a huntsman, who dares her to a race to her grandmother’s house. He arrives first and eats the old woman, yet our heroine can’t hate the man. Even though she wounds him, she still cares for him and ends up becoming turned into a lycanthrope herself. Finally, the story breaks into today’s time, as the wolves crash through the windows of Rosaleen’s modern world, symbolizing the end of her pre-pubescent innocence.

This framing story also allows the grandmother and Rosaleen to tell stories that concern wolves, man and desire. They include a young werewolf (Stephen Rea) running from his wife and young family, the devil (Terrence Stamp!) showing ip in a Rolls Royce, a witch that transforms a family of noblemen and a wolf woman (experimental musician Danielle Dax) treated kindly by a priest.

The film also offers some truly horrific and bloody transformation scenes that were featured prominently in the advertising when this ran in the U.S. I remember seeing these commercials and being horrified by them, but they are just part of the overall journey for a movie that is more allegory than genre film. And hey — David Warner is in it and he always makes everything he’s in so much more interesting for his presence.

*There were also two wolves used in the film, which required snipers to also be on set. That’s because these wild animals can never truly be tamed.

This movie goes by many names. Beyond the translation of the title we used — The Monsters of Terror, it is known as Dracula vs. Frankenstein in the UK, Reincarnator in France, Assignment Terror in the U.S. and was almost titled El Hombre que Vino de Ummo (The Man Who Came From Ummo), in reference to Michael Rennie’s alien character.

Count Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy forever!) has been revived from his death at the end of The Mark of the Wolfman as aliens remove the silver bullets from his body — yes, really! — as part of their plan to use a carnival as the cover to control Tao-Tet the mummy, Frankenstein’s — err, I mean Farancksalan’s — monster and a vampire named Count De Meirhoff. Their plan is to learn why humans fear these monsters and use them to attack humans. I mean, I guess that’s a good plan. They have plenty of technology and it really feels like the kind of scam that an 80’s TV cartoon villain would come up with. But hey — that’s the plan they have and they’re going with it. If you had access to the book Anthology of the Monsters by Professor Ulrich von Farancksalan, you might do the very same thing.

In a bit of irony, these evil aliens are led by Dr. Odo Warnoff. I say that because Michael Rennie also played Klaatu, the good alien that came to warn us all in The Day The Earth Stood Still.  He’s helped by Maleva Kerstein, another dead scientist (Karin Dor, who was Helga Brandt from You Only Live Twice) ready to destroy the world.

Can our werewolf hero save humanity from aliens and their monsters through hand-to-claw combat? Will Inspector Tobermann (Craig Hill, The Blood Stained Shadow) be an effective policeman? Will our Daninsky need to be shot by the woman who loves him, Ilsa (Patty Shephard, who would go on to be Countess Wandesa Dárvula de Nadasdy in The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman and also show up in Edge of the Axe)?

I’ve seen plenty of reviews make fun of this movie. Look, life kind of is horrible. You’d do well to watch this and shut off your brain and experience the wonder of a movie that pits a furry Spanish lothario against every Universal monster minus the budget. Live a little. Remember what fun is like.

You can watch this on YouTube. Or grab the RoninFlix blu ray and do yourself a wonderful kindness.

The movie begins with a child runs through the woods being chased by a werewolf which corners and kills her. All that’s left is a teddy bear which we soon see being held by a drifter named Ian Richards as he tries to get a ride. He gets a job helping to rebuild a church, but by the time the full moon comes back, he’s soon captured by them.

Oh man — The Howling series of films has brought us here to the sixth movie of several films that rarely, if ever, tie together. Are you ready?

This film adds a sideshow angle, complete with Deep Roy — Teeny Weeny from The NeverEnding Story, Fellini from Flash Gordon, the Tin Man in Return to Oz, all of the Oompa Loompas from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Tim Burton film — and a vampire leader of the circus battling the entire town of Canton Bluff.

Director Hope Perello also made the Full Moon kid movie Pet Shop and a drama entitled St. Patrick’s Day.

So how does this all tie in? Mary Lou from The Rebirth has a brief, non-speaking part as an audience member at the beginning of the film. They actually explain this in the next installment, New Moon Rising.

You can watch this on Tubi.

An unofficial remake of Cat People, this Alfred Shaughnessy-directed (he wrote Upstairs Downstairs) film is all about Leonora Johnson (Barbara Shelley, perhaps Hammer’s best-known female actress with roles in Dracula, Prince of Darkness; The Gorgon; Rasputin, The Mad Monk and Quatermass and the Pit), who may have inherited a family curse — when angered, she transforms into a murderous cat — along with an ancestral estate and lots of money.

Somehow, Dr. Brian Marlowe is still Leonora’s psychologist, despite them dating years before. I have no idea how he’s able to serve in this role, which feels like a violation of ethics, nor stay married to his wife Dorothy when Leonora continually is either trying to sleep with him or transform into a wolf and kill her. Dorothy is either a saint or a moron, as she keeps forgiving and helping.

If you were at the drive-in in 1957, you probably could have caught this on a double bill with another American-International Pictures release, The Amazing Colossal Man. Shelly would also star in another cat-themed horror movie, The Shadow of the Cat.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

Hammer had already made films for Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, and The Mummy. Surely it was time for the werewolf, with this being the first furry horror film shot in color, as well as Oliver Reed’s first starring role.

This wolf — Leon — has a wild origin story. His mother (Yvonne Romain, Devil Doll) was a mute jailer’s daughter who was assaulted by a beggar who had the gall to complain at a nobelman’s wedding and ends up imprisoned for 18 years. She had turned down the rich man herself and was sent to the dungeons, which caused her to be impregnated. Once released to “entertain” the nobleman, she kills him instead and runs into the forest.

She gives birth and dies. Because the beggar had died right after attacking her, that makes young Leon an orphan. He’s raised by Don Alfredo Corledo and his housekeeper Teresa. As he was born on Christmas Day, that means that he’s cursed to become a werewolf, already hunting for the blood of goats before he’s even out of puberty.

Leon finds work in a winery, but become despondent when he realizes that his station in life will never allow him to marry the owner’s daughter. When a co-worker takes him to a house of ill repute, his wolf nature comes out and he ends up killing one of the girls and his friend.

Too late, our hero learns that the love of a good woman can keep the wolf in check. Seriously, British werewolves are crazy, because you can become one without being bitten. You just need to not be born on December 25th. And man, if you’re unlucky in love, people are going to get, well, wolfed down.

Eventually, Leon’s adoptive father must make a silver bullet and take care of matters. All of this period drama longing seems to take forever to get to that transformation though. I remember this airing on UHF TV in my single digit years and just fiending for the moment that the man became wolf. It takes nearly sixty minutes of the movie’s 93-minute run time before we get to see Reed go fully hirsute.

Before being released, the British Board of Film Classification gave Hammer Films this edict: This movie could either have scenes of sex or violence, but not both. So they went with violence.

The publicity shots for this and the images of Reed in full werewolf mode were pretty popular. The actual film doesn’t live up to what was in my mind as a kid, but it’s still pretty fun.

I loved Adrián García Bogliano’s Here Comes the Devil, so I was excited for this werewolf film. It’s not as amazing as that film, but there are some interesting parts to this story.

Will McKinley (Ethan Embry, Empire Records) has moved his blind vet dad Ambrose (Stakeland, We Are What We Are) into a retirement home. Ambrose is angry, as he feels that he can live on his own. Despite the attentions of the ladies of this community — Tina Louise (Gilligan’s Island, Evils of the Night) Rutanya Alta (Mommie Dearest, Amityville II: The Possession) and Caitlin O’Heaney (Savage Weekend, He Knows You’re Alone) in great casting — but he only really cares about Shadow, his German Shepherd service dog. Then, one night, a werewolf breaks into his duplex and kills his neighbor (Karen Lynn Gorney, Saturday Night Fever) and his beloved canine companion.

Ambrose uses all his military skills to track down the wolf, as well as his enhanced hearing, as he recognizes a rasp in the breathing of the killer. Could it be the priest (Tom Noonan!)? The man in the iron lung? Or the strange James Griffin (Lance Guest)?

The film kind of plods along until the very intense close and emotional letter that Ambrose sends his son. I just wish that the film had more werewolves and less narrative leaps to make, like a blind man being placed in an unfamiliar home and not knowing where the furniture is.

There are parts of this movie that I realy liked, but I expected so much more. You may enjoy it more than me, so check it out on Amazon Prime.