Writer & Editor
While there are many movies with werewolves in them, there are relatively few good ones in which the werewolf is the main character. Of those, the debate over which is best usually comes down to An American Werewolf in London or The Howling. (Traditionalists may also argue the case for 1941’s The Wolf Man.) Fine. But what about the other werewolf movies out there? Here are my favourite five.
Great news: WolfCop is now a reality. Writer/director Lowell Dean and his filmmaking team managed to advance through multiple fan-voted rounds of CineCoup’s development-spurring competition. When they made it into the Top 5 finalists in the inaugural CineCoup Film Accelerator, I had hope they might make it all the way — and on June 10, they did.
No, it’s not a new officer of the Saskatoon Police Service’s canine unit, but you could be forgiven for thinking that at first glance of Lou Garou, the main character in Canadian werewolf movie WolfCop.
A werewolf in cop’s clothing, Garou (played by Leo Fafard) is the brainchild of filmmaker Lowell Dean. Garou hits the bottle a bit too hard occasionally, so he’s used to not remembering where he’s spent his nights. But now, instead of just waking up with a hangover, he finds himself investigating crime scenes that seem a little too familiar.
The tagline for WolfCop, which currently only exists as a trailer (see below), is “Dirty Hairy… only hairier.”
Composer Howard Shore draws from the themes he created for previous films in Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Lord of the Rings for The Return of the King, and this score caps the trilogy off superbly.
Jon Mikl Thor, born in Vancouver, BC, started out as a bodybuilder in the 1970s and moved into the theatrical world of heavy metal. His shows featured feats of strength to the adoration of screaming fans. But as he tells it, taking the God of Thunder as your stage name doesn’t grant you immunity from trouble…
“There are many dangerous parts about being Thor in New York. One time I did a TV show and had the make-up on and long blonde hair. My wife likes Bojangles chicken, right? So I went to a Bojangles in a sort of shady area of New York City and then I was calling her, ‘Hey, I have some Bojangles chicken!’
If you haven’t heard of Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel, released in 2005, don’t confuse it with the mo-cap movie that came out years later. This version, starring Gerard Butler as Beowulf, is a more primal take on movie-making, with much of the atmosphere coming from the Icelandic locations. The difficulties posed by the weather, among other things, were epic; that story is told in the documentary Wrath of Gods, which I plan to post about soon.
For now, read what Canadian filmmaker Gunnarrsson had to say about shooting in his homeland.
Sturla Gunnarson is bringing an ancient hero to life in the wilds of Iceland. The Icelandic-Canadian filmmaker is helming a international production of Beowulf and Grendel, starring Gerard Butler and Ingvar Sigurdsson.
Beowulf, a poem written in Anglo-Saxon, is believed to be one of the oldest extant works of English literature. Ironically, none of its characters are English. The plot centres on the struggles of a Scandinavian warrior, Beowulf, against the monster Grendel.
