Review by Paul Davis
Stars Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, Art Malik,
Simon Merrells, Mario Marin-Borquez, Asa Butterfield, | Written by Andrew Kevin Walker & David Self
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £24.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 120 minutes | Directed by Joe Johnston
The Wolfman and I go WAY back. Now I'm not referring to the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. original, I literally mean that this year's remake of The Wolfman and I go WAY back! Rewind to the back end of 2007 with me for a moment. At the time I was about to wrap principal photography on a feature length documentary on the making of An American Werewolf in London, a project that Universal Home Entertainment (who own the movie) had pretty much no idea I was shooting.
In conversation with director John Landis, he would constantly remind me that the likelihood of Universal actually acquiring and releasing my film was slim to none. We didn’t have the money to license clips or music from the movie and Universal certainly didn’t need to buy our film for any future re-issues of American Werewolf. While these conversations came up with Landis for the best part of a year, I always had something in the back of my mind… the fact that Universal were gearing up to remake The Wolfman – and in turn, every werewolf title in their catalogue will be reissued to cash in on its release. They always are! Any self-respecting film fan knows this and has 80 different copies of Halloween on DVD to prove it.
To make a long story short, the documentary was acquired by Universal in 2008, because they wanted to release An American Werewolf in London on Blu-Ray in conjunction with the theatrical release of… tada! The Wolfman. This film and I shared the pain with delays and release date shifts right up until the American Werewolf Blu-Ray release in September last year, but in addition, the production of the documentary had mirrored Rick Baker’s time on The Wolfman. The day we spent with him at his Hollywood studio in June 2007 was the day after Benico del Toro went in for his first make-up test – from which that famous shot of Baker and del Toro strangling each other was taken. Even that early it appeared that the production, something that Baker pursued to be involved in, was not going to be a smooth ride for the Make-Up Effects legend.
In July of 2008 I was set to visit Rick Baker with John Landis at Pinewood Studios – something as a kid I would never fathom happening. Unfortunately, by the time Landis had got in touch with Baker, he was on his last day of the shoot and ready to head back to Los Angeles. Damn it! My first real visit to a huge movie set was not going to happen, well, not YET anyway. With news that the movie had been pushed to a November 2009 release (from its original April slot), Baker and crew were back at Pinewood in the Spring of 09 for $30 million worth of reshoots. This time I did get that visit and what I saw was an interesting mixture of amazing sets, brilliant designs and appliances by Baker and an uneasy feeling that nobody actually wanted to be there. In saying that, I don’t mean that all involved didn’t care about the project, far from it. In fact, whenever Rick or his assistant Dave Elsey showed me something new, they shared my excitement. It was just the feeling that everyone had come to the end of their tether on the project and enough was enough. Again, I had caught Rick on his last day of the reshoots, so I bet he couldn’t wait to get back to sunny California.
An "is he isn’t he" regarding Danny Elfman doing the score (he did), and another release date shift later, The Wolfman finally hit cinemas in February of this year to a lukewarm response both critically and at the box office. To date it’s managed to recoup its $85 million budget (which I think is a tad lower than it actually was) worldwide and with the new Blu-Ray/DVD release it’s set to bring in some more revenue for Universal. The exciting thing regarding the home video release is that it includes director Joe Johnston’s original 120-minute, and considerably superior, cut of the film.
For those of you who didn’t see the film in cinemas, here’s the long and short of things – Laurence Talbot (del Toro) is an actor on tour with a Shakespeare troupe when he learns that his brother has mysteriously disappeared at his family home in London. Greeted by his father (Hopkins) upon his return, Laurence learns that his brother has been murdered, with the local townsfolk and gypsies believing it to be the work of a werewolf. Talbot is sceptical of the superstitious locals until of course he is attacked by the beast himself and survives. Cue the next full moon and our buddy Larry is sprouting hair, baring fangs and eating people. It is quite literally Curt Siodmak’s original story on steroids! As for the extended cut, just re-read what I just wrote and make it last extra 16-minutes by reading it slower.
My initial thoughts when seeing the movie were foremost how beautifully it is shot. I’d heard a few stories here and there that Johnston would unnecessarily spend hours on a shot of a leaf or something as absurd as that, however – the results speak for themselves and I think Johnston and cinematographer Shelly Johnson did a stellar job capturing 19th century London on screen. Another from the plus side of the coin is how blood-soaked the movie is. Although I was told outright by Baker and company that the movie was an out and out horror flick, I always feared that some of that Van Helsing/The Mummy goofiness would be put in there by the executives. These fears were heightened when I was shown a wonderful scene of the wolf sat under a bridge chewing on an arm - only to be told that the director had already cut it citing that it was too gruesome. He's a The Wolfman for crying out loud! However, mini-rant about severed arm chewing aside, the gore is plentiful and really solidifies the films attempts to be taken seriously as a gothic-horror tale.
On the flipside however, a lot of the performances in the film seem to be very by the numbers. I did not buy for one second that Del Toro and Hopkins were supposed to be related. There was nothing there. No love, no hate, no love-hate. Nothing at all. It felt like they were merely reading lines to each other. What I think was even more offensive was the lack of continuity between shots that were filmed during the initial shoot and the reshoots. It's no secret that Hopkins partook in a considerable weight-loss program between principal photography and the reshoots, and although they waited until the very end of the reshoots to film Hopkins' additional scenes, it still was not enough time for Sir Ant to balloon back up to the way he appeared throughout most of the movie.
Overall, and despite the fact that I think the director's unrated cut IS better than the theatrical version, I feel as though the movie just plods along half the time and spends far too much time talking about the monsters and the horrible things they do rather than showing them – but when they do show it, it is awesome! Also on the chopping block for me are the hokey computer-riddled transformation sequences, that to this day make me wonder what it would have looked like had Rick Baker had his way and got to use all of the mechanical effects that he had created for said scenes. Also, whoever's idea it was to have the wolf gallop on all fours... yikes! It's not good.
As for the Blu-Ray itself, the HD presentation is absolutely stunning and beautifully compliments the wonderful cinematography I raved about a moment ago. The wonderful DTS-HD sound is epic on any half decent surround sound system – although I dare you not to laugh when the wolf howls. It's like when Simba tries to growl in The Lion King. You go through the entire movie hoping that he's going to get better at it. The bonus features are plentiful on the disc, with featurettes by the dozen focusing on everything from the movie's production to the work of Rick Baker. There are also a host of deleted scenes and two alternate endings for your viewing pleasure, all in glorious HD.
All in all The Wolfman isn't great, but I'd certainly take this over a lot of the horror movies that have come out in recent years. If this paves the way for more Universal Monsters to get an update then I'm all for it. Maybe Guillermo del Toro will jump back on Creature From the Black Lagoon now that he's done playing in Middle Earth?
• PAUL DAVIS is the writer, director and host of the documentary Beware The Moon: Remembering An American Werewolf in London. He is currently in pre-production to shoot a segment for UK horror anthology Habeas Corpus with four other young genre directors. In addition he will pop up in John Landis's Burke & Hare later this year and will play one of the lead werewolves in Gladiators vs Werewolves, which shoots at the end of the year. In his "spare time", Paul also DJs for Reel Music.