The Wolfman comes out of hibernation this Friday courtesy of Benicio del Toro.
Will his monster pals be far behind?
“The Wolfman” is Hollywood’s latest attempt to bring a classic movie monster back to life.
Universal once gave us a rogues gallery of monsters – Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster, among others.
Today, those creatures don’t seem as relevant as they once did. Audiences care more about Freddy, Jason and the undead.
And there’s no Abbott or Costello to make them hip once more.
Yes, vampires are all the rage these days. But do any of them remotely resemble Bela Lugosi, the man who set the standard for movie vampires back in 1931?
If an actor attempted Lugosi’s Transylvanian accent and lifted his cloak up to his nose audiences would erupt with laughter.
“Van Helsing” tried to bring a gaggle of them back together on screen, but the results were … horrific.
So “The Wolfman” has to do more than entertain audiences this weekend. It must show an old-school creature in an old-school setting (before Facebook and text messaging) can still scare the heck out of us.
(Photo: Actor Benicio del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, a man cursed with lycanthropy in “The Wolfman.”/Universal Pictures)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
For me there was never a fear factor with Wolfman. He was a victim. The story for me dripped more of soap opera not monster flick.
Frankenstein lives on because the theme of the story is timeless and transferable to any other genre. Man doing something he shouldn’t, creating something he doesn’t understand and ultimately can’t control. But in this case the monster is also a victim, I never found him scary either. The monster in the movie, not the book, has more in common with the character Lenny from Of Mice and Men than some dangerous creature.
Dracula is the only true monster of the bunch. He’s not a victim, he’s pure evil.
With all that said, like most everything else stories have to be re-imagined to keep current with the times. We wear clothes the same as they did 80 years ago but the styles have changed, we have music but the style has changed…etc..etc. I expect this new Wolfman film to die a quick death.
Opus … well said, all. I’m surprised they set the new Wolfman at the end of the 19th century … gutsy. But the film makes a concerted effort to appeal to modern crowds (a tease for my review on Friday …)
Abbott and Costello. That’s exactly what we need. Think Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels in “Dumb and Dumber” and add all the favorites.
The biggest difference to me between today’s horror movies and the universal classics are: Those films were fun. Today we have bloody. Today we have crass. Today we have gross. Today we have shocking. But fun? Almost never.
There’s barely a laugh in the new Wolfman … a little humanity would have helped it out quite a bit.