This video compilation won me over by beginning with perhaps the greatest werewolf transformation ever committed to celluloid, the one from AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Genius, pure genius. Then following it up with Eddie’s transformation from THE HOWLING? Yes, this list is legit. But while the fight scene between Hugh Jackman’s werewolf and the bat-winged, bestial Dracula was by far the coolest part of the movie VAN HELSING, I’m not sure it belongs on this list. I much prefer practical effects to CGI, even really good CGI, like that used to accomplish Benecio Del Toro’s metamorphosis into his particular version of THE WOLFMAN.
Here’s where I must kibitz a little, though. In this compilation of the greatest cinematic werewolf transformations, where is the granddaddy of them all, the original Universal lycanthrope, Lon Chaney Jr. as THE WOLFMAN? The masterful, seamless transformation sequence accomplished by filming Jack Pierce’s laborious applications of make-up at various stages, then splicing those together, allowing for a slow bleeding from one to the next, may be technologically “obsolete” by today’s standards, but no man-into-werewolf segment of any movie has ever been done better.
Lon Chaney Jr. was the BEST wolf man of all. Nobody can touch him in this role.