If someone were to offer me a clean, crisp $100 bill in exchange for my agreeing to sit through the entirety of Leigh Whannell‘s Wolf Man, I honestly wouldn’t know how to respond. I think I’d hold out for $250. I would sit through this obviously poisonous film for that amount.

I’ve never seen Terence Fisher‘s Curse of the Werewolf (’61), which starred Oliver Reed and was set in 18th Century Spain. (Although it was shot in England.) It was the first werewolf film to be shot in color. Stills indicate that Reed’s makeup wasn’t bad.

For the last 30 years my all-time favorite werewolf flick has been Mike Nichols‘ Wolf (’94), which has an excellent screenplay by Jim Harrison (whom I met and hung out with on a warm evening in March ’96 at the premiere of Carried Away, which was based on Harrison’s “Farmer”) and Wesley Strick. I didn’t like the last half-hour of Wolf, of course — nobody did. But the first 90 minutes moved along nicely.