The Kasturi/Files: Episode 4: The Worst Kind of Wolves

Day 4 of our ongoing October horror movie series here at Speculative Chic — and it’s time to enter werewolf country. (Where wolf? There wolf! Sorry. We may veer into Young Frankenstein territory later this month.) More chitchat, film discussion, book recs, and cocktail ideas from Sandra Kasturi and Gemma Files! Welcome to The Kasturi/Files!

Sandra Kasturi: I love werewolf movies. I love werewolf novels. I’m always looking for the next great one, and it’s so rarely that I find anything that fulfills my very specific werewolf needs. In fact, I have trouble defining what exactly I’m looking for, except “I’ll know it when I see it.” Like they said about porn. And art. I adored An American Werewolf in London, but An American Werewolf in Paris left me cold. The Brotherhood of the Wolf was fantastic — a grand guignol of shapeshifting and fucked-up siblings and weird history in something only the French could pull off. The Howling was a bit over the top, but I still dug it. Er . . . but not so much the sequel with the marsupials. Silver Bullet (and Cycle of the Werewolf) were enjoyable, but they didn’t hit me where I live. It might all have started when I saw the Estonian werewolf movie Libahunt (1966), probably at too impressionable a young age. It’s based on a play by famous Estonian playwright, August Kitzberg, and the whole thing is available on YouTube, so if you speak Estonian, have at it. Warning: the print is quite dark (or maybe it’s just always nighttime in Estonia?), so might be frustrating, but watch the first minute or so; the music is hypnotic and upsetting. It’s kind of a Baltic Hammer Films movie, but a little more subtle and folkloric, and no real creature effects, but still eerie and effective and with some ritualized things that smack of The Wicker Man and Midsommar, and maybe The Crucible, with a dash of a more ominous version of Susan Cooper’s Greenwitch thrown in. Lots of nasty villagers punishing people if they think they’re infected with the supernatural, or, you know, if they have dark hair.

Anyway, my love affair with werewolves came full circle one day when I was in my twenties — my friends and I decided to go to the movies, to one of those big Cineplexes that was showing about fifteen different films. But every single one was sold out. Except The Company of Wolves. (1984, directed by Neil Jordan. Yeah, that Neil Jordan.) Since we’d hauled our asses downtown, we went. Even though the poster was unappealing — it looked like campy horror with a wolf coming out of a guy’s mouth. Surely we were above all this? But we watched it. And what a revelation. What an unexpected gift, to accidentally see something you weren’t expecting to turn out that good! It was Jordan’s first film, and if you haven’t seen it, well — you must. It’s a werewolf move . . . and it isn’t. It’s a fable, a fairy story, a cautionary tale. A film about storytelling itself. It’s based on Angela Carter’s story of the same name, which you can find in her book The Bloody Chamber, and Carter co-wrote the script with Jordan. On the surface, it’s a retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood,” with a girl called Rosaleen who dreams about a fairy-tale forest and a grandmother and . . . an unsuitable man? Wolf? Someone dangerous. I actually find it quite difficult to recap the plot, because the whole thing reads as a kind of neo-Gothic fever dream. But there are stories within stories within stories, and the whole film is like some brightly colored Fabergé egg with a surprise that bites at the center. Or maybe like those nesting Matryoshka dolls, revealing something hairy when you open the last one. A great cast (including Stephen Rea, David Warner and Angela Lansbury — deliciously camping it up: “The worst kind of wolves are hairy on the inside!”) rounds it out, and you end up with a gloriously dark confection of whipped cream and blood.

Gemma Files: Werewolves have always been a favorite monster for me as well, especially so since I spent a lot of my childhood and teenage years feeling so angry I often feared I might explode if just one more person pressed on me too hard — sort of like a female Incredible Hulk, but not even vaguely as good with it as She-Hulk is. My classmates used to find it hilarious to provoke me into tantrums, so the idea of losing control and ripping everyone around me apart was less gross and terrifying to me than very, very satisfying (oh crap, said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud). Which is why, sexy lady in leather from The Howling aside, it always disturbed me somewhat that werewolves seemed to be coded as an entirely male power fantasy: surely there were other women who felt the lure of destruction turned outward rather than inward, who wanted to consume the objects of their hatred (or, indeed, affection) rather than to be consumed by them.

Sandra: You know, this is how you and I are very much alike — I also had a great deal of rage (maybe still do?), and you’re right — the idea of turning into something that can crunch everyone’s bones to pulp is a gleeful fantasy.

Gemma: But then I too ran across The Company of Wolves, and all was explained. The funny part is that I was already familiar with the idea of rewriting fairy tales from Tanith Lee’s book Red as Blood, which does indeed contain a lycanthrope-oriented Red Riding Hood rewrite (“Wolfland”), but hadn’t as yet read any Angela Carter, a mistake I immediately rectified. With Jordan’s film, I loved the overt link between puberty — “the curse” — and the possibility not only of turning into a monster yourself, but of somehow bringing out the monster in other people (i.e. dudes) without even wanting to. After all, the original tale is very much a metaphorical set of warnings not to deviate from the norm lest you invite being changed beyond all recognition — maybe into a wolf, maybe into a “ruined” woman, maybe into a corpse; “keep to the path and don’t talk to strangers” sounds like nothing so much as what we still tell our kids to save them from rapists, pedophiles, or serial killers. What Carter knows, however, and Jordan communicates so beautifully, is that change cannot ever in itself be avoided. All we can try to do is to recognize it when it comes, and know our own desires well enough to be able to take charge of what we allow ourselves to become.

Sandra: I’m going to interrupt for a wee second with an aside . . .We’re not talking about Canadian cult classic Ginger Snaps (starring Katherine Isabelle), but I kind of feel like we should give it a shout-out, since it also slyly deals with lycanthropy tied into puberty/menstruation. Plus it’s just a great movie. (And I loved Red as Blood too.) Anyway. Carry on!

Gemma: But let’s move on here to a very masculine werewolf film indeed — Dog Soldiers (2002, written, directed and edited by Scottish madman Neil Marshall). Never mind that he then went on to create The Descent, one of the only horror films I can name with a completely female core cast; this one takes place in the Highlands, where a squad of six British army troopers is taking part in need-to-know “training exercises” which pit them against a Special Air Services unit led by haughty Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham, the Onion Knight from Game of Thrones), who chose his opponents specifically because he has it in for one of them, Private Cooper (Kevin McKidd), who previously applied to Ryan’s unit but was turned down when he refused to shoot a dog in cold blood. But when the squad goes into battle the next morning, all they find is a bunch of slaughtered SAS remains plus a badly wounded Ryan, who’s not exactly forthcoming about what might have attacked them, even when our heroes also begin to be chased through the woods and picked off by a wily, supernaturally strong group of opponents. With Sergeant Wells (horror character actor supreme Sean Pertwee) wounded as well, Cooper and his mates collide with zoologist Megan (Emma Cleasby), who takes them back to the cabin she supposedly shares with a local family. When they get there, however, the place proves completely empty except for a dog. As Emma helps Cooper super-glue Wells’s intestines back inside him and the rest of the squad fend off a new incursion by what turn out to be four extremely pissed off werewolves, Cooper slowly realizes the horrible truth: this cozy little house is, in fact, the very worst place they could have chosen to hole up in in all of Scotland . . . because for the creatures outside, it’s Home Sweet Home.

While The Company of Wolves is Romantic with big R and resonant in a score of ways that make me very happy — intellectually, deconstructively, mythologically — Dog Soldiers, in essence, is just good, clean/dirty fun, an Assault on Precinct 13-style home invasion turned last stand actioner that leavens its close-packed mixture of gore, suspense, bad jokes, and constant class conflict with a score of strangely touching moments. It’s like Aliens meets Rio Bravo with occasional tea-breaks, and I love it dearly, often watching it when it isn’t even Halloween. But gross transformations aside, it’s as far away from The Company of Wolves’s gruesome poetry as a Glasgow council slum is from the misty moors of Northumbria . . . not very geographically, but philosophically? Pretty much on a different planet.

Sandra: It’s funny, I would never have described The Company of Wolves as Romantic, but it absolutely is, especially in a medieval sense, and “gruesome poetry” is just the perfect phrase. You know, years later, when I saw Rob Marshall’s ruinous take on the Stephen Sondheim musical, Into the Woods, I could have sworn that Marshall lifted design, concepts and even camera shots directly from Jordan’s film. That scene between Johnny Depp’s Wolf and Red is almost an exact replica of the scene between Rosaleen and the Wolf in Company.

As for Dog Soldiers — yeah, it’s nothing like The Company of Wolves, and yet, and yet . . . I love it just as much. It’s violent, weird, funny, very British (in the best way), and a boatload of fun. Perhaps what both films have in common is that in the end, the monster is inside the house . . . and you. Maybe embracing it is how you win.

Cocktail: Bloody Mary & Red Riding Hood

Sandra: I’m going to give you two. I feel like, given the gore here, a Bloody Mary seems appropriate. But I also found a drink called the Red Riding Hood! How perfect.

Bloody Mary: Easy peasy — it’s just vodka and tomato juice. Or rather, that’s the Lazy Sandra version. Oh, and put it in a glass. With ice. Okay. I feel like I’m not trying very hard. The real Bloody Mary recipe is this:

1 1⁄2 oz Vodka
2 1⁄2 oz Tomato juice
3 dashes Hot sauce
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1 oz Lemon juice
1 oz Lime juice
1 pinch Ground black pepper
1 pinch Salt

But I’m not kidding — vodka and tomato juice will do you fine. And you don’t need to bother with the garnish. You can already feel virtuous, because of the tomato juice.

Red Riding Hood (this one’s fancy!):

0.5 parts Vodka
0.5 parts Strawberry Liqueur
0.5 parts Disaronno Amaretto
1 part Prosecco

Pour first three ingredients into a champagne flute; top with the Prosecco. A warning: this is one of those All Booze All the Time cocktails, with no mixer — so imbibe cautiously, my droogies.

Book Recommendations

Sandra: As I said, Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, is a gem of a collection that cemented my love for fairy tales stood on their heads, for sly beasts and reversals of fortune. If that’s not enough, it’s just superbly written. And full of wonderful lines like: “The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.” (From “The Tiger’s Bride.”) And I must admit, Carter’s work heavily influenced my own poetry collection, The Animal Bridegroom. Lots of whiskery wolf action. The 75th anniversary edition of The Bloody Chamber has an introduction by one of my favorite writers, Kelly Link, so: added bonus!

You should also check out Sing Your Sadness Deep by Laura Mauro (Undertow Publications), especially her story “Sun Dogs” which was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist — lots of folklore and shapeshifting, and things not being quite what you think they are.

And of course Benjamin Percy’s Red Moon, an action-packed thriller, but also an allegorical look at America’s ongoing imperialism and the post-9/11 world. Plus werewolves.

Gemma: For werewolf novels, I’d recommend both Stephen Graham Jones’s Mongrels (HarperCollins, 2016), which beautifully updates classic werewolf tropes while also running them through the filter of Indigenous American experience, and Melanie Tem’s Wilding (Dell Abyss, 1992), which centers around the familial relationships between four city-dwelling members of a tribal pack of matrilineal female lycanthropes. The rage and hunger of female animals is the driving force throughout this book, that instinct to claim and devour which I always felt was lacking in most werewolf narratives. And finally (because I enjoy being really obscure), I’d like to point people towards Bruce Elliott’s brilliant short story “Wolves Don’t Cry” (you can find it in Bill Pronzini’s anthology Werewolf!), which features the only reverse werewolf I’ve ever come across; it begins when a wolf in a zoo wakes up to discover he’s turned into a man, and follows him through his useless efforts to habituate himself to the human world, culminating in him performing a ritual designed to turn him back into what he already knows himself to be.

Sandra Kasturi is the publisher of ChiZine Publications, winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and HWA Specialty Press Awards. She is the co-founder of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium and the Executive Director of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, and a frequent guest speaker, workshop leader, and panelist at genre conventions. Sandra is also an award-winning poet and writer, with work appearing in various venues, including Amazing Stories, Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, Prairie Fire, several Tesseracts anthologies, Evolve, Chilling Tales, ARC Magazine, Taddle Creek, Abyss & Apex, Stamps, Vamps & Tramps, and 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. She recently won the Sunburst Award for her short story, “The Beautiful Gears of Dying,” in the anthology The Sum of Us. Her two poetry collections are: The Animal Bridegroom (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds. Sandra is currently working on another poetry collection, Snake Handling for Beginners, a story collection, Mrs. Kong & Other Monsters, and a novel, Wrongness: A False Memoir. She is fond of red lipstick, gin & tonics, and Idris Elba.

Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work, two chap-books of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst award for Best Adult Novel). Most are available from ChiZine Publications. She has two new story collections from Trepidatio (Spectral Evidenceand Drawn Up From Deep Places), one upcoming from Cemetery Dance (Dark Is Better), and a new poetry collection from Aqueduct Press (Invocabulary).