The idea of werewolves has existed since long before movies came along. The concept goes back to antiquity with ancient Greek historian Herodotus writing in the fifth century B.C. about a colony where settlers were transformed into wolves for several nights of the year; several centuries later the story of Greek King Lycaon turning into a wolf was passed down, becoming the root for the still-used psychological diagnosis of “lycanthropy;” and in the Middle Ages philosopher-saint Augustine of Hippo wrote as a matter of fact about how witches could cast spells that turned men into wolves.
So yeah, werewolves have been around. But it’s safe to say so much of our modern conception of the furry hellhounds comes directly from the movies. In folklore the full moon was just one of the many ways a man or woman could be changed into a wolf; but in the movies it became the official doctrine, just as silver being the weapon of choice turned into the sanctioned way of dispatching the beasts. And no image associated with the critters has enjoyed greater cinematic appeal than the transformation.
The sight of man morphing into beast—a fleshy actor turning into one covered in fur—is among the great set pieces of horror, up there with the vampire’s seduction and a guy waving a chainsaw in a Texan sunrise. But not all werewolf transformations are created equal. Some are fun, others cheesy, and some… have lasted in the popular imagination for going on a century. So without further ado, here are what we estimate to be the very best werewolf transformations.
12. Van Helsing (2004)
Like more than a few horror fans, we have mixed feelings about using CGI to create a werewolf transformation. Digital effects can at times be eerily immersive, especially when you don’t notice them. Yet perhaps due to the unreality of a man transitioning into beast, computer-generated trickery seems a lot more obvious and spell-breaking, especially when compared to some of the best prosthetic wolf-outs.
Nonetheless, we must give credit to writer-director Stephen Sommers for at least the big idea vision for the Wolfman transformations in Van Helsing. Like everything else in his movie, these scenes’ reach exceeds their grasp in terms of technology, with the movie looking more like a Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoon than a Universal Gothic horror, but at least in the case of the werewolfery, Sommers broke new ground.
When Will Kemp and later Hugh Jackman fall beneath the sway of the full moon, neither just turns into a wolf by growing fur, fangs, and other fun stuff. Rather they rip off first their clothes and then their skin, tearing away their humanity to reveal the beast within. It’s an impressive visualization. And for all the dated effects, Kemp and Jackman still sell the uncontrollable pain of the moment like addicts going through withdrawal.
11. I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)
There is not a lot that can be said about the special effects in I Was a Teenage Werewolf, because there barely are any. A ‘50s cheapie produced by Roger Corman’s favorite distributor, American International Pictures, and released as part of a double-bill with Invasion of the Saucer Men, the film is what one might call functional.
Still, there’s something memorably crude and sinister about the big scene where Michael Landon turns into a werewolf onscreen. The “effect” is simply a dissolve between a shot of Landon without the makeup and another with it applied, but the sequence occurs as his teenage werewolf is watching a young woman in his high school perform gymnastics. Suddenly an innocuous all-American kid hears a bell go off in his ears and turns into a wolf before our, and more distressingly her, eyes. About 50 years before Sam Raimi drew a bright line between superpowers and puberty in Spider-Man, this cult classic C-movie did the same thing with more lascivious implications as a boy becomes a wolf and corners a girl.
10. Bad Moon (1996)
An appropriately ‘90s werewolf movie, Bad Moon follows a mother and son (Mariel Hemingway and Mason Gamble) who realize that mom’s brother, Uncle Ted (Michael Paré), has returned from Nepal with more than just some good adventuring stories about meeting a wolf. The Stephen King-like setup—which is actually based on a Wayne Smith novel—prepares viewers for a proper domestic melodrama with a hairy supernatural climax, complete with a heroic dog saving its family.
This popcorn finale is facilitated by a transformation sequence that mixes CG with practical effects. The body-warping digital trickery has aged poorly, and now better resembles a cutscene effect from a PS2 era video game. However, Paré sells a menace that is still palpable in the moment beforehand as his estranged brother reveals his real toxic thoughts to his sister. There is something genuinely threatening about his laugh beneath practical fangs, even before his jawline goes crooked.
9. The Wolfman (2010)
Rick Baker dreamed of implementing 30 years of experience, as well as the toolkit of digital augmentation courtesy of CGI, while working on The Wolfman. He sought to match what he did as a young man on An American Werewolf in London. Alas, director Joe Johnston chose to go full CGI for the werewolf transformations, which visually made a poor match for the otherwise largely practical werewolf makeup job Baker designed, and which informed the rest of the picture.
It’s a missed opportunity, but of all the CGI-heavy werewolf transformations of the last 25 years, The Wolfman is probably the best due to superb table-setting. In the centerpiece transformation where we get a good look of how Benicio del Toro gets his wolf on, he is tied to a chair and in a straight jacket while an auditorium of stuffed Victorian shirts scoff and guffaw at his pleas to kill him. If not, “I will kill all of you!” he cries. More laughter as the full moon slowly begins to rise. The subsequent changeover, with its cracked-bone sound effects and build-up to del Toro and Baker’s (proper) werewolf ripping his tormentors to shreds, is the stuff of monster movie nirvana.
8. Underworld (2003)
The Underworld franchise is a strange one because it tapped into the zeitgeist idea of “vampires versus werewolves” before Twilight turned it into a YA phenomenon later in that decade, and it similarly realized Kate Beckinsale looked great fighting the undead right before she did Van Helsing. Yet the more money they got in sequels, the worse-looking the “Lycans” became. (Also the term “Lycans” always felt like a clunky studio note from an exec who thought “werewolves” sounded cheesy). In the first movie, though, the film’s relatively small budget for a Hollywood production led to a lot of visual innovation for the creature feature designs.
Computer-generated imagery is definitely used to enhance the transformation scenes of when another future Twilight star, Michael Sheen, goes Lycan. And the same is true of Kevin Grevioux and his wonderfully baritone Raze. Luckily, most of the effects are achieved by practical creature designs where monstrous faces extend like an accordion, and their fingers crack with rapid speed and bone-snapping sound design. It’s simple and effective, achieving these movies’ goal of everything looking early 2000s cool at all times. The same can apply to Scott Speedman’s third act transformation as the “hybrid” between vampire and werewolf where his skin and eyes seamlessly turn onyx black while a snout digitally protrudes and sinks back in. It’s nifty. Pity the franchise didn’t know how to use this missing link between the species.
7. Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
We’ll never fully understand why Michael Dougherty’s instant cult classic, Trick ‘r Treat, was denied a proper theatrical release 18 years ago. But the anthological Halloween flick is still an October favorite for how it synthesizes everything you love about the spooky season into a low-tech but high-concept monster mash. Take the twist ending to the storyline starring Anna Paquin. Depicted as a shy and introverted wallflower next to her big sister (Lauren Lee Smith), Paquin’s Laurie looks vulnerable even before she dons a Little Red Riding Hood costume to attend a secret Halloween party in the woods.
Viewers are encouraged to think they’re watching a vampire story, as a strange cloaked figure with fangs stalks Paquin into the wilderness. Instead we learn that this was a werewolf yarn all along when her predator (Dylan Baker) is captured and unmasked to be a pitiful serial killer with prosthetic fangs. Paquin’s growing teeth, however, turn out to be the real deal as she greets her unsuspecting date with the ominous taunt, “It’s my first time, so just bear with me.”
The party music turns to Marilyn Manson’s “Sweet Dreams” cover, and all the pretty girls begin ripping off more than just clothes. Their flesh is also torn asunder, revealing fur and fangs beneath. It’s probably influenced by Van Helsing’s idea of tearing through the skin to reveal the inner-monster, but even though it’s clearly done with prosthetic insert shots here, it immediately feels more visceral, unsettling, and frankly exhilarating as it turns the tired trope of the man preying on women on its head. Instead Paquin is the one with glowing pupils as she teases, “My, my, what big eyes you have.” Chomp.
6. Fright Night (1985)
Less of a transformation into a wolf than an agonizing one out of it, Stephen Geoffreys’ Evil Ed goes through one of the most painful looking metamorphoses this side of David Cronenberg. By tapping into the half-forgotten factoid that Dracula can also turn into a wolf in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Tom Holland’s campy throwback to Hammer horror classics, Fright Night, features newly turned vampire pal Evil Ed going through a really bad night.
It begins when his white wolf is staked in the heart by a haphazard and cowardly vampire hunter (Roddy McDowall) and then goes flying over a suburban bannister. On the other side of that fall, McDowall finds a wretched creature caught somewhere between boy and beast, dying from its stake wound as it slowly reverts back into a crying and terrified child named Ed. Some of the prosthetic tricks used are obvious to the modern eye (like the fake floor beneath the quadrupedal body), but many of them are a showcase from a decade that marked a highpoint in movie monster prosthetics work. The exaggerated lupine features on Geoffreys’ heads are almost as pitiful as the actor’s own face as it slowly is revealed in later shots while still encrusted in a dying husk around his frame. He’s a tortoise trapped in a collapsed shell waiting to be put out of his misery.
5. The Werewolf of London (1935)
The very first werewolf movie—or at least the first made in the U.S. and to survive 90 years later—Universal Pictures’ original Wolfman flick would be eclipsed by the studio’s second stab at the material six years later. Nonetheless, this 1930s hair-raiser has the better transformation scene when Henry Hull’s priggish professor discovers he is cursed by the bite of the werewolf. The scene in question has cozy Universal table-setting, as the cat in his study hisses at the rising danger in the room, warning Hull’s stiff he is a monster before he knows it.
The subsequent transformation is both rudimentary and still impressive. In order to create the illusion of Hull turning into a werewolf in a single shot, the panicked man rushes by a series of pillars outside his family home. As he passes each stone structure, he takes on more and more characteristics of a wolf. Obviously filmmakers stopped to apply makeup after he passed each pillar before combining it into “a single shot,” but it’s still a visually pleasing magic trick to behold, especially for its age. The makeup design of this werewolf, however, has always left me wanting.
4. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
While The Wolf Man (1941) might be the gold standard that codified almost everything we associate with a traditional werewolf story, it truthfully lacks a few of the motifs people misattribute to the film. For starters, nowhere in The Wolf Man is a full moon mentioned or seen (merely an “autumn moon” is needed to transform). Secondly, the transformation is only hinted at in the film as his legs are shown growing hair. Later dissolves are used to reveal poor Lon Chaney Jr.’s face in repose after the werewolf is slain at the end.
The sequels, however, correct these oversights, beginning with the best of them in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). Beneath a retconned and beautiful full moon, a sleeping Chaney is jolted awake by a premonition of inescapable doom. The cursed man realizes the moon is up and in an extreme closeup from his hospital bed accepts with resigned eyes his fate. His face slowly grows the iconic Jack Pierce-designed werewolf fur and fangs. It’s obviously done through many dissolves that combine shots of Chaney’s face in various stages of makeup application (they even created a special pillow so the wrinkles in the sheets would not move). It still looks charming in the way a great haunted house decoration would in October, especially as the best version of Pierce’s design reaches maturation and turns to the camera to growl “boo.”
3. The Company of Wolves (1984)
With two distinctly different, eye-popping werewolf transformations, Neil Jordan’s dreamlike The Company of Wolves deserves more credit than it often gets. A childhood fairytale designed for an adult audience, the film is like a half-forgotten reverie caked in Freudian meaning. It likely was a personal one, too, for Angela Carter who co-wrote the screenplay with Jordan from her own short story of the same name. Jordan, however, adapts it with expressionistic wonderment in the main… and 1980s creature feature grisliness in the transformation details.
In the first transformation sequence, Stephen Rea plays a groom who returns to his brides years after abandoning her on their wedding night. He’s back to reveal there was always something wild beneath his kindly smile. He rips off his flesh not to unveil the beast, but to abjectly destroy everything humane and cultured which civilization has deceptively placed on him. Only as a skinless flayed man does he begin to transform into a dog.
The better transformation, though, comes at the end when the film’s heroine Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson), who is Red Riding Hood by another name, finds her much older suitor at Grandmama’s house. The teenage girl is attracted to the seductive nobleman (Micha Bergese) but is also rightly threatened by his worldly airs and their thinly veiled implications. Sure enough after she shoots him, the wolf within protrudes from beneath his skin like a Ridley Scott chestburster before exiting through his mouth. It is a tremendous and still eerily believable magic trick to the modern eye.
2. The Howling (1981)
Special effects makeup artist Rick Baker was originally supposed to design the werewolves in Joe Dante’s The Howling but had to back out due to an older commitment to John Landis finally coming to fruition (more on that in a moment). But even if Dante couldn’t work with wunderkind Baker, he still got the next best thing with Baker’s protege who worked with the master on Star Wars, Rob Bottin. Ironically, Bottin would mastermind the second best werewolf transformation in movie history (after his mentor’s) in The Howling.
Saved until near the very end of the picture, The Howling’s big transformation sequence is absolutely terrifying because unlike most cinematic werewolves before or since, the film’s main big bad wolf is already a predator who delights in the transformation. There is a not-so-subtle threat of sexual violence and depravity to Robert Picardo’s Eddie Quist, a serial killer character who corners a journalist (Belinda Balaski) in a cabin in the woods. She is able to put some pain into him, but he comes back as a seven-foot tall, bipedal wolf that towers over her in the film’s most disturbing scene. Afterward, we witness how Eddie can transform into a wolf at will several more times, and he does so in front of Balaski’s widower (Kevin McCarthy) and another woman who has to put the bad beast down (Dee Wallace).
Part of the memorability of the transformation(s) stems from how long they’re drawn out. Each part of Picardo’s body seems to simmer and bubble, as if his bones have melted beneath the flesh and are about to burst in a boiling geyser. Yet the more nightmarish the imagery, the more the serial killer within the movie seems giddy, getting off on his pain and the anticipation of inflicting it on the other characters. It’s genuinely horrifying, but like the protagonists you’re almost frozen in shock and awe at the disgusting sight.
1. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
The other, and ultimately definitive, landmark werewolf movie of 1981 is John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. A remake of The Wolf Man in all but name, it follows an American fish caught out in UK water. Whether it is the close-minded moors of rural southern England or the punk-ish streets of early ‘80s London, David Kessler (David Naughton) really doesn’t belong here, even before he is damned to a brief and bloody lifet of werewolfism. The movie is both modern, complete with its revolutionary blending of self-ware humor and horror, and old-fashioned.
Its famed transformation sequence blends both sensibilities into cinema legend. After unwisely ignoring the warnings of his best friend’s ghost (Griffin Dunne), who materializes to warn David of his curse, this poor schmuck is caught with his pants down and an NYU shirt on before he tears it into pieces while screaming bloody murder to the heavens. And that’s before he’s even visually begun to show signs of transformation.
The brilliance of this transition is Landis and Baker brazenly chose to do it in a brightly lit room where darkness could not hide any of their tricks. Instead Baker innovated uncanny techniques that still deceive to this day as Naughton screams in equal parts horror and agony as his hand grows a foot longer in a single shot. As his face expands, and the sounds of Sam Cooke’s velvety “Blue Moon” cover drifts on, tonally indifferent to David’s anguished damnation as cinema’s ultimate hellhound, the final effect of the movie is settled. This is all brutally terrifying and darkly funny.
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