Bearly Plausible - The End of an Icon

Unfortunately one of the most terrifying movie monsters of all time has been bled dry of what made it what it was. Werewolves used to be a symbol of pure animality and destruction on film. They were beasts that could not be negotiated with. That made them a great antagonist because you knew that they would be unrelenting and single minded in their goal of causing as much bloodshed as possible.  But now we are left with a sad pathetic shell of that monster and you can blame two things. One is Twilight. In fact you can probably blame Twilight for The Great Depression and Hurricane Katrina too. Second is a television show that I actually love but for all it does right it just totally screwed over werewolves, and that show is True Blood.  Just take a look at what a real werewolf looks like. For your viewing pleasure the werewolf from Bad Moon (top) and Dog Soldiers (bottom):

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Now these are werewolves.

And now let me show you what True Blood (top) and Twilight (bottom) think a werewolf is:

These are just big dogs.

Just as a sidebar what advantage would you get as a giant dog? They don't even have opposable thumbs! End sidebar. So maybe you're wondering to yourself, "Why should I care?" Well if you enjoy the art of cinema then you have to appreciate the low budget film. And the low budget straight to DVD film industry thrives on horror movies because they are easy and cheap to churn out. No big budget explosions, no crazy effects, no green screen just costumes and no CGI. Admittedly for every one good straight to DVD film that is made there are 1459.5 bad ones but you appreciate those good ones more because of that.

Sure you can blame a whole bunch of other movies along with Twilight and True Blood for this problem but the sheer popularity of those two franchises far outweighs all of those other problems combined! So it's the end of the werewolf icon; at least for this generation. Maybe they'll get it right 20 years from now. Considering the subject I thought it would be nice for the Moon Bear to leave you with his recommendations for great werewolf movies.