Every weekday until the end of October, CraveOnline will present an all-new Horror Movie Marathon to help you avoid showing the same old movies at your Halloween parties. Keep coming back every day for new schedules and party ideas!
Wolfing Out
You may have noticed that there are a ton of vampire movies, slasher movies, ghost movies and zombie movies out there, but not a lot of werewolf films, good or bad. There’s a reason for that: werewolves are expensive visual effects in any era, and a crappy looking werewolf will ruin a movie a lot faster than a half-assed vampire or zombie ever could.
So if you want to schedule a werewolf movie marathon for Halloween, your options are relatively limited. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great films to show your guests. It’s just possible that real horror movie fans have seen most (if not all) of them before. Still, we think we can recommend some flicks that’ll come as a surprise to at least some of the folks at your party, and leave them howling for more.
Check Out: Horror Movie Marathon of the Day: Dracula
In the Dog House
There aren’t a lot of tropes associated with werewolves that will help you decorate your house or plan activities for your guests, so you’re going to have to get creative. You may be tempted to track down some wolfbane for decor, but it’s highly poisonous to humans as well as lycanthropes. Don’t tempt fate.
If you have the space for it, or a nice backyard, you may want to encourage your guests to bring their pet dogs over for a nighttime playdate. They’ll probably want to watch some of the movies with you as well. Keep an eye on them. A sidelong glance from man’s best friend while watching a film like Dog Soldiers might mean your pet is getting ideas.
Hungry Like the Wolf
Foodwise, you’ll want meat… lots of meat. Have a barbecue to satiate everyone’s taste for flesh, and whatever you do, don’t forget the hot dogs. That’s a given, right?
And hush puppies, obviously. Cornmeal treats that are perfect for snacking. Are you sensing a theme here?
Check Out: Horror Movie Marathon of the Day: Witchcraft
Get The Right Movies
You can find a lot of decent, sometimes even great horror movies on Instant Streaming. Then again, so can everyone else. If you’re hosting a horror movie marathon, your guests expect you to show them something they haven’t seen before along with a handful of classic standbys.
So go to your local video store – the odds are good it still has a better selection than Netflix – or, if there aren’t any left in your neighborhood (such a shame), track them down online. Most of the movies we’re recommending are great movies that are either so popular they’re pretty cheap by now, or so obscure they are probably priced low since the demand isn’t high. But obscure movies can be the best surprises, and trust us, we’re about to recommend a ton of them.
Put a Schedule Together
The film critics at CraveOnline have a tried-and-true formula for movie marathons. You start with a “Duh” movie (a popular film everyone has seen), partially to get it out of the way and partially because there’s a good chance some of your guests will arrive late and you don’t want them to miss the good stuff.
Then you get everyone’s attention with the “Unknown Classic,” a film that none of your guests have (probably) seen, so even someone who goes home early will feel like they got something special out of the evening.
Follow that up with some “Background Noise,” i.e. a film that won’t necessarily capture everyone’s attention. That’ll play in the background while everyone socializes. But you’ve got to make sure it has enough good parts that people don’t take their eyes off the TV for too long and forget why they came.
Now the time has come for a “Jumpstarter,” a really lively, crazy film that’ll grab everyone’s attention again. You’ll follow that up with something even weirder, the “Oddball,” to reward the folks who are still going. This will be the strangest film of the evening, maybe a genre-bender or the work of a mad genius, and it will be a great capper for the masses who will probably call it an evening afterwards.
And now that the evening is coming to an end, you’ll want to throw in something stupid. A real “Stinker.” Take the edge off the night’s festivities by talking back to the screen or falling asleep to a film that doesn’t really deserve your attention. It’s the perfect way to end an evening of otherwise great movies.
Then again, you may want to just pick films from one of those categories to test your endurance. How many classics can you get through in one night? How many unsung classics can you discover? How can one weird-ass film top the next? We have multiple suggestions in every category to get you through the night, if that’s the way you want to play it.
Just remember: don’t overextend yourself. Six movies is probably the maximum number that anyone can handle. Don’t feel bad if people leave early. Just make sure the folks who stay get something special for their trouble.
Let’s Plan Your Werewolf Horror Movie Marathon!
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
Let's Plan Your Werewolf Movie Marathon!
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The Duh
There aren't many movie genres with a single, undisputed classic, but the werewolf genre is one of them. John Landis's An American Werewolf in London remains a viciously entertaining movie that blends horror, comedy and a genuinely sad story of a cursed man with ease. The practical effects are still incredible to this day.
Alternates:
Teen Wolf (1985)
Wolf (1994) -
The Unknown Classic
As we've already pointed out, there aren't a lot of great werewolf movies to begin with. But the best one that somehow never broke into the public consciousness was The Company of Wolves, directed by Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire). The fantasy film stars Angela Lansbury as a grandmother retailing her granddaughter with tales of sexualized big bad wolves which tear out of human skin and represent every repressed urge imaginable. Very fun, very strange, very culty.
Alternates:
Ginger Snaps (2000)
Wolves (2014) -
The Background Noise
The original Universal horror classic The Wolf Man still holds up really well, but in a party atmosphere it's probably a little too slow to hold everyone's attention. Wait until the crowd is getting a little antsy and let it play in the background until their attention spans pick up again.
Alternates:
The Beast Must Die (1974)
Wolfen (1981) -
The Jumpstarter
Your guests will definitely perk their ears back up for Dog Soldiers, a killer action-werewolf hybrid from director Neil Marshall (The Descent). A team of soldiers runs into a lycanthropic danger during a training exercise and have to fend off giant wolf monsters in the woods. Cool visual effects, killer action sequences.
Alternates:
Cursed (2005)
Skinwalkers (2006)
Wolfcop (2014) -
The Oddball
There's a good chance you're running out of werewolf movies by now, unless you're pumping your program full of our alternate selections. You may want to mix things up with a good old-fashioned killer dog movie, like the Stephen King classic Cujo. Dee Wallace stars as a mother trapped in a car with her child over the course of a weekend, with a rabid St. Bernard waiting outside to kill them. Claustrophobic and terrifying.
Alternates:
The Pack (1977)
Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978)
Man's Best Friend (1993) -
The Stinker
There are so many bad werewolf movies out there that it's difficult to know where to begin. But since we just gave Stephen King a shout out for Cujo, we might as well balance the scales with Silver Bullet, a really lousy werewolf movie that nevertheless holds a nostalgic appeal for many. There are rocket-powered wheelchairs, a church full of lycanthropes and werewolf effects so terrible the filmmakers tried to hide them as much as possible.
Alternates:
Teen Wolf Too (1987)
An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)
Red Riding Hood (2011) -
Alternate Marathon: The Howling Movies
There's only one long-running franchise dedicated (exclusively) to werewolves, and that's The Howling. They start out pretty great with the 1981 original, directed by Joe Dante, with cool visual effects and an unusual story about self-help (via werewolves) in the 1980s. Then they explode into craziness with The Howling II... Your Sister is a Werewolf, starring scream queen Sybil Danning (pictured) in awesome fetish outfits and perverse werewolf sex scenes. They only get worse (and worse, and worse) from there, but you can dedicate nearly a whole day to watching all eight films in this bizarre and very enjoyable franchise.
