Relicui Mei

 "The Wolfman" (2010) .  Big film; lots of money. The pet project of producer Benicio DelToro, who makes the unfortunate choice of starring as Larry Talbot himself. Well... he's better-looking than Lon Chaney, Jr., I suppose.   But really he looks like he should have starred in a remake of Dr. Giggles , instead. Most of the elements from the original film make their appearances, although they are sometimes strained. The silver-headed cane; antique dealer Gwen Conliffe; Maleva the Gypsy Woman; the Talbot Estate and Sir John Talbot being an off-putting weirdo and a-hole; the attitude of dogs; the medalion; the elder brother's death; people questioning Larry's sanity; Larry macking on a woman way out of his league.   It's got some fun set pieces (the attack on the gypsy camp and the asylum escape), although it generally lacks emotional impact.  And it's got Anthony Hopkins doing his patented Crazy and Unpleasant Yet Paradoxically Erudite Old Man routine.   In...

Speaking of Larrys... Admit it. You've never ACTUALLY sat down and watched  "The Wolf Man" (1941) to see the lycanthropic fate of poor Larry Talbot. Do.  Not because the Wolfman will frighten you.  But because Larry Talbot will frighten you.  He's the biggest, ugliest, oldest-looking, 35-year-old you have ever seen. At least, modern Hollywood nepo-babies are generally good-looking and have some talent.  Lon Chaney Junior only got in any movies because his DAD was a horror movie star; Junior could barely pull off playing, say, a piano-mover in a Bowery Boys flick. Pretty sure this is his high school yearbook photo. Plus his character Larry Talbot is every creepy, pushy, entitled white male on the mack from every old movie, all wrapped up into one.  I was shocked The Girl didn't just beat him to death with that honking big cane she sold him. By the time they got to it, I was rooting for the wolf that attacked him. His real name, btw, was Creighton Chaney, but...

Today, I watched "Howl" . Or, as the opening credits put it, " H O W L ", which I suppose was some kind of attempt to meet a legal requirement to warn viewers how painful it would be. It was, of course, a werewolf film.  When the Werewolf expansion for the Sims 4 came out (I won't call it the "Werewolf pack" because that's confusingly ambiguous) it became my excuse to binge a thousand werewolf films I'd never seen.  So now when I come across an werewolf film unknown to me, I'll give it a try, for completist purposes. I have seen things. Things you don't want to know about. Sometimes they are so bad I will bail on them (and I've watched all of The Werewolf of Washington , a film so bad it made me DEPRESSED, and which should be retroactively legislated out of existence)  But "H O W L" was SO bad I watched the entire thing, because I was riveted by how such a thing could have occurred.  No sane person would have written thi...