'Bad Moon'

Based on the novel Thor by Wayne Smith, Bad Moon is one of those horror films that I feel was not given the credit it deserved at the time of its release. Good reviews of it are hard to come by and it seems to have been largely forgotten but in this review, I'm going to tell you why, if you love a good werewolf film, you should give it a shot, and not of the silver bullet variety.

Bad Moon opens on our central character, Ted, played by Michael Pare, working in Nepal with his girlfriend, played by Johanna Marlowe. The scenes between Ted and Marjorie were cut significantly so that the film could maintain an R rating but you still get the sense that they are a good couple... if a short-lived one, since the body count is kicked off with a brutal attack on their camp.

We came for delights of a much more gory kind and in this, the opening does not disappoint. Any fan of werewolves will love the practical effects and design of this wolf because it looks genuinely terrifying, and just what you would expect a wolfman to look like. But we will get more into our furry fiend in a moment. Its time to discuss what I think makes Bad Moon special... the hero.

Most werewolf films focus either on the wolf himself or the one hunting him. Not so with Bad Moon. Here, our main character is a German Shepherd named Thor, the vigilant protector of Janet and her young son Brett. In the novel, the whole story is told from Thor's perspective, something that I feel the director and screenwriter, Eric Red, tried to capture but we have to have human characters to make this work. Throughout, Thor, played by an extremely expressive Primo, is put up against a creature far larger, stronger, and deadlier than himself in a battle of wills to protect his family, but there is a catch: Family is the danger.

As the story focuses more on the family, Ted returns to visit his sister and nephew. You guessed it, Janet and Brett. At first, Thor welcomes Ted as a member of his pack but things start to change when he discovers the body of a forestry worker a few hundred feet from Ted's camp. We can only assume from Thor's behavior following this that he suspects that Ted is to blame, probably having picked up his scent at the scene. I'm glad that the filmmakers didn't give Thor an inner voice like he has in the book, and we have to look at Thor's behavior as tensions rise between him and Ted.

As several hikers go missing in the woods, Ted moves onto his sister's property at her insistence, making the situation far more dangerous. Ted attempts to go about his life and join the family, but Ted has a secret. Every night he disappears out into the woods around sunset, trying to protect his sister and her child by chaining himself to a tree. And this is where Thor first sees the true horror of what Ted has become... a werewolf.

This is where my love for this film skyrocketed. The werewolf, designed by Steve Johnson, is, in a word, perfect. The animatronics that are used on wolf Ted are spectacular and when he snarls I'm not going to lie, I had a genuine fight or flight response. Everything about this suit looks right, down to the stub of a tail and the saliva dripping off the huge fangs. This is for me one of the best portrayals of a werewolf on film because you can tell that is where they put their money and didn't do the cheap option of using a wolf or dog as TV and low budget horror films do now. Yes, that is a trend that needs to die. I hate it. This is how a werewolf should look... except for one thing.

The transformation sequence is critical to this subgenre. Werewolves have to transform on screen and this one is rather lacking. Likely to stay within the seven million dollar budget, the filmmakers decided to use CGI to change Ted with close up shot of practical pieces like the half-transformed mouth. It hasn't held up well, but it doesn't really take away from the film as a whole.

As Thor realizes the Ted is a threat and begins to keep him from chaining himself at night, Ted decides that he has to get rid of him. As this happens, Ted becomes more aggressive and less human to the point that he sees his family as prey. That is perhaps one of the best parts of the film. We see the change from loving brother to a man driven purely by an animalistic need to hunt and kill.

You could assume that Ted plans to just go about his business and chain himself up and never harm his family but there is one slight problem... Janet. Janet is an intelligent woman and discovers her brother's secret when she follows him out into the woods and witnesses his transformation. This leads to the climax of the film and I'm not going to spoil that for anyone that hasn't watched it, but I will say that it will make you appreciate a loyal dog more than ever.

Now, as film adaptations go, Bad Moon is decent. I feel like some changes were necessary, because it wasn't possible to portray Thor's conflicting emotions on screen as it is in the book and the abbreviated story benefits from cutting the central family from five to just Janet and Brett.

This is a film that I would love to see an unrated cut of, but since it didn't do well at all at the box office, that is unlikely. For me, however, it gave me everything I could have asked for in a werewolf film. Practical effects, a good story, good acting, and the tension and fear that I need for a werewolf film to feel like a success.