They continue to be made, but they’re utterly dwarfed by zombie movies, vampire movies, etc. Which is all to say that in the end, there are a lot fewer werewolf movies out there than there are for the other classic monsters. It’s the Achilles’ heel of pretty much any indie werewolf movie-a refrain of “the suit looks cheap!” Horror fans are fickle, and tough to please. Werewolf movies are inherently more costume-dependent, and they also tend to be scrutinized more harshly for their effects as a result. Then of course there’s the issue of costuming-it’s a lot more expensive to build full-body werewolf suits than it is to slap a few wounds on an extra, call him a zombie, and call it a day. For whatever reason, the werewolves themselves are rarely seen as vital enough to continue carrying a franchise solo. Even a foundation of the genre, such as George Waggner’s classic 1941 The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Jr., never received a direct sequel of its own-rather, the Wolf Man was lumped in alongside other monsters in the future, in films such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. They’re not nearly as sexualized (and capitalized upon) as vampires. They don’t represent the pop culture zeitgeist so appropriately as zombies. They’re not nearly so ubiquitous as ghosts. Of the classic cinematic monsters, which were essentially canonized in the public consciousness by the Universal monster films of the ’30s and ’40s, werewolves are never quite given the luster or romanticization of the others. Operation: Wolf Hound is available on 4 July on digital platforms.There’s a saying (or at least a sentiment) among horror geeks: Werewolves always get short shrift. They all battle their captors who, according to the hallowed rules of trash-movie logic, are mostly much worse shots than the good guys. ![]() After the attack, Holden’s surviving comrades are captured by the Nazis and kept captive at a base where they learn that the enemy is just about to deploy some kind of superbomb, capable of destroying a whole city (no one calls it a nuclear weapon).Įventually, Holden gets to the base and helps free his friends, as well as a few previously captured Allied soldiers and Kara Joy Reed doing a very ’Allo ’Allo!-style French accent as a resistance fighter. The Nazis have had this whole Trojan Spitfire thing going on where they scavenge downed planes, repair them and then fly them to catch Allied missions unawares, which apparently was a real thing. In the opening scenes, Holden and his friends are ambushed over northern France by planes that look like British aircraft but which turn out to be flown by Germans. ![]() In one particular, and especially homoerotic, sequence, star James Maslow, playing wounded Jewish air force pilot David Holden, applies dressings to his wounds, a process that requires a lot of writhing about on his back, belt unbuckling, and hollering, supposedly in pain (although it’s hard to tell). There are many more egregious wastes of money out there in the world.Īt least this one, for all its flaws and completely unironic macho posturing, will please some viewers with its many shots of muscled, sweaty soldiers in vests. You’ve got your aerial dogfights, your period production design (albeit often camouflaged in darkness) and lashings of blanks, squibs and controlled explosive material to make for a very noisy, if tediously protracted, series of climaxes. Nevertheless, you’ve got to give its director, producer, co-writer and supporting player Michael B Chait and his team a little credit for pulling together what must have been a reasonably expensive shoot for an independent film. L et’s be clear: this second world war action movie is cliched, wooden and excessively long.
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