Review: 'Werewolf Stories: Shape-Shifters, Lycanthropes, and Man-Beasts'

Werewolves are many things. They are scary and mystical. They are metaphors and metaphysical. They are the subjects of monsters movies, fairy tales, and folk lore. They are people who transform into four legged animals and furry two-legged weirdies that look suspiciously like Oliver Reed. They are fictions, and for a kooky few, non-fictions.

Review: 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' Blu-ray

Terry Gilliam found the perfect vehicle for his peculiar brand of weirdness and silliness, as well as his 17th-century-engravings aesthetic, when he decided to adapt Rudy Raspe's Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The time period and oddness of Munchausen's fish stories were right up Gilliam's alley and perfect for providing some shape for his fancies. 

Hey, Universal... What's Up with Your Hammer Horror Library?

As I've written on this site more times than I care to Hammer Horror is in a sorry state in the United States. While select titles have slipped out in hi-def from several production companies (Shout! Factory, Millennium Entertainment, Synapse Films), the studio's most essential films remain MIA. Two of the most essential are Hammer's first Dracula sequel, Brides of Dracula, and its one and only werewolf picture, Curse of the Werewolf. Both of these films are the property of one of the biggest studios with Hammer rights in the U.S., Universal, and both were originally released on DVD in 2005 as part of the "Hammer Horror Series 8-Film Collection", which also included Kiss of the Vampire, Paranoiac, Night Creatures, Nightmare, Evil of Frankenstein, and Phantom of the Opera. 

On September 2, Universal will rerelease "Hammer Horror Series 8-Film Collection" on DVD even though this double-disc collection isn't even out of print. The press release made no mention of a blu-ray version, and my inquiry to Universal regarding the hi-def fates of these films has gone unanswered as of this writing. OK, so Hammer doesn't quite have the sweeping rep and influence in the US it enjoys in the UK, but this is still pretty confounding treatment for some unforgettably horrific films that would look astounding on blu-ray. I'd suggest starting one of those online petitions calling for their release on blu-ray if I believed that sort of thing accomplished anything. For now we can only hope that Universal--the studio that did right by its own horror legacy with its "Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection" blu-ray box in 2012-- comes to its senses... or gets its throat torn out by Oliver Reed.