Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review

Werewolf by Night/Reboot

The entire division continues the  preoccupying task of reworking all of the extant Top 5 Horror Movie lists into a more uniform size, shape, and utility. This job would be  a lot easier with interns to order around.

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Werewolf by Night (Disney+)

Following the death of the Bloodstone Cult’s former leader, all of the monster hunters gather at the old man’s mansion to compete for control of The Bloodstone, which has monster fighting powers. Whoever wins the little monster-hunt-in-the-hedge-maze gets to run the whole shebang. The only thing is, one of the people in attendance is not who they seem. One of them is...a monster…

Another Bronze Age 1970s-era Marvel comic, back when they had a line of monsters in the Mighty Marvel Manner—this was my hands-down favorite of the bunch. Jack Russell (I can’t make this up, folks) inherits a family curse and becomes a...you get it. Like everything else in the Marvel Universe, it’s all connected, so the Werewolf by Night encountered Moon Knight, Howard the Duck, Ghost Rider, and other monsters like Frankenstein, the Living Mummy, and the Man-Thing (Marvel’s unapologetic and kinda snarky rip-off of DC’s successful Swamp Thing character). For what’s basically a rip-off of a rip-off, this book was wonderful. The scripts were fun, and the artwork by Mike Ploog and others have kept it a fan favorite for years.

Before I go any farther, let me just say that I really liked what the special was. Everyone was great in their roles, noteably Gael Garcia Bernal as the titular character, and Laura Donnelly as Elsa Bloodstone, daughter of the old guy who put the whole party together. There were some beautiful set pieces, and shot in mostly black and white, in the way that director (and one of my favorite composers) Michael Giacchino chose to shoot it, made this not-quite-a-movie great. I’d like to think I know a little something about the Universal movies of the 1930s and 1940s, and this is more style than substance. I suspect had they tried for a pastiche of Universal it would have bored modern audiences silly. The other Marvel monster cameo (I won’t spoil it, but surely the internet has by now) was wonderful, too. Comic book accurate. Too bad ol’ Jack Russell didn’t get the same consideration.

I was hoping for something a little closer to the comic, is all. Design-wise, the werewolf make-up is a triumph in that it’s practical! Not digital! But it doesn’t have any character to it. I think it’s closer to Oliver Reed’s Curse of the Werewolf design with a little Henry Hull Werewolf of London thrown in than Jack Pierce’s iconic make-up. What I’d rather have seen is Mike Ploog’s bipedal Non-Chaney-Like werewolf. Like this:

Not sure why they didn’t go that route. But this is a quibble, because once again, I’m left with my jaw wide open, wondering how I came to live in a world where I don’t have a jet pack, but that I can watch Werewolf by Night on the DISNEY CHANNEL. Think about it, people!

The show isn’t scary, but it’s nice and violent and a good creep-fest in the Mighty Marvel Cinematic Universe manner (I mean, who knew that lycanthropy also imparted the skills of parkour?) It’s also not enough. I’m fine with Indy-film Oscar Issacs wolfing out, and he had great chemistry with Irish Kristen Ritter, so they need to team back up again at some point. I want more of this end of the MCU. Here’s hoping that we get it, now that Dr. Strange has opened up the multiverse. You Old School Steve Gerber Howard the Duck fans know what I’m talking about.

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Reboot (Hulu)

I’m not a big sitcom fan unless you’re throwing one under the bus. The premise of this sitcom is this: a crap-tastic 1980s beloved (code for ‘purile’) sitcom gets a (wait for it) Reboot, with the same cast, including the kid, who’s now a twenty-something. The pitch is to make the show weird, edgy, and “fucked up” in the showrunner’s own words. But someone at Hulu gets cold feet at the last second and hires the original show’s writer back. He’s a comedic dinosaur, and the new showrunner and he butt heads immediately.

The set-up for the series is all contained in the first two episodes. This show has some great lines, really funny generation gap humor that cuts both ways, and some PG-13 raunch, trending towards rated R. The cast is tight, really funny together, and the show doesn’t stop to see if you got that last joke; it’s hurrying on to the next one. Rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, some Boomer vs GenX vs Millennial digs, and even Johnny Knoxville is good in the show, holding his own with sitcom veterans and funny comics like Paul Reiser, Keenan-Michael Key, Judy Greer and Rachel Bloom. That’s a lot of Emmy nominations for a sitcom about a sitcom.

Best thing about it is this: I love movies and Tv shows that purport to draw the curtain back on the scripted fiction of Hollywood and show just how broken the entire system is. A lot of the laughs are at the expense of actors, studio executives, making TV in Burbank, and so forth, with additional barbs flung at 21st century tack-ons like social media, influencers, reality TV, and the culture of celebrity in general. If they aren’t careful, they may start trying to make a point here. Binge the first three episodes and see if you don’t think it’s funnier than Modern Family. I know I do.