Werewolf

If you've had your fill of dreamy teen vampires, then Glen Duncan's new novel, "The Last Werewolf," will give you a reason, in the immortal words of Ozzy Osbourne, to bark at the moon. The serious literary crowd can't bring itself to take any of the genre stuff seriously: Tales of werewolves, vampires and other fantastic creatures are just too low-brow for them. (Time's better spent reading another novel of middle-class family dysfunction, I guess.) But Duncan's book offers those deeper, reflective surfaces that they might crave: No one broods on history and irony more than his narrator, Jacob Marlowe, even if his meditations get interrupted every 30 days or so by an absolute hunger for flesh.

Like its title character, "A Werewolf Boy" is not quite one thing or the other. The South Korean feature (a smash on home turf) is a chaste young-adult romance that bites into supernatural melodrama, science fiction and political conspiracy theories. Little is predictable about the coming-of-age fantasy, but the biggest surprise is that writer-director Jo Sung-hee makes the potentially unwieldy genre mix work as well as it does. At once earnest, silly, sprightly and dark, this is a beauty-and-the-beast tale in which the beast cleans up nicely and has a pure heart to match his lycanthropic tendencies.

I am in possession of a Westside magazine called UFO, which chronicles the activities of extraterrestrials and those Earthlings they have abducted, examined and then returned to the bayous of Louisiana or the beaches at Malibu. Shirley MacLaine, as I recall, was one of those who spent a pleasant afternoon with people from Zeta Reticuli, but to the best of my knowledge she has not revealed details of the visit.

The sort of adolescent anxiety as body horror writer-director Bradley Rust Gray attempts with his new lesbian werewolf love story "Jack & Diane" has been done better elsewhere - the 2000 Canadian film "Ginger Snaps" immediately springs to mind. Here, Juno Temple's British free spirit Diane meets up with Riley Keough's tomboy Jack, and the two fall madly, passionately in love with such recklessness that the force of it seems to awaken an actual monster within Diane. The transformation sequences are conjured through brief, evocative animated sequences courtesy of the Brothers Quay.

As a Michael Fox-loving member of the demographic it targeted, I most certainly saw the 1985 film "Teen Wolf," but I don't remember much save it was a comedy and not very good. "Teen Wolf," which premieres Sunday night on MTV, is also one of those two things and it is not a comedy. Though there is some satisfaction in being reminded that supernatural curses were being used as metaphors for adolescence long before "Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer was born (the original "Teen Wolf" was a homage/rip-off of the classic 1957 "I Was a Teenage Werewolf")

Daring to be different! "The Marsupials: Howling III," set in Australia, is about a werewolf colony that evolved from a (now-extinct) marsupial wolf. Which means that the women werewolves--when in human form--carry their little ones in their pouches. As for the were tykes, well, they don't attain their human features until they're about 4. Which means it's tricky taking them out in public.

If a full moon affects the human body, then a supermoon surely would send those effects into overdrive, leading to even more pregnancies, epileptic seizures, surgery screw-ups, suicides, assaults and various other types of biological havoc. Surely, it would. The operative word, of course, is "if. " And the Skeptic's Dictionary begins a nice distillation of moon-related folklore this way: "The full moon has been linked to crime, suicide, mental illness, disasters, accidents,  birthrates, fertility, and werewolves, among other things.

Re "Rice Likens Iraq to Postwar Germany," Aug. 8: While I have great respect for national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, she is completely out of sync when using post-World War II Germany to predict the outcome of our occupation of Iraq. According to your article, Rice said that "postwar Germany had been as messy as postwar Iraq, and yet Germany eventually became the 'linchpin' of a fully democratic Europe." Rice went on to say that we faced so-called werewolves, Nazi remnants who attacked Allied troops and engaged in sabotage, "much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants" in Iraq.

AHHAHOOOOO !! Susan King's omission of my TV series from her list on werewolves has wounded me like a rusty trap ("Howling Through the Ages," June 12)! Although I am not a werewolf, I have an affinity for them. For I was Lucan, the boy raised by wolves, in the 1977-79 ABC series of that name. Before sinking my fangs into my paw for being slighted, may I say I would have enjoyed being on her list! KEVIN BROPHY Van Nuys In your list of werewolf films, you neglected to list the funniest horror film ever produced: "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein."

On Page 1 of the Southeast/Long Beach section, Nov. 6, Jane Addams Elementary School Principal Beryl Brooks was shown looking at the Halloween art to which Donna Voetee, a Long Beach parent, objected. Voetee called it "witchcraft material." On Page 7, same section, same date, an Arcadia couple exchanged formal marriage vows in church, Reverend Simonian doing the honors. The bride was dressed as Frankenstein's beloved; her groom, the monster himself. A costumed werewolf escorted the bride, and the wedding cake was black.

If you've had your fill of dreamy teen vampires, then Glen Duncan's new novel, "The Last Werewolf," will give you a reason, in the immortal words of Ozzy Osbourne, to bark at the moon. The serious literary crowd can't bring itself to take any of the genre stuff seriously: Tales of werewolves, vampires and other fantastic creatures are just too low-brow for them. (Time's better spent reading another novel of middle-class family dysfunction, I guess.) But Duncan's book offers those deeper, reflective surfaces that they might crave: No one broods on history and irony more than his narrator, Jacob Marlowe, even if his meditations get interrupted every 30 days or so by an absolute hunger for flesh.

Forever A Novel Maggie Stiefvater Scholastic: 390 pp., $17.99, ages 13 and up The middle book in Maggie Stiefvater's bestselling "Shiver" trilogy ended with a Romeo-and-Juliet cliffhanger, as Grace mysteriously disappeared from the hospital, Grace's father punched out her werewolf boyfriend and said boyfriend wondered whether he'd ever see his beloved again. In "Forever," the highly anticipated conclusion to this shape-shifting young-adult series, the drama continues to ratchet up as Grace and her boyfriend Sam negotiate the complications of nascent werewolf love.

As a Michael Fox-loving member of the demographic it targeted, I most certainly saw the 1985 film "Teen Wolf," but I don't remember much save it was a comedy and not very good. "Teen Wolf," which premieres Sunday night on MTV, is also one of those two things and it is not a comedy. Though there is some satisfaction in being reminded that supernatural curses were being used as metaphors for adolescence long before "Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer was born (the original "Teen Wolf" was a homage/rip-off of the classic 1957 "I Was a Teenage Werewolf")

If a full moon affects the human body, then a supermoon surely would send those effects into overdrive, leading to even more pregnancies, epileptic seizures, surgery screw-ups, suicides, assaults and various other types of biological havoc. Surely, it would. The operative word, of course, is "if. " And the Skeptic's Dictionary begins a nice distillation of moon-related folklore this way: "The full moon has been linked to crime, suicide, mental illness, disasters, accidents,  birthrates, fertility, and werewolves, among other things.

"Do you hear that — that wolf howl?" asked Adam. "That can't be a wolf," said Carl. "There are no wolves in Los Angeles. " "A vampire, then," said Adam as he peered from under his bed into the hallway. "Vampires don't howl," said Carl. "It's werewolves that howl on the full moon. Look. " Both boys craned their heads toward the window. They saw the full moon in the sky. "The person in the bathroom making all that noise is my Great Aunt Tilly. My parents left her to baby-sit us. I'm convinced she's a werewolf," said Adam.

Special effects makeup artist and animatronics effects supervisor Shane Mahan has had monsters on the brain since he was a youngster growing up in Michigan. "My story is not dissimilar to most of my colleagues," says Mahan, who earned an Oscar nomination for "Iron Man. " "We grew up in the 1960s and early '70s where the only way you could see monster movies was to stay up late. Today kids can just Netflix the movies. There's no challenge of the quest anymore. It used to take real effort to stay up to 2 in the morning to watch 'Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Forever A Novel Maggie Stiefvater Scholastic: 390 pp., $17.99, ages 13 and up The middle book in Maggie Stiefvater's bestselling "Shiver" trilogy ended with a Romeo-and-Juliet cliffhanger, as Grace mysteriously disappeared from the hospital, Grace's father punched out her werewolf boyfriend and said boyfriend wondered whether he'd ever see his beloved again. In "Forever," the highly anticipated conclusion to this shape-shifting young-adult series, the drama continues to ratchet up as Grace and her boyfriend Sam negotiate the complications of nascent werewolf love.

Somewhere on the way to today's multiplex, the traditional horror-movie vampire received an extreme makeover. Max Schreck's Count Orlok of 1922's "Nosferatu" -- bald, hunched, with claw-like hands, bug eyes and shark-like teeth -- morphed into the hollow-cheeked, Abercrombie & Fitch model looks of "Twilight's" Robert Pattinson, all James Dean glowering and choreographed hair. Beautiful vampires populate the small screen as well. HBO's "True Blood," (based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series)

Anyone worried about the fate of Bella, Edward, Jacob and the rest of the "Twilight" gang after the moody blues of movie No. 2 can breathe a sigh of relief. "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" is back with all of the lethal and loving bite it was meant to have: The kiss of the vampire is cooler, the werewolf is hotter, the battles are bigger and the choices are, as everyone with a pulse knows by now, life-changing. It's really all because the kids are growing up. Not just Bella, Edward and Jacob, though they're doing their share of hitting major milestones what with their love triangle more fraught than ever, but Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner who finally, finally have figured out how to breathe life into the characters first created by publishing phenom Stephenie Meyer.