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Originally Posted by CNash
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Thanks for posting this. It’s amazing how many short films have come close to the holy grail, only to back away at the last second and not really show anything. It’s especially frustrating for shorts like “Hello Moon/‘M’ Is for Moon” where the girl is drop-dead gorgeous. I realize that most (if not all) of these filmmakers don’t share our fetish, but if you’re going to make a short film where literally the entire plot is, “Girl turns into a werewolf,” and then you DON’T show the transformation, what was the ever-living point of doing the work and getting all those people together to make the movie in the first place?
It reminds me of the old, disappointing movie “Jaqueline Hyde,” which was a Jekyll and Hyde story about a shy, plain-Jane woman who transforms into a curvy, gorgeous supermodel. I was following that production for over a year, and when I finally watched the DVD, I was once again let down to find out that all the TFs were pretty much off-screen. In fact, during the first “TF,” which really wasn’t a TF, all the girl does is moan and writhe around in her bed, then she falls off the bed, and when she gets up, she’s the new, hotter model. During the audio commentary for this scene, the director said, “We were going to have special-effects shots here with bubbling skin, but we ran out of time and money in the budget,” which prompted me to think, “Then what was the point of even making the movie?! The entire hook/plot of the movie is a plain woman has the power to transform into a hotter model, and you DON’T show the transformation?” They should’ve used most of the budget for that one scene and then filmed the rest of the movie around it with the leftover money. After all, dialogue scenes aren’t expensive to shoot.
This same sentiment was echoed during a behind-the-scenes documentary of “The Howling,” where a producer was complaining they were running out of money and couldn’t do a proper TF scene. “As far as I was concerned,” he said, “one of the reasons we were making the movie in the first place was to showcase a fantastic transformation,” so he procured an extra million for the budget, and the rest is TF history.
The more I think about it, the more I realize we’re never going to really get a female TF we want until us guys (and girls?) pool our resources together and make one ourselves. Obviously, we won’t have millions to play with, but according to the writer/director of “The Dark,” which in my mind is still the closest we’ve come to a great female werewolf TF, the makeup for that short only cost $500, so imagine what we could do with thousands. I realize we don’t all agree on exactly what constitutes a good TF. For example, some people want the TF to be painful; some, including myself, want it to be pleasurable, but we could have a compromise where the TF is at first painful, but as the changes progress (and her “adrenaline” kicks in), the girl could start to enjoy it. I would also say that most of us here would rather have bubbling skin and gradual changes (like in “The Howling” and “AWIL”) instead of ripping skin and gory changes (like “Trick ‘r Treat,” “The Company of Wolves” and “Hemlock Grove”). At least we could agree on that part, and for those who don’t, they obviously don’t have to contribute to the project. Also, we’d need to find someone who knows how to sculpt prosthetic makeup.
Or I guess we could just wait and see if this “AWIL” remake will pay off or if it’s really a hoax.