Interviews
How ‘Werewolves’ Director Steven C. Miller Brought Dozens of Werewolves to the Big Screen [Interview]
Silent Night director Steven C. Miller‘s latest doesn’t just feature a single werewolf on the prowl, but dozens in action horror movie Werewolves. It’s the type of setup that’s exciting for werewolf fans yet daunting in scope due to the stunts and creature work required.
It’s also exactly what excited Miller about Matthew Kennedy’s script. “The writer just brought it to me pretty early on, and so I fell in love with it instantly,” Miller tells Bloody Disgusting. “I couldn’t believe how much mayhem was happening in the script, especially with the werewolves. I was baffled that we were going to try to get this many werewolves on screen. So, I fell in love with it right away. The process really was trying to find people that actually wanted to make it. Because I’m sure you’re aware that in Hollywood, for some reason, it’s like people don’t want to touch werewolves. They don’t want to do it. So it was very difficult at first to think about who would do this.”
“Luckily,” Miller continues, “I had just made a movie called Line of Duty, and the movie did really well for these producers and Myles Nestel and Craig Chapman at the Solution Entertainment Group, so there was a no-brainer to take it to them, and I knew Myles was a big Alien geek. He likes sci-fi and horror, and I figured he would get it, and he totally did.”
Why is it that, despite their reverence among horror fans, werewolf movies are in such short supply? Miller reflects, “I feel like it’s because they’re either really great or maybe really bad. And I think that the audience sort of judges that pretty heavily early on, even with just the images that come out right away. I mean, that’s obviously something you just expect. But I think the studio is thinking, can they make money? The consensus for studios is that they don’t make money. But you know, hopefully, that trend is changing with not just our movie. But you got Wolf Man. You got a bunch of other cool werewolf things starting to come out, and I think it’s a good time for them.”
Frank Grillo as Wesley Marshall in director Steven C. Miller’s WEREWOLVES, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
Werewolves is the type of movie that features a product called “moonscreen,” a lunar light blocking cream meant to protect humans from their mutation triggering when exposed to the Supermoon. That tongue in cheek style of humor along with the action horror reminds of ’90s films like Full Eclipse. That throwback vibe hails from Miller’s horror influences.
“I was looking at a lot of late ’90s Dark Castle movies. I just love that kind of vibe,” he tells us. “And then, obviously, Blade was a big reference for me because I loved the original Blade and how it mixed horror and action. But it was fun. You have a character like Wesley Snipes, who just makes it that much more exciting. Knowing we were getting Frank Grillo, it was important for me to let Grillo be Grillo and let him have fun doing what he does best, which is delivering some crazy lines. Really, just leaning into that was a big thing for me. I do that in general when I’m picking movies, whether it’s Silent Night or things like that, where I love movies that ride the tone. They can be wild fun. They’re sort of crazy and might be a little bit too much, but I like it. Those are all things that I was looking at, but definitely those Dark Castle films, Blade, and even Underworld. Things like that that really hit.”
Director Steven C. Miller’s WEREWOLVES, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Todd Stefani / Briarcliff Entertainment. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
Frank Grillo may take top billing in Werewolves, but it’s Studio Gillis’s werewolf effects and creature work that might be the real stars of the film. Miller, along with SFX legend Alec Gillis, treated this important aspect of the film with the utmost attention and care. Miller explains, “We took several months to even just come up with the design. We had the original sketch artwork done. Then Alec came in and expanded on that artwork, and it’s different to go from art to an actual person being in a suit. You have to accommodate for that. We talked about their legs. We talked about their arms. Would they have elongated legs? Would they have elongated arms? But they knew how much I wanted them to run, how much I wanted them to move.
“Then it just became about making them a little bit leaner, making them able to do more movement. Alec had a version of the werewolves that were completely hairy. Then Alec and I took a razor and some clippers, and we started cutting them down. The next thing you know, I’m giving some abs to make it look brutal. It was a process; we had a lot of fun. I mean, it was me in the shop with Alec every day for months, and we were just enjoying our time together, having fun with the other artists who were making them. Creating different teeth, different ways that they could look, the tongue, and all that kind of thing. We were down to the nitty gritty of their eyeballs, and if I put the eye light on it the right way, would it be yellow? We really focused on a lot of little nitty, gritty things that we had fun doing.”
As Gillis previously explained in an interview with Bloody Disgusting, there may be dozens of on-screen werewolves, but they only had seven Wolf suits with suited actors playing them. Managing seven practical effects-driven werewolves, complete with fully articulated animatronic heads and no shortage of stunt work, presented insane production challenges on their own. But Miller got even more ambitious with it; one memorable sequence involves werewolves attacking in the rain.
Behind the scenes of director Steven C. Miller’s WEREWOLVES, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Todd Stefani / Briarcliff Entertainment. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
“That is easily the most challenging scene sequence we did in the entire film,” Miller confirms. “Because the suits are heavy. But when you add rain, they become even heavier, and then you add the animatronics on top of that. So, we have a little bit of a Jaws shark situation, where sometimes they’re stuttering or not working. Then we’re trying to get them to work. Not only that, but then we put them on wiring, and we have them flying through the air in certain places in the rain. It’s also a whole other level of ridiculousness that we put onto the crew, but everybody was having so much fun that everybody just kept trying to push the envelope. How much could we actually do with these things, how much could we show, and how much would the audience be on the ride? We just kept having fun with it.”
Gillis revealed to Bloody Disgusting that he already has ideas for a sequel to this independent horror film, but he’s not the only one. Miller shares, “We have a lot [of ideas]. Frank Grillo has a lot. Producers have a lot, which is fun that they’re all excited. We all feel like this world should be expanded upon. We wanted to do more in this movie, obviously, but we didn’t have the money. We definitely want to keep going, and I think there’s some really great takes.”
Miller offers up an intriguing possibility if Werewolves performs well enough. “My favorite is to really go more Escape from New York with werewolves. That’s something Frank and I love, and we keep talking about it. We’ve talked about how we can put werewolves on a plane somehow and have a transformation sequence on a plane. There are a lot of really fun things there that we’re trying to figure out. I think we would actually do a really great live transformation if we were focusing on that. But yeah, this is just one of those movies, and I think it has potential if the audience gets out and sees it. It’s just all up to the audience.”
Werewolves howls its way into theaters nationwide on December 6, 2024. While you wait, you can enter to win a custom werewolf head made by Alec Gillis himself!
Director Steven C. Miller on the set of WEREWOLVES, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Todd Stefani / Briarcliff Entertainment. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
Interviews
George A. Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ Gets New Life After Search for Long-Lost Film Elements
“I was told that this couldn’t be found by some people that I worked with, and that just set a fire in me,” Scream Factory producer Jeff Roland says of the newly restored Day of the Dead in 4K from the seemingly long-lost original interpositive.
The four-disc release, loaded with special features and new interviews in addition to the restoration, arrives almost exactly three years after Roland began his long pursuit of the missing elements that he was warned were lost to time.
It’s a fitting journey for Day of the Dead, the third film in horror master George A. Romero‘s zombie series, considering the film’s long road to reappraisal after its initial failure at the box office in 1985. A huge departure from the popular Dawn of the Dead, the third film set its battle for humanity’s survival in an underground bunker, waged between a small group of scientists and ruthless soldiers.
It was underground where Roland began his pursuit of the missing interpositive elements, starting with the old-fashioned paper trail in Scream Factory’s basement, sorting through records from their 2013 Blu-ray release.
Scream Factory’s Years-Long Quest to Restore a Horror Classic
“So, there I was, going through boxes and boxes and boxes, trying to find this one specific invoice for a delivery company amongst thousands of pieces of paper,” Roland tells Bloody Disgusting. “That was the start. I was able to figure out the delivery service, and from there, it just went into a whirlwind of… drama? Yeah, there was some drama in there at one point; I thought it had been stolen by someone.”
The lengthy restoration process that also details Roland’s Indiana Jones-like journey, but he notes that “the short and sweet of it is, it took forever, I was trying to find leads. anything. I was seeing ridiculous things online, you know, like it was in a diamond mine in South Africa. I even followed up on that. I thought it would be hilarious if it were actually being kept in the Wampum mine. So I called them, and this poor woman who answered the phone sounded like she got this call every other day.”
Roland notes, “The records, for film vaults and such, aren’t the greatest. I’ll just say that. So, I think that’s, over time, that’s something that we definitely need to improve upon in this business.”
John Harrison Reflects on Day of the Dead‘s Surprising Legacy and Original Vision
While now considered another Romero zombie classic, critics and audiences rejected Day of the Dead at first, especially the Caribbean-style theme music from composer and first assistant director John Harrison.
Few are as surprised by the massive shift in the film’s reception as Harrison. The filmmaker and longtime Romero collaborator reflects, “Now, if you had asked any of us, and George included, that, ‘hey man, you know, in 45 years, this movie’s gonna be considered like a cinema classic.’ We all probably would have said, ‘Oh, we’re making a movie, man. We’re just having fun making a movie, and God, can you believe it, that people are paying us to do this?’ I don’t want to minimize it. I don’t want to say that we were just goofing around.”
Harrison continues, “All of us were really serious about our craft and about what we were trying to do. But I don’t think that any of us, maybe George, hopefully, had some feeling that his films would last for a while. I was a kid, you know? I just wanted to have fun, make movies, and be part of that whole scene. So, it was really disappointing when Day came out, because it was a bomb. I mean, let’s be truthful about it. It was a bomb. And people hated the score. So, 40-some years later, it’s become, for some people, the apogee of that first dead trilogy. The best of the three in its own way.”
Harrison also points out that Romero’s Land of the Dead would later face a similar reception and reappraisal, which was all the more fascinating considering early budget cuts caused Romero to drastically scale back Day of the Dead‘s story. A lot of what was excised was later revisited in Land of the Dead. “That was actually part of the original Day of the Dead concept,” Harrison explains of the 2005 film.
“Because of budget and schedule and so forth and so on, and ratings,” he tells BD. “George couldn’t do it, and that’s why we ended up with the more condensed version of Day of the Dead, which everybody now knows and loves. In a way, I’m kind of glad, because it has a real identity being trapped in those caves, and the end of the world, the two sides of society. Going at it, headbutting, to try and survive. But the whole Fiddler’s Green idea and all of that stuff that ended up in Land of the Dead was part of the original Day.”
George Romero Predicted Social Media and Modern Culture
Suzanne Romero, founder & president of the George A. Romero Foundation and the late filmmaker’s wife, breaks down the film’s trajectory even further. “The original Day of the Dead script, I think, at one point, it was written for a $12 million budget, and it was basically cut in half. And it’s a great script. But that’s what happens with filmmakers, and you gotta make do.
She continues, “But I really think that this film is really for the fans and people who love physical media. And in terms of the foundation, well, anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is.”
The mention of Land of the Dead brings up one recurring theme of Romero’s work: the filmmaker’s ability to keep his pulse so thoroughly on the current social climate in a way that feels prescient.
Roland agrees, “I think one of the most amazing things that doesn’t get talked about enough is in 2007, he came out with Diary of the Dead. That pretty much predicted YouTube culture. I mean, we’re going through it right now, the exact things that were happening in Diary of the Dead. It’s incredible.”
“Well, that was intentional,” Harrison says, “because I was part of that and worked with Peter [Grunwald] and George on developing that whole script and production. And that was definitely intentional. There was nothing accidental or, ‘Great timing, guys!’ It was not like that at all. It was intentional.”
Romero agrees, “[George] was very wary of social media, but very wary of the internet. He was always very suspicious and thought that we ought to beware; we ought to be walking very carefully into this space.“
“Which we haven’t done, of course,” Harrison adds.
“No, of course not,” Romero responds. “And AI. I mean, he would be writing about AI right now and thinking, danger! What the fuck are you doing, people? But not only that, but he also did it in a layman’s way. You know, he really brought it to very familiar language, and people that spoke to each other, it was in a very natural way, and it was the way he developed characters. The way he evolved with how his women were more powerful, because he kind of regretted that in Night of the Living Dead, [Barbra] was weak. He always thought the women ought to be much stronger, and I think it started with Season of the Witch.”
Everyone Wanted to Be a Zombie in a Romero Movie
George A. Romero’s legacy certainly looms large over Scream Factory’s impressive new release, offering a comprehensive look at Day of the Dead through a dizzying number of new audio commentaries, featurettes, and interviews detailing everything from the “mine fever” that spread among the cast and crew to Ernest Dickerson‘s high-pressure day on set running the second unit camera.
That’s also reflected in Romero’s zombies themselves, dating back to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead.
“In Pittsburgh, it was a badge of honor to be a zombie in a George Romero movie,” Harrison recounts. “Everybody from the Dean of Students at Carnegie Mellon to the presidents of corporations. I had a story that came out of Dawn. I was pitching a commercial for my own little company, and I’d done a bit for George as ‘Screwdriver Zombie’ on Dawn. I didn’t get cleaned up enough, and I went to this meeting at the first thing in the morning. The vice president of this bank is looking at me, going, ‘Is there something wrong with you?’ I said, ‘No, no, that’s what I know? I’m fine.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re bleeding out of your ear.’ Okay, so then I had to tell them the whole story. And he listened to it, and I thought, well, this is gonna be ridiculous. I’m coming in talking about being a zombie in a movie, and I want to sell him this, like, multi-thousand-dollar commercial that the bank is gonna pay for. He listened very carefully to me, and he said, ‘Well, listen, we’ll talk about the commercial, but do you think I could be a zombie in one?”
That hasn’t changed in the present, either.
Romero confirms, “We’re producing George’s film, Twilight of the Dead, and we get requests, ‘Can I be a zombie in this film?’ So, even today, people are very interested, and yet it’s terrible. I mean, it’s hours and hours of makeup.”
Scream Factory’s Day of the Dead four-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector’s Edition releases on June 16.
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