1. Dog Soldiers – 2002
The Flick: A werewolf movie that combines good story with believable characters and badass wolf beasts that are also impervious to machine gun spray.
The Scene: Gets high marks for suspense. Elects against graphic special effects.
2. La Noche de Walpurgis – 1971
The Flick: Spanish horror freak Paul Naschy plays traveling werewolf Waldemar Daninsky who jumps around and growls in the company of nude vampyresses.
The Scene: Notable for excessive use of drool and bad voice dub.
3. The Wolf Man – 1941
The Flick: Lon Chaney Jr. stars as an American who returns to his family’s estate in England and is bitten by a wolf.
The Scene: Uses basic photography tricks to give the appearance of rapidly growing hair. Silver screen magic!
4. Leviatán (Monster Dog) – 1984
The Flick: Pitiful movie effort in almost every conceivable sense. But awesome because it stars metal legend Alice Cooper.
The Scene: What is going on here? Who cares? It does Cooper’s macabre stage theatrics proud.
5. Teen Wolf – 1985
The Flick: Formulaic high school yarn about a normal kid who pines for the hot cheerleader while failing to see that his true love is Boof. Also, he is a werewolf.
The Scene: Werewolfism as puberty.
6. Ginger Snaps – 2000
The Flick: Ginger Snaps is really Teen Wolf for girls, except less overtly comedic and a better overall movie. The werewolfism as adolescence metaphor works.
The Scene: This is pretty much the scene in which Ginger actually snaps.
7. The Curse of the Werewolf – 1961
The Flick: A famous “Hammer Horror” film, Curse of the Werewolf is an early purveyor of popular lore like silver bullets and full moons.
The Scene: Every bit as terrifying as the animatronic band at Chuck E Cheese.
8. The Howling – 1981
The Flick: Represents the quintessence of werewolf horror. Special makeup effects, eerie music, campy humor and healthy gore.
The Scene: Werewolf Eddie Quist says “I want to give you a piece of my mind” and then literally does so.
9. Silver Bullet – 1985
The Flick: A crippled kid for a protagonist and a murderous, shape-shifting priest for a bad guy—yep sounds like Stephen King.
The Scene: Why would a werewolf use a baseball bat to kill someone? That’s like Superman flying coach.
10. Late Phases – 2014
The Flick: Sneaky good werewolf yarn with hints of Wicker Man (“creepy island”) where a blind veteran suspects it’s not a coyote plaguing his retirement community.
The Scene: Panning camera and face tearing make this memorable.
11. The Company of Wolves – 1984
The Flick: Bizarre, atmospheric fairy tale that relies on the symbolism of men as dogs.
The Scene: After intense two-minute seizure that goes from self mutilation to slimy dog meat, try not to laugh at the finish.
12. Bad Moon
The Flick: 90s horror mostly sucked as the decade was lost to teen celebrity slashers. This run of the mill wolf pic is a good example of the suck.
The Scene: The strange combo of legit special FX and bad early CGI create an uncanny valley.
13. American Werewolf In London – 1981
The Flick: Best werewolf film ever. Moves seamlessly between comedy and horror, sticks with you long after the credits.
The Scene: THE Transformation, the gold standard. Sam Cooke’s “Blue Moon” classes it up.
Originally tweeted by Joey Campbell (@jrok78) on March 5, 2021.