Werewolves

A Deuce of Fairytale Fearsomeness

Have you ever heard of STRUWWELPETER (“In English, “Shockheaded Peter”)? Me neither. It was written in 1845 by a guy named Heinrich Hoffman. (I’m betting the title tipped you off that the book was written by a German guy.) Apparently it inspired Tim Burton to create Edward Scissorhands. (Edward would seem to be a combination…

Book Review: SOMETHING IN THE WOODS IS TAKING PEOPLE

This “book” is actually a compilation of five works by author Stephen Young: SOMETHING IN THE WOODS IS TAKING PEOPLE, HUNTED IN THE WOODS, PREDATORS IN THE WOODS, TAKEN IN THE WOODS, and MYSTERIOUS THINGS IN THE WOODS. Mr. Young gets a lot of press on the COAST TO COAST AM radio program, or so…

Review: BONE TOMAHAWK

A trio of townspeople are kidnapped by a pack of cannibalistic, cave-dwelling troglodytes, and a posse consisting of Sheriff Kurt Russell along with his elderly deputy, a cripple, and an Indian fighter turned gunslinger, have to go rescue them. That’s the premise. It’s equal parts old-school Western and Horror movie. It’s THE SEARCHERS meets THE…

The Disappearance of Lak Sivrak, the Werewolf of STAR WARS

Did you know there was a werewolf in the original STAR WARS? It’s true. The character’s name was Lak Sivrak, although it didn’t receive this handle until later. It, or he, even had his own action figure. Fans and other creators gave him an elaborate backstory, but his beginnings were humble. Special Effects god-man Rick…

STRANGER THINGS To Get Even Stranger

Replace the word “stranger” in the above title with “freakier” and it still works. The SECOND use of that word, that is. Otherwise you’d end up describing a show called FREAKIER THINGS, which, while it sounds like fun and like something I’d want to watch, doesn’t really exist. Or you could replace the second “stranger”…

TWIN PEAKS Weekly WTF

I have chosen to cover TWIN PEAKS here on the werewolves site instead of on one of our sister sites (darkness.com, vampires.com, topcomics.com, and zombies.org) due to the connection with demonic possession and serial killers. These twain are a better fit for a website catering to all things werewolf. I do realize that not EVERY…

Exhibit A

This past weekend was a lousy one for Horror. Universal’s THE MUMMY underperformed at the American box office (but did great overseas) and got slammed by bad reviews (more on this in a second). The independent IT COMES AT NIGHT has been getting glowing reviews on the circuit, but it also underperformed, relatively speaking, and…

The Shocking Truth is only true in part!

The other night I was enjoying one of my rare, very rare, experiences in couch-reclining and channel-surfing. I chanced upon this television show on REELZ called THE SHOCKING TRUTH. This one featured the film THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. While it promised hidden, unknown, or not commonly known facts regarding the movie, and most of…

Revisiting the Classics: THE UNDYING MONSTER

After Universal Studios cashed-in big time on Horror in the 1930s with its pantheon of black-and-white Monster icons, it was to be expected that the other major movie studios would want to get in on the action. RKO Pictures managed quite nicely in the 1940s, with the efforts of producer Val Lewton, who brought us…

Review: PENNY DREADFUL: The Comic Book Series, Issue 3

Honestly this series just keeps getting better. In the latest issue, we learn what really happened all those years ago in ancient Egypt. Remember back in season one (of the TV series), they were hinting at this stuff, the two brothers, Lucifer (or Set, as he was known then) and Dracula, competing for the love…

Review: WOLFCOP the Comic Book, Issue One

Another comic to review this week! This debut issue of WOLFCOP, a new ongoing series, debuting the same week as PENNY DREADFUL issue three! I’ll take it! How IS this new series, you ask? Let’s start with the artwork, which is fine. No complaints there. Howzabout the story? A good comic must have both good…

Good News and Bad News

The more I see from the forthcoming DARK UNIVERSE, the revamped shared universe of the classic Universal Monsters, the more hopeful I become. For example, check out this viral video for Prodigium. This last is the secret organization that will be at work in all the Dark Universe films, fighting the Monsters and trying to…

Cannibalism Cures Diabetes and Depression

Man, all this conflicting information! There was that report a few weeks back wherein scientists postulated that human flesh wasn’t all that nutritious. Then there are all those reports about prions and Mad Cow Disease-like ailments that can result from cannibalizing one’s own kind. It would seem that the consensus was that anthropophagy wasn’t good…

An American Were-Tiger in Texas

The upcoming TV series MIDNIGHT, TEXAS will feature a were-tiger. Based on the works of author Charlaine Harris, whose TRUE BLOOD series led to a little television show of the same name, this new series will debut on July 24th on NBC. Wait. NBC? A NETWORK station? That’s not good. Not only will this limit…

BOB is still there!

If you aren’t a fan of TWIN PEAKS I won’t try to convince you to start watching the show. Honestly you’d have to go back and watch the entire first two seasons from 25 years ago, and the lackluster movie TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, to be able to make heads or tails out…

Book Review: NIGHTMARE IN THE WOODS by A.H. Verge

Let’s start with the negative stuff and get it out of the way. Mr. A.H. is obviously not a professional writer. At times it is painfully obvious. The wonders of the Internet and modern technology now allow anyone to become a published author, sans editorial oversight. This is both a good and a bad thing….

Ozzy and the Eclipse

I saw this thing on social media, but I was out at the time, viewing it via my phone, and when I sought to save it, it didn’t save. Alas, alas! And yet I remembered the gist of it, thus I can still report on it! So, like, there’s supposed to be this eclipse sometime…

Who’s the Most Badass Werewolf of them all?

To keep this thing in focus, let’s consider only the werewolves of the movies/TV, ‘kay? Maybe I’ll do a “most badass werewolf of Literature” some other time. Which beast would get your vote? Like, if they all were put into an arena and had to fight it out, last werewolf standing, which werewolf would be…

Beware Pyotr

Horror as a medium is at its best when it provides commentary and insight into the human condition, when it tackles the big ideas. FRANKENSTEIN, for example. The book, the movie(s), the characters. How far should Science go, it asks us? Is there a limit to what men should attain? Are some things beyond us…

The Advent of St. Christopher

You’ll be hearing more about this over the next couple of weeks, as I am finalizing work on the release of my first novel. It will be called THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER—WEREWOLF. Yeah, given that I’m mentioning it here, and in case the title didn’t tip you off, it’s a werewolf novel. It is…

Paging Dr. Jekyll

So Dr. Jekyll is going to be to the new “Dark Universe” of the rebooted Universal Monsters what Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Makes sense, considering Universal has admitted it is trying to copy Marvel’s template with its own “shared universe.” Jekyll is heading, or at least heavily involved…

Werewolves of Television

As a general rule, werewolves have never held the same appeal for the general public, the “commoners” as I like to call them, as has the vampire. Buffy, The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, The Strain; there’ve been plenty of vampires on the boob tube. Werewolves, not so much. There have been occasional exceptions, though. Check…

The Missing Link was Greek?

Science has believed for quite some time that our earliest ancestor in any way resembling us came from Africa. Sure, we could go all the way back to some single-celled organism floating around in a pool of stagnant water as our true earliest ancestor, but the one we are concerned with is that one immediately…

Dark Universe

They’ve gone and given it a name, now. The planned “shared universe” of the Universal Monsters. They’re calling it “Dark Universe.” It’s simple. Catchy. I like it. Will it be dark ENOUGH, though? We’ll just have to wait and see. There is some room for hope. Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, who have been tapped…

Monster Goat

The word “monster” has as its root the Latin term “monstrum,” which in itself has a root as a verb meaning “to reveal” or “to warn.” In years past, the birth of a deformed child, for example, or a deformed animal would have been taken as an ill omen. The births of “monsters” so often…