ABCs of Horror 3: "B" Is for Bad Moon (1996)

Paste’s ABCs of Horror 3 is a 26-day project that highlights some of our favorite horror films from each letter of the alphabet. The only criteria: The films chosen can’t have been used in our previous Century of Terror, a 100-day project to choose the best horror film of every year from 1920-2019, nor previous ABCs of Horror entries. With many heavy hitters out of the way, which movies will we choose?

There’s something joyously frank in a horror film that announces its exact intentions right off the bat, in its opening moments. In the era where overwrought, self-serious “prestige horror” frequently sucks all the oxygen out of the room, cutting straight to the chase can be like a delicious reprieve from the burden of expected analysis, a vacation for your brain. It’s what makes the schlocky likes of Bad Moon such a delight now, nearly three decades later–you watch the film today and can scarcely believe the hot werewolf action you’re being blessed by, within the first four minutes. So many films with similar taglines would make you wait their entire runtime before finally delivering the goods, but not Bad Moon. The “slow burn” tag does not apply. The gonzo audacity of its opening sets the tone for the no-holds-barred delights that follow.

And when I say “deliver the goods” in this instance, I’m talking about not only a hilariously gory werewolf attack, but a surprisingly explicit sex scene as well, all within the opening four minutes of an R-rated (because it absolutely had to be), decently budgeted horror film that inexplicably opened wide in the U.S. the day after Halloween in the fall of 1996. Bad Moon proved to be a significant box office money loser, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of lupine bonafides.

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Allow me to set the scene: A pair of photojournalists on assignment in Nepal strike camp for the night, but we can instantly see they’re significantly more interested in exploring each other’s nooks and crannies than any of the surrounding squelchy jungle environs. Less than two minutes into the film, they’re already off to the tent to ravish each other, leaving their native guides to snicker around the campfire as the night closes in. This is just about when all hell breaks loose, as a 7-foot werewolf bursts into the camp and scatters the natives, blessedly avoiding any immediate disturbance of the coitus already in progress. That is, until the werewolf then rips into the tent with our two lovers and proceeds to savage the woman in a much messier way than her beau. The man, after sustaining a nasty gash to his chest, crawls desperately toward a shotgun, which he then levels at the beast and blows its head off, sending geysers of cartoonish gore into the night sky. Silver bullet? Apparently not necessary when you score massive cranial trauma.

Great place for a title card, right?

Most werewolf films would proceed to then follow that lucky attack survivor (and unlucky girlfriend loser) as he realizes the curse upon him and searches for a way to reverse it or avoid harming other people, but this fellow–whose name is Ted (Michael Paré), by the way–is not the protagonist of Bad Moon. Far from it; he’s actually the villain. The protagonists, as it turns out, are his extended family–sister Janet (Mariel Hemingway) and nephew Brett (Mason Gamble of Dennis the Menace), who are placed in a prime position for werewolf attacks when Ted decides to park his camper in the backyard of their lake house for an extended visit. Yes, it’s a classic case of “werewolf uncle moves in next door,” which would cramp just about anyone’s style. Whether he actually intends to kill them is anyone’s guess, a question the film never really gets around to asking.

No style is more cramped than that of the actual hero of the film, though, which is no human at all, but the family dog, a hulking German Shepherd by the name of Thor. This was no eccentric choice of writer-director Eric Red, merely a faithful transplantation of the source material, author Wayne Smith’s novel Thor, which is indeed told largely from the dog’s perspective. The canine essentially steps into the role of the suspicious horror movie protagonist who no one else will believe–he knows the moment he lays eyes on Ted that something about him just doesn’t smell right, but try telling that to a family with a strict “no biting the uncle” policy. Will the loyal Thor be able to show everyone the truth in time to save their lives?

What results is a brisk game of cat-and-mouse, or dog-and-wolf, leading up to a final confrontation pitting the family against their now berserk Uncle Ted, all in an extremely efficient and tidy 79 minutes. Why its plucky charms were lost on contemporary reviewers is hard to say–you get a sense that the Gen X’ers in the audience may have considered themselves a bit too cool for an admittedly preposterous (but well crafted), old fashioned monster movie, and were instead subconsciously awaiting the anarchic, meta spark of Scream that was only a month or so away.

Regardless, I take umbrage at one aspect in particular that tended to be cited in those contemporary reviews: Criticism of the film’s special effects. Granted, Bad Moon does have a couple sequences of absolutely horrendous CGI, including a late-in-the-game transformation sequence that is garishly hideous, but I’ll be damned if I’ll stand for disparagement of the actual werewolf costume, which in my opinion is one of the very best ever put on screen. The fully articulated head in particular is a marvel, and presumably where much of the film’s budget was spent, and its snapping and snarling jaws are both far more lifelike and vivid than almost all movie monsters of the era. The filmmakers must have known it; they feature the suit on screen constantly in the film, and for good reason. It looks fantastic!

And that’s Bad Moon for you, a film that doesn’t bother to tantalize the audience with possibilities or “invite them to imagine” a monster when it would much rather just give them a monster to yelp at. It’s the best film about a family dog and a werewolf uncle you’ll see all year.

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more film writing.

ABCs of Horror 3: “B” Is for Bad Moon (1996)