Pleine Lune

You have a good life. Nice home, nice yard. But one day a relative comes to visit, and you know something's not right about him. You come to find out he's a werewolf. The only problem is, you're the only one who knows. And you're a dog.

Werewolves are one of those monsters that come and go in films. After a decade which saw the release of many good werewolf films (the 1980s), there just weren't many films about them in the 1990s. Bad Moon is one of the few good ones that were made during this period. Not an outstanding film by any stretch, but a fun film nonetheless. It features an excellent performance by a German Shepherd as the protagonist, Thor. Worth a look if you're a fan of the genre. Probably not very exciting if you're not.

I was positively impressed with just how well done the transformation into the werewolf was done. I am very familiar with werewolf movies from the ones done by Lon Chaney Jr. to the present day and this one was pretty effective.

The plot was standard, but just how much can one change the werewolf saga? A good man is against his will unfortunately transformed into a murderous creature of the night, and even though he tries his best to control his urges, it is all to no avail, and in the end someone close to him has to end his bloody reign of terror.

The acting by the principles was reasonable, and yes the German Shepherd, Thor, did steal the show, but again, so what? I would even enjoy watching it again!

While researching in the jungle with his girlfriend Marjorie (Johanna Marlowe Lebovitz) and a group of natives, Ted (Michael Pare) and the group are attacked by a beast and only the wounded Ted survives. When his sister Janet (Mariel Hemingway) learns that Ted is back home, she invites him to bring his trailer to her real property and spend some time with his nephew Brett (Mason Gamble) and her. Ted accepts the invitation when the police find several corpses attacked by an animal nearby his trailer. Ted is welcomed by Janet and Brett but their dog Thor estranges him. Soon Janet suspects and finds evidences that Ted is a werewolf and her family is in danger.

"Bad Moon" is a decent werewolf film, with reasonable story. In this film, Ted turns into a werewolf every night, and not only in the full moon. He comes closer to his beloved sister and nephew expecting that the love of his family heals or at least help him to control the beast within as his last chance. The dog Thor (Primo) steals the movie. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Lua Negra" ("Black Moon")

Despite useless to say but somehow how I've really enjoy the Werewolf legendary tales, even it was been made recently, almost without any help from those graphic computers usually done on latest, this picture was saw in my early Cable TV experience and impact me mainly over such priceless sequence thru Dog's look, almost freeze, how it was done is quite insane, many hours shooting to catch a three seconds or something, what a takes!!! The storyline is another meaningful thing to expose, quite often has a romantic pair on the plot, in this it wasn't happened, Mariel Hemingway and Paré are brothers, offering a different plate to savour for a change, further the werewolf supply my taste in another point, as on golden days the Werewolf was made by animatronic process on the wolf's head, inside a stunts making all body moves, just in the mutation was used graphic computer, pretty bad by the way, but enough for me, this picture has just 5,7 from IMDB's users, very underrated !!!

Resume:

First watch: 1998 / How many: 2 / Source: Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5

This is quite a unique movie because it's based on the book Thor which tells it's story from the perspective of a dog called Thor. The movie doesn't do this for the most part, but the dog Thor remains an important character in the story. So sometimes it feels almost like a horror movie interpretation of Lassie.

The cinematography, acting, directing is top notch for a 90s horror and I'd say those elements are actually superior to many newer, more recent, horror movies. One early birds eye view shot for example is just as good as the opening shot of the classic movie The Shining.

The monster, obviously a big werewolf, is at times quite menacing and horrific and not the predictable CGI that we often see in modern films but instead the old school animatronics/puppet type. I'm not sure how younger audiences will react to it since they're so accustomed to CGI these days. To me, CGI often looks fake and lacking substance, density and textural reality. But with a puppet of this nature, while you can easily tell it's fake, it just has more substance to it because it's made of real material, moving in real space, as opposed to CGI emptiness.

This movie is only let down by a slightly weak story. It starts off very well and carries on being fairly gripping up until the third act when certain plot holes and weaknesses in the script come into play. The final scenes unfortunately are probably the biggest let down and that's where this movie loses most of it's points for me. If it had a stronger third act and much better ending I think it would have possibly been regarded as an all-time horror classic instead of the cult classic that it still remains. But it's still very much worth watching for any horror movie fan and I'd definitely recommend it for some guaranteed horror movie fun.