10 Most Terrifying Horror Movie Werewolves

The werewolf is perhaps second only to the ever popular vampire in terms of cinematic exposure, but they’re a lot harder to get right than their befanged colleagues. Perhaps the lack the depth of the more relatable vampire, perhaps there’s just not so much you can do with a werewolf tale - whatever the problem, their hit rate isn’t nearly as strong.

The main problem, most likely, is that it’s so difficult to get an on screen werewolf right. Films with colossal budgets - the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises, for example - have tried their hand at a visually striking werewolf, but for whatever reason, more often than not, they come out looking like a malnourished Scooby Doo (like the former) or just like a regular boring wolf (like the latter).

When they work, though, they really work.

There’s no reasoning with a werewolf, no running away. They’re strong and they’re deadly, and they want only to eat you up. Some filmmakers - with and without sizable budgets - have managed to nail the creatures in memorable and effective ways. And when they do, you’re in for a fright.

Gore master Joe Dante dials up the squick in this 1981 horror comedy. A few years before carrying off a similar trick with Gremlins, Dante veers rapidly between daft and goofy blood and guts and genuinely unsettling body horror. Just as you think you’re safe to relax into a silly monster pastiche, he hits you with a traumatising transformation scene or a bucket of acid in the face, catching you with your guard way down.

Lycanthropy is treated as halfway between a cult and a disease in The Howling, with a colony of wolfmen and wolfwomen who’ve learned to transform at will being the setting of the final stand off. Admittedly the effects are hit and miss (star Dee Wallace’s transformation is a little truncated, and when we finally see her wolf form, she looks like a socialite’s handbag dog), but when the shocks are on point, like the ambush in the office, they work a treat. Dante’s werewolves look simply disgusting, forever dripping with a translucent goo and as tenacious as any onscreen monster.

The film spawned a forgettable franchise, but this first entry stands up as well as most werewolf flicks you could hope to see.