Melania Trump swerves Donald Trump's kiss in awkward inauguration moment
The exchange occurred as Donald Trump's inauguration got underway.
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Wolf Man: How Much 'Man' Do We Really Want in a Werewolf?
Wolf Man’s creature design is being debated and raises an age-old question: just what should a werewolf look like?
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Released in 1935 near the tail-end of Universal’s first cycle of monster movies—it came out the same year as Bride of Frankenstein—The Werewolf of London’s eponymous beastie was designed by legendary makeup artist Jack Pierce, the same man who masterminded the looks of Karloff’s Mummy and Frankenstein Monster. He also would get to utilize his original werewolf ideas on The Wolf Man, because in 1935 the classically trained Hull demurred sitting beneath such extensive makeup. Instead, he argued, audiences would want to see the human character (and actor) still beneath the wolf design. We imagine he and Leigh Whannell might have gotten along.
As a consequence, the werewolf in Werewolf of London has more in common with Mr. Hyde in various Jekyll and Hyde flicks. Hull’s werewolf prowls the streets of London in an overcoat, scarf and hat, stalking women of the night like the spirit of Jack the Ripper returned. He even apparently retains the power of speech.
Future generations of makeup artists affectionately refer to this werewolf design as the “Elvis of Werewolves,” and even have homaged it on occasion—such as Josh Hartnett’s throwback to the more man than wolf antihero in John Logan’s underrated Penny Dreadful. Largely however, the look was supplanted and forgotten after Pierce’s improvements in ‘41.
While a staple of childhood nostalgia and Halloween decorations today, there is still something rather gnarly about Chaney in his full werewolf regalia in The Wolf Man and its various sequels. It also defined the look of a guy still in his clothes covered in so much fur that his face became completely unrecognizable. With a good actor, which on his sober days Chaney very much could be, the design might even become ferocious. There is in fact something quite wicked about the scene in the film where in appropriately dark shadows on a foggy soundstage, Chaney comes running full tilt at first Evelyn Ankers and then Claude Rains with a look of murder in his eyes. Perhaps more thrilling and amusing than scary, it’s still left an impression for a reason.
Over the following 40 years, every cinematic werewolf in one way or another was an homage, imitation, or knockoff of what Pierce and Chaney did. Some of them are quite impressive in their own right, such as another real-life hellraiser in front of and behind the camera, Oliver Reed. He experienced a much more elaborate full body fur-job in Hammer Studios’ The Curse of the Werewolf (1961). A loose adaptation of Guy Endore’s underrated novel The Werewolf of Paris, the Hammer film draws on Medieval ideas of werewolfism being passed on through the blood and the sins of the father. Yet the design in the movie is pure Hollywood, if by way of the UK’s Roy Ashton. The teeth are sharper, the face more animalistic, and the blood of his victims finally visible, but if you squint it could still just resemble Reed after a particularly bad bender.
It was probably the best 20th century upgrade on Pierce’s standard, especially when compared to the cheaper designs in movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) and the various Paul Naschy Wolfman knockoff movies from 1970s Spain. But they, along with cartoon shows like Scooby-Doo, also made the emphasis on the Man in “Wolf Man” kitschy by the ‘80s….
