Horror movie remakes are a dime a dozen. Great series of the 80’s are coming back twenty years later and even films like The Wicker Man and The Hills Have Eyes have been remade, even though it seems as though not even a full ten years separate the films. But you know it has been too many generations since the original film came out when you have Twilight fangirls writing the head of Universal Studios accusing Wolfman director Joe Johnson and his team of plagiarizing New Moon (yes, this actually has happened). Well ladies, it is now time to get acquainted with the original werewolf love story. This is a re-make of The Curse of the Wolfman, the 1941 addition to the Universal Studios Monsters retinue of films. And Twilight fans, if you think guys turning into dogs are hot and happen to have a fetish for gore,  boy, will you ever love this film!

Set in 1891, the film focuses on sleepy-eyed American Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), an English immigrant who has made a small name for himself as a Shakespearian actor. When he receives word that his brother has been killed, he hastily returns to his ancestral home to find that his brother’s life had violently been ended by some kind of wild animal, which has the local townspeople understandably upset, this being in the days before the Local Animal Control. After enduring the superstitious tales of the townspeople for a while, he approaches his father (Anthony Hopkins), who is an accomplished hunter, and proposes that they track down the beast. When Dad is apathetic on the subject, he decides to hunt the beast himself, which turns out to be a really bad idea. Who is the hunter and who is the hunted? And what happens when a man becomes the very thing he loathes?

If any of you Twilight fans are still reading this, I suggest you stop here, because this film does not involve naked hunks frolicking in the wilderness. Perhaps you know someone (or have known someone) at one point in your life who was all like “Hey, check this out!,” and then proceeded to do something physically strange, like bend his fingers backwards against his hand, pop his arm out of its socket, or unhinge his jaw as if it were no problem. You probably said “Eew, gross!” or had some similar reaction and pretended that you did not actually know this person on future outings. This werewolf is like that guy, only to the Nth degree. Actually, I would not be totally incorrect in suggesting that the entire film is like that guy. This movie pulls no punches, and the werewolf scenes are guaranteed to make you squirm, even if you are a chain smoking hardass that plays the God Of War series of games 12 out of 24 hours each day. Watching this guy’s bones violently rearrange themselves as his flesh strains and writhes like a bag full of live cats will do that to you. The transformation scenes are horrific and bloody enough to be believable; if you think casual body mods are scary/icky, this film will make you puke.