FrightFest Guide to Werewolf Movies is a Horror Movies novel by Gavin Baddeley. Read summary below.
FrightFest Guide to Werewolf Movies (The Dark Heart of Cinema) Summary
The crimson eyes of the werewolf still glare at us from the midnight depths of our ancient roots deep in primordial forest. From the halls of Ancient Greek kings and from Roman horror stories, to medieval law courts and modern crime scenes, the lycanthrope has stalked us across the centuries.
In the contemporary world of the concrete jungle we may feel masters of our bestial ancestry, but the werewolf reminds us that our teeth were evolved to tear living – perhaps even human – flesh, that our place atop the food chain remains precarious.
We are now most familiar with the wolfman courtesy of Hollywood. Over the past century, a diverse pack of lycanthropes has manifest on the silver screen – in big-bucks blockbusters and zero-budget B-movies – each revealing a little more of the nature of the beast.
Within these colorful pages we will encounter reluctant wolfmen and shapeshifting sadists, Nazi werewolves and werewolf nuns, big bad fairytale wolves and lycanthropic nymphomaniacs.
Your guide is acclaimed author, broadcaster, occult historian – and lifelong werewolf obsessive – Gavin Baddeley. By finding fresh perspectives on established classics, uncovering neglected gems, and even examining a few howlers among the definitive selection of werewolf movies reviewed, Baddeley shows how the myth has adapted and transformed: whereby werewolves become analogies for alcoholism or adolescence, or ciphers for sexual awakening or serial murder.
Providing our foreword is the award-winning director, writer and producer Neil Marshall, whose brilliant debut feature DOG SOLDIERS reinvigorated the werewolf movie for the 21st Century.
So, the moon is full, the wolfsbane is in bloom… Time to brave the fogbound moors to find out who – or what – is responsible for that baleful howling… all is revealed in the FrightFest Guide to Werewolf Movies.
READ; The Werewolf Dates The Deputy (Nocturne Falls)
FrightFest Guide to Werewolf Movies (The Dark Heart of Cinema) Review
5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have for lovers of lycanthropy, horror history, and, naturally, werewolf movies.
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2019
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The FRIGHTFEST GUIDE TO WEREWOLF MOVIES (2019), written by occult historian and lifelong lycanthrope aficionado Gavin Baddeley, is the fourth installment in the guide series accompanying the annual FrightFest film festival held in London for two decades now.
Baddeley covers some 200 werewolf films, from the mythical creature’s modest first onscreen appearance in the oblique 1922 DRACULA adaptation NOSFERATU (who knew?) through to a pair of werewolf films released in the year of this book’s publication. Each page is lavishly illustrated (FAB press puts out “quality books for cult connoisseurs” indeed) with promotional artwork and screenshots from each film, which informs the text artfully woven around the arresting imagery. Indeed, WEREWOLF MOVIES doubles as an art book, and it is a delight to simply flip through its extensively decorated pages. Each entry in werewolf cinema—films from all over the world—is given roughly a page (sometimes a half-page, sometimes a page-and-a-half) of analysis, with a bit more attention dedicated to specific classics in werewolf cinema, such as the original WOLF MAN (1941), AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981), THE HOWLING (1981), THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984), UNDERWORLD (2003), and various others.
The real hero who emerges from within Baddeley’s narrative is Spain’s “Hombre Lobo” Paul Naschy, who transformed from a young werewolf fan inspired by FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943) to a starring lycanthrope “at least a record-breaking dozen times”—from FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR (1968) to TOMB OF THE WEREWOLF (2004)—to an inspiration for cinematic shapeshifters himself. (That Baddeley can not only cover 200 movies within one genre but 12 films featuring the same actor without becoming repetitious or dull is a testament to his skill as a writer and storyteller.)
As worthwhile as WEREWOLF MOVIES’ individual film reviews are, what’s especially appealing is the book’s four-part, 35-page Introduction, which is classic Baddeley. The well-read and witty author takes the reader on a fascinating tour through ages of werewolf lore: the ancient Greek lycanthropic King Lycaon; Rome’s founding myth of abandoned twins Romulus and Remus, adopted and suckled by a she-wolf; the ancient Roman ceremony of Lupercalia; the monstrous wolf of Norse myth Fenrir/Fenris; the medieval Catholic Church’s stance against belief in lycanthropy on the grounds that only Almighty God could create or change matter; werewolf trials in the Middle Ages; studies in lycanthropy such as Sabine Baring-Gould’s BOOK OF WERE-WOLVES (1865); the werewolf’s infiltration into fairytales, such as “Little Red Riding Hood”; lycanthropy’s relationship with modern-day serial murder; the wolf-obsessed Third Reich; crass “wolf-whistling” men, immortalized in Tex Avery’s 1943 “Red Hot Riding Hood” cartoon; Hollywood’s love of therianthropy—man-into-beast shapeshifting; and so on and so forth.
This journey beginning in ancient mythology naturally ends in the modern movie theater, Baddeley underlining cinema’s power to shape our myths old and new. (The author points out how the “Even a man who is pure in heart” verses recited in THE WOLF MAN have been mistaken for legitimate Germanic lycanthropy folklore). Baddeley explores how the mystical power wielded by cinema is especially significant with regards to the werewolf—the genuine “underdog” in the classic cast of Hollywood monsters, for unlike Frankenstein’s monster or Dracula, the werewolf does not have a specific literary text to return to; the silver screen has therefore proven instrumental in establishing and solidifying lycanthropy’s central myths, such as the full moon, the pentagram, the silver bullet, etc. This is Baddeley’s entryway into werewolf cinema.
While onscreen lycanthropy lore and gore is fascinating and fun, werewolf movies appear most interesting when in dialogue with personal turbulence, from puberty—whether in the more comedic vein of TEEN WOLF (1985) or the more grisly vein of GINGER SNAPS (2000)—to PTSD (WAR WOLVES, 2009). (Interestingly, as Baddeley notes, perhaps the most apt is the lycanthropy-as-addiction analogy, as some of the actors who have played wolf-men had drinking problems, not least Lon Chaney, Jr.)
Given that any werewolf film is a risky endeavor, as convincing vampire or zombie makeup and FX are far cheaper and easier, Baddeley is generous to even the chintziest entries and the schlockiest shapeshifters in this collection. But to be sure, as with any Baddeley book the reader is in for a great many laughs. The author on the Nixon-era WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON (1973): “The President’s a cynical, blundering blowhard, who surrounds himself with bigots and crooks.…This long felt like a dated time-capsule, but now feels oddly topical”; on Peter Cushing in LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF (1975): “Only Cushing could face down a werewolf purely by being frightfully British!”; on Earl Owensby in WOLFMAN (1979): “He is…pretty hairy, and during one scene where Owensby is topless, I had to pause the film to work out if he was supposed to be transforming”; on the busty Sybil Danning in HOWLING II: STIRBA – WEREWOLF BITCH (1985): “Danning plays…the (ahem) titular arch-werewolf Stirba”; on the reformed rock star Alice Cooper in MONSTER DOG (1986): “Alice Cooper successfully reinvented himself as a hard-rocking born-again Christian Republican – a more terrifying transformation than anything in MONSTER DOG”; and on pretentious do-all Jon Rekdal’s WEREWOLF (2012): “What is Rekdal’s idea of lycanthropy? Being taken over by our worst impulses? If so, in this case it’s unfettered egotism.”
Gavin Baddeley’s WEREWOLF MOVIES is sure to inform, entertain, and with an infectious bite turn readers (“even a man who is pure in heart”) on to many films in the werewolf genre. For lovers of lycanthropy or horror history, the book is a must-have—worth purchasing for the Introduction alone. While FrightFest recruits a new writer for each year’s guide, the FRIGHTFEST GUIDE TO WEREWOLF MOVIES left me hoping that Baddeley will be brought back for a guide to FRANKENSTEIN films.
About Gavin Baddeley Author Of FrightFest Guide to Werewolf Movies (The Dark Heart of Cinema) Book
Gavin Baddeley Author Of FrightFest Guide to Werewolf Movies (The Dark Heart of Cinema) Book, He is an ordained Reverend in the Church of Satan, and an experienced journalist who has worked for The Observer and Metal Hammer. He is the occult authority for the BBC and Channel 4, has addressed Cambridge University, and has been profiled in The Independent and The London Evening Standard.
FrightFest Guide to Werewolf Movies (The Dark Heart of Cinema) pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information
- Publisher : FAB Press (October 16, 2019)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1913051021
- ISBN-13 : 978-1913051020
- Item Weight : 1.7 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.5 x 0.5 x 10.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #861,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #161 in Horror Movies
- #477 in Movie Guides & Reviews
- #7,640 in Performing Arts (Books)
- Customer Reviews: 4.7 out of 5 stars 58 ratings
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