Exactly four decades after Jacques Tourneur terrified audiences with his quick and moody werecat horror film Cat People in 1942, Paul Schrader – following the success of American Gigolo – released a nearly in-name-only remake. The cultural climate in 1982 was vastly different than when Tourneur was making his film. Schrader’s remake, after all, came in the same year as the gleefully excessive epic Conan the Barbarian, the ultra-gory remake of The Thing, and slasher films like The Slumber Party Massacre and Friday the 13th: Part III testing the limits of on screen carnage. But where was the sex?
Tag: Dead of Winter: Tales of the Beast
Few monsters have as strong of a cinematic tradition as the werewolf. Nearly as soon as the first silent films were made, the werewolves appeared in them. Though these films were inspired by both mythological folklore and accounts of “real” werewolves, the movies seem to have largely ignored the fact that in these old tales, lycanthropy affected both men and women. Ginger Snaps not only aims for a bit of gender equality amongst these shapeshifters, but it does so by pointing at the obvious female markers within werewolf mythology.
The 1980s were an incredible time for practical effects, and a great time for horror films. The unique and terrifying cinematic experiences made during this era — from The Thing to Hellraiser — owe much to masterful animatronics and other practical effects. But there’s one film that seldom gets brought up in the horror special effects conversation: The Company of Wolves.