Bad Moon - Luna mortale

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.

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 deeply, 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 gorgeous 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.

Despite what you might think after reading my title, I quite liked Bad Moon. It's good for a werewolf movie even though I sometimes had the feeling I was watching an episode of "Lassie" rather than a movie about a werewolf.

A man and his girlfriend, both American scientists on an expedition somewhere in the jungle of India, were attacked by a werewolf. He manages to survive the attack and knows to kill the animal, but his girlfriend has already been ripped to pieces and died a horrible death. Even though he survived the werewolf wounded him badly and now he's a werewolf himself. Despite popular believe, the man doesn't only turn into a werewolf at full moon. He becomes one every night and there is no cure. His only hope is his sister and her son. He hopes that the love of his family will cure him from his "disease".

As I already said Bad Moon is an enjoyable movie. Especially the morphing technique (when you actually see him turn into a werewolf) is cool to watch. The story may not always be the very original, it still does the trick. The same for the acting. There is nothing spectacular about it, but it is very decent and believable. I give this movie a 6,5/10.

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.

I'm always on the fence when it comes to the 90's horror underground/B list films. I always enjoy the one liners from 80s slasher classics, but for some reason the 90's always had those lines that seemed kinda forced in their cheesiness. They seemed to have a lot of political and current issues fueled behind them. Fortunately, there are only a couple of those lines in this movie and it only bothers me just a little.

This movie has a great opening scene and I like the movements and the aggressiveness of the werewolf. The family's German Shepherd is hands down the smartest character in the film and there is even a line towards the end that gives credit to this. Considering the supernatural take of the whole werewolf concept, this movie has a good bit of realism surrounding the nature of the beast. I won't say too much, but it briefly explores the psychological effect of the man plagued by this curse with a few select scenes. A few broken rules for the genre also help put a slight twist on what would otherwise be an average werewolf flick. My most memorable scenes include the power struggle between the two alphas. There is some great symbolism and well placed humor within this dynamic. Don't expect anything too mind blowing, but if you enjoy the finer threads of a movie check this one out!