9 Werewolves Lamer Than New Moon's Wimpwolf
5. Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf (1985)
Also known as Howling II: It's Not Over Yet and Howling II: Stirba Werewolf Bitch, this is the deliriously terrible "sequel" to Joe Dante's minor masterpiece. Christopher Lee, long before his Star Wars/Lord Of The Rings comeback, is an occult investigator pitted against Sybil Danning, lycanthrope queen in bondage gear with fur like cotton candy and whose abilities include shooting lasers out of her fingers. A Z-grade classic.
6. Howling III: The Marsupials (1987)
Howling II director Philippe Mora tried to outdo himself with this one, which takes the werewolf legend from Outback Australia onto the main streets of Sydney. Uniformly ridiculous -- our heroine has an "evolutionary freak" in her tummy pouch and her sister-werewolves disguise themselves as nuns -- this has the silliest transformations ever, including one on a ballet performance and a finale blast at, of all places, the Oscars. So kitschy it makes Baz Luhrmann's Australia look like an Ingmar Bergman joint.
7. Teen Wolf Too (1987)
Michael J. Fox's charm made Teen Wolf -- a parody of Michael Landon's film of 30 years earlier -- work as a minor comedy. Pity it was a success, because that meant a greenlight for Teen Wolf Too. Jason Bateman, real-life brother to Fox's Family Ties screen sister Justine, stepped into the role as a cousin of the original teen wolf, whose lycanthropic powers make him his college's boxing champion. It's reliably laugh-free and everything Bateman's done subsequently has been a step up. With the possible exception of The Sweetest Thing.
8. Van Helsing (2004)
The bare chest of The Sexiest Man Alive and a bear-sized, entirely weightless CGI were-beastie? New Moon's sexy-manimal is probably directly related to the similarly lackluster lycanthrope of Stephen Sommers' misbegotten monster mash. Weirdly, YouTube is filled with clips of Hugh Jackman shedding his skin to become a werewolf set to all sorts of discordant music, from Polish techno to American heavy metal. But no clip captures the gritty realism of the scene better than this.
9. Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans (2009)
Has there been a more useless franchise in recent memory than Underworld? The original squandered a decent premise, with Len Wiseman seemingly of the opinion that wife Kate Beckinsale in skintight leather could divert us from story holes and his hack direction. Their sequel was, remarkably, worse, and threw frenzied editing of underlit scenes into the mix. Len and Kate at least saw sense and avoided the third installment. Instead, veteran special effects guy Patrick Tatopoulos stepped up and cast Kate-a-like Rhona Mitra. As the title suggests, there are werewolves in the movie, but, truth be told, it's hard to see exactly how crap they are, given the film veers between underlit blue haze and Exxon Valdez-oil spill black.
Michael Adams is the author of the upcoming comic memoir Showgirls, Teen Wolves, And Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest To Find And Watch The Worst Movie Ever Made (HarperCollins)
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Comments
Howling II is great for one reason: The end credits have Sybil Danning ripping her top off over and over on a loop. Somebody in post earned their money on this one.
If you know anything about the books, you would know they are NOT werewolves, they are shape shifter, they turn into a wolf not a werewolf.
Please know what you are talking about before you post something!!!!
Werewolf can turn people into werewolf by a bite or a scratch.
They are not able to do this!!!
The creature in New Moon you refer to is not a werewolf - a creature part wolf part human, possibly, that stands erect like a man. These creatures are simply wolves. Granted, they are described at horse-height, but on physical characteristics other than size, they are simply wolves.
I looked up the clip you refer to, and for the life of me, I can't figure out what is "wimpy" or laugh-worthy about these wolves. Details, please, because so far, you've compared apples to oranges (well, maybe apples to apple pies, if you will), so your article is what's laugh-worthy here considering your ignorance of the story.
Seriously, "articles" like this one infuriate me. You clearly don't know your stuff, because the werewolves in Twilight are not exactly the same as your average wolf. First and foremost, they are shape-shifters, not werewolves that transform during the full moon. Secondly, they are able to transform incredibly swiftly.
I know that it's fashionable to bash Twilight if all of your buddies do it, but at least have your research, moron.
Furthermore, the Twilight wolves are just that: wolves. They aren't traditional werewolves. They are shapeshifters that assume the form of a wolf from their tribe.
Please do your research before you jump on the anti-Twilight bandwagon.
Haha! Dimo Dimo, you are dead right about the end credit sequence. Sybil's boob baring is repeated 17 times, in fact! I asked the director Philippe Mora about it, and he said he did it 5 times but the producer went beserk and added another 12 of his own in.
Genius.
Ohhhh! I see. . . Shape shifters, not Werewolves. . . Hmmm. . .
THAT'S EVEN LAMER!!!!!
Translation of above comment> "Furthermore, I am going to repeat my first post but in different words."
That's awesome!
There are no wolves in Twilight. They're only in New Moon and the other two.
Please do your research before obsessively googling any blog that mentions the Meyerverse and rushing to defend it in an obsequious manner.
This is hilarious. Google alerts you've done it again.
Twlilight fans share much in common with Australians, or so it seems.
Whats up with these people defending New Moon. Just because they are "REAL WOLVES" not were wolves does not make them any less crappy.
All this steam-blowing about New Moon is a bunch of bologna. You know why? Because a werewolf is a person that can turn into a wolf. That's it, that's all there is to it, show's over folks. You can add all the fluff and extra crap to that definition you want, but it still doesn't change the definition. Soooo the characters in New Moon can definitely be called werewolves. The author herself did so many times until she changed her mind right there at the very end of the series, stupidly.
(And psssst... they're more "traditional" than anything Hollywood dreamed up Chaney Jr. and beyond. Go read up on your mythology.)
Remember Sleepwalkers?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2rjEimMbfY
His car can SHAPESHIFT! Which seems to piss off all the cats in the World!! I am drenched in the awesomeness of it all. . .
Please, please. Let them call them anything other than werewolf. You're doing werewolves a monstrous disservice by associating them with anything remotely related that that hack-job Meyer and her Halloween teenage drama.
Actually, werewolves are just shape shifters who can shift between human and wolf form whenever they please. It's the movies and the such that have them becoming half human and half wolf.
http://www.mythicalrealm.com/legends/werewolf.html
In all honesty, who really cares about the real definition of a werewolf or not? All it comes down to is the whole thing is a pile of pidgeon excrement. A whimsical and somewhat perverse "love story", written by a strange woman who wishes she was young, and obviously wants to be spit-roasted by a pedophile werewolf and a vampire (who, going by the 2567654356556353362 references to the word 'chargrin' is always a bit miffed, and somewhat humiliated). Why anyone can honestly obsess over this poor excuse for literature is beyond me, it practically secretes and oozes desperation, which is blatantly displayed in her lack of imagination for adjectives.
What it boils down to, is that I wouldn't wipe my ass with this literary cock-up, and any such "Twihards" who think differently, need to pull their heads out of their asses, realise that real people are not "R-PATZ", Taylor Lautner, a vampire or a freaking werewolf, and get on with life. It's repulsive.