Double Feature of the Week

I'm just feeling a bit like digging into the ol' Netflix bag, and all this talk about zombies and horror movies got me thinking that I might have overlooked a few good ones. These two movies were a double feature I had one night--hadn't seen either of these and thought both of them were damn fine werewolf movies. These would be Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers.



Good examples of how to keep a struggling genre alive and interesting. Both have there own fairly unique variations on the theme. But neither knock down the reigning champ of werewolf movies -- An American Werewolf in London. Oh, the days when Landis had style. This movie still holds the best werewolf transformation sequence ever. And the Nazi Werewolf nightmare scene is still genuinely scary. But An American Werewolf in London is, in my mind, in the category of the comedy/horror that I was talking about previously. Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers are more in the melodramatic serious horror vein. Like the difference between Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. Different sides of the same coin.

Anyway, both Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers have their own decent attempts at the werewolf transformation sequence. Ginger Snaps definitely wins in this comparison. The Ginger in the title is the older of two gothy Canadian sisters who enjoy Harold style hobbies like photographing each other in various stages of death and making fun of and getting into fights with the square popular kids of the school. Well, one night, one of them, Ginger, gets bit. In some ways it's a bit like Spiderman. Instead of the Male Spider Puberty Metaphor they have the Female Werewolf Puberty Metaphor--and it works pretty well but with much more violent and gorier and Canadian results. The two sisters do a better than expected job of creating a believable relationship, which is good because that's the main crux of the movie.

Dog Soldiers is one of the better products of England's long lasting boner for Tarantino. But it's better than anything Guy Ritchie's crapped out, and really is more of standard action movie than a werewolf movie--a point the director and cast love to repeat in the featurette extra. Basically (after a pretty funny intro that's really a gratuitous wink-wink nod-nod to the conventions of the genre) a small platoon of British soldiers go on an exercise in the woods of Scotland and get attacked by what just happen to be werewolves only to be rescued by a local resident who takes them to a house were they can do a last stand at. Great "this can't be happening" moments and the cover artwork really doesn't do justice to one of the best werewolf representations on film. Maninsuit werewolves all the way--no cgi or robots going on--and done very well-quite creepy in some moments.

I recommend Dog Soldiers a bit more in terms of entertainment value. Ginger has more weight to it (as well as two sequels now--both are a bit of a ways down on the queue so no comment on them as of yet) and is a more solid story, but the blender action of combining werewolves with army guys with Reservoir Dogs and then adding a bit of Night of the Living Dead and just a dash of Dead Alive--well, shit, even I'm surprised they managed to pull it off, but damn it all it's a good ride.