Not the GOAT

I fell in love with werewolves when I was a little boy. Walt Disney’s anthropomorphic Big Bad Wolf in the Three Little Pigs scared the toadstools out of me when he had the pigs trapped, rubbed his paws together and laughed this lascivious laugh in anticipation. (I didn’t know what “lascivious” meant back then, but I knew the energy.) Big Bad was HUGE and had TEETH. I made my mother take me to see Lon Chaney, Jr’s “The Wolfman.” I feel a connection with wolves. They are so social, so intelligent and so powerful.

The first time I saw Curse of the Demon, the first closeup of the demon’s face scared the shit out of me. It looked like a wolf.

So I am that rarity, a true werewolf aficionado. As I matured, I learned that
the lycanthrope is a symbol for masculine virility and power. Yes, there are indeed wolf bitches, and, in real-life packs, the Alpha Bitch is every bit as important as the Alpha Dog. She controls the social
structure of the pack. And I am fully
aware that the werewolf cinematic tradition embraces the Alpha Bitch, as in Howling 1 and 2 and the Ginger Snaps franchise.

I have studied werewolf lore. The occult interests me; hence, my username.

One thing that werewolves are not is funny. They are more serious than a heart attack. Both Dog Soldiers and Stephen King’s Silver Bullet have some real humor in them, as does The Howling 2: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, but they are NOT JOHN LANDIS COMEDIES!!!

Werewolves are serious.

And if you want a werewolf movie that is serious, scary and beautiful all at once, you want Danny Boyle’s The Company of Wolves. There will never be a better, more serious werewolf movie. Ever.

American Werewolf in London is not.

So I ask all of you who think this is the best werewolf movie ever: what other werewolf movies have you seen and liked? If your
answer is “none,” then you just don’t like werewolf movies and cannot comment on the genre.

Some of you have posted that AWIL makes us care about the characters, implying that other werewolf movies have not. Have you seen the Ginger Snaps movies, or Dog Soldiers or the Benicio Del Toro version of The Wolfman or Red Riding Hood, or even the Lon Chaney Sr or Jr Wolfman movies? That’s likely a rhetorical question. You want to see a werewolf GROW? Watch Sybil Danning in The Howling 2: Your Sister’s a Werewolf. If you’re a guy, you’ll grow, too.

[Rod Serling voice] “Submitted for your consideration: the consensus belief that
American Werewolf in London is the GOAT werewolf movie comes from a population that does not know really know anything about werewolf movies and just wants a convenient default response when asked, “What’s the best werewolf movie?”

You’re the kind who believes that Bose makes the best loudspeakers, and Rolex, the the best watches. You drive an Audi.