Halloween '26: Group Photo #21

  I enjoy reading Paste magazine. I had an actual magazine subscription before they went completely online, and I still get their newsletters. They posted the article/ list "The 25 Best Werewolf Movies of All Time" last October, and I wanted to see where some of the movies I own ranked, if at all. 

    All the following quotes were written by Paste staff writer Jim Vorel

The Wolfman in yesterday’s post is ranked #17, “…an absurdly large $150 million budget pushed it into being the marketed as the blockbuster it should have never attempted to be. But you can still do far worse in the werewolf movie canon.”

             Bad Moon in last Sunday’s post about “Final Dogs” is ranked at #9, "Why the filmmakers used any of the atrocious CGI you’ll see in the transformation scene is beyond me, given how spectacular the actual suit looks. Don’t sleep on Bad Moon—it’s the best werewolf movie you’ve never heard of."

            Last Friday's An American Werewolf in London is at #1, and deservedly so, “The film lulls you into comfort with its witticism before springing shocking, gory dream sequences on the viewer, which repeatedly arrive unannounced. The key moment is the protagonist’s incredibly painful, traumatic full transformation, set to the crooning of Sam Cooke doing “Blue Moon,” which is still unsurpassed in the history of the genre. 

            Here’s four more movies from the top 25:

           1974’s The Beast Must Die (on laserdisc) is ranked at #24, "Near the end, this goofy flick even features a 30-second “Werewolf Break,” where the audience is asked to guess the wolf’s identity."

           1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (on DVD) is ranked at #8, "It can’t stand up against the better entries in the Frankenstein series, or the original Wolf Man, but there’s no substitute for seeing two of the original monster icons go toe-to-toe.” 

           2002’s Dog Soldiers (on DVD) made it to #4, "If someone ever asks me to venture an opinion on the best-looking practical effects/full-body werewolf suits used in a feature-length horror film, the choice of Dog Soldiers will be an easy one to make.”

           1981’s The Howling (on DVD) is up at #3, "1981 happens to be the best year in the history of werewolf cinema, thanks to three films: An American Werewolf in London, The Howling and Wolfen. Of those, The Howling can’t quite compete with the macabre humor and budget of John Landis’ British werewolf classic, but it still ranks among the best lycanthrope movies of all time.”

    You can click on the title of the article to read the complete descriptions for each film.