bad moon movie review

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After being bitten by a werewolf in the jungle, Ted looks for a cure. His lawyer sister, with a son and dog, invites him to park his camper by her house in the woods and live out of her frid... Read all After being bitten by a werewolf in the jungle, Ted looks for a cure. His lawyer sister, with a son and dog, invites him to park his camper by her house in the woods and live out of her fridge. After being bitten by a werewolf in the jungle, Ted looks for a cure. His lawyer sister, with a son and dog, invites him to park his camper by her house in the woods and live out of her fridge.

Wayne Smith
Mariel Hemingway
Michael Paré
Mason Gamble
122 User reviews
84 Critic reviews

(as Michael Pare)

Sheriff Jenson

(as Johanna Marlowe Lebovitz)
Forest Ranger

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Trivia The movie made many significant changes from the novel, particularly in the make-up of the family, which in the novel consisted of two parents and three children, as well as the dog, who sees the family as his pack, which must be defended at all costs. The dog's perceptions of events are treated in great detail, as is the relationship between him and his human family, and his confusion as to whether the werewolf is a threat to his family that must be eliminated, or a pack member who must be respected. These subtleties mainly did not make it into the film.
Goofs There is a full moon. Two nights later, we see another full moon. Two nights later, we see yet another full moon.

Janet : Ted, you know you're always welcome here. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to park your Airstream in my backyard, and you're going to live out of my fridge.

Crazy credits The Producers would like to thank the following for their help and cooperation in the making of the film: THE KABELA FAMILY THE LAIDLER FAMILY
Connections Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Werewolf Movies (2013)

User reviews 122

Michael_Elliott
Feb 26, 2008
How long is Bad Moon? Powered by Alexa
November 1, 1996 (United States)
United States
Anmore, British Columbia, Canada
Morgan Creek Entertainment
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$7,000,000 (estimated)
Nov 3, 1996

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 20 minutes
Dolby Stereo

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Bad Moon Reviews

Eric Red was a credible writer for the 1980s thriller The Hitcher but as a director, he's strictly by-the-numbers.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/4 | Mar 22, 2022

The werewolf costume, animatronic facial movements, and makeup effects are superb.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Sep 9, 2020

A brutally underrated werewolf movie...

Full Review | Jul 29, 2016

It's impossible to hate any movie in which the hero is a magnificent German Shepherd, but that angle is about all that Bad Moon has going for it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 24, 2016

"Bad Moon" isn't a great film, but it is a competent one with enough inspiration and individuality to impress. It is easy to see why it has built up an affectionate little following over the last few decades.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 13, 2016

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 16, 2005

Watchable werewolf stuff, if your expectations aren't all that high.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 26, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

‘Bad Moon’ Is a Forgotten Werewolf Schlockfest That Deserves to Be Rediscovered

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Bad Moon does a lot of things wrong, beginning with the fact that it hit theaters the day after Halloween in 1996. Perhaps Warner Bros. mistakenly believed people taking down their cardboard skeletons needed a rousing werewolf picture to carry them to Thanksgiving. It’s the time of year when people are more in the mood for the existential terror of Planes, Trains & Automobiles ’ bizarre subplot about John Candy ’s secret dead wife rather than the in-your-face horror of a shaggy Muppet hulk stomping heavily through west coast suburbia like he’s trying to lure the Power Rangers into a showdown. Plainly stated, November of 1996 was simply not ready for Bad Moon .

In the film’s opening, Ted ( Michael Paré ) and his girlfriend Marjorie ( Johanna Lebovitz ) are boning in their tent in the jungles of Nepal after a successful photography mission when they are attacked by a werewolf. The werewolf mauls Ted and kills Marjorie, but Ted manages to send the creature to Werewolf Hell by blasting its head apart with a shotgun (more on that later). Ted returns to the U.S. and parks his Airstream in his sister Janet’s ( Mariel Hemingway ) backyard, and proceeds to wolf out on random passersby including a surveyor inexplicably working in the middle of the night and some asshole trying to run a low-stakes personal injury scam from the 1920s. Janet’s precocious son Brett ( Mason Gamble ) and their hyperactive German Shepard Thor are suspicious of Ted, and Thor eventually gets carried off by Animal Control after he attacks Ted for being drenched in werewolf musk. Brett Goonies his ass to the pound to bust Thor out, and they get back to the house just in time to stop Tedwulf from killing Janet. (This is a gentle way of saying that Thor knocks Werewolf Ted out of the goddamn window.) Ted carries his gravely-wounded werewolf ass off into the forest and Thor follows, killing Ted the following morning after he transforms back into a human.

Despite its many flaws, Bad Moon has always held a certain amount of charm for me, partially because I love all things werewolf. (They are the most accidentally hilarious monsters ever created and I will not hear otherwise.) I aim to spend the next several paragraphs doing my best to explain why I will go to my grave defending this movie, even though I recognize with my rational mind that it is schlocky garbage (please note my grave will be adorned with stone angels who are also werewolves).

First of all, schlocky garbage doesn’t have to be bad! Sometimes those are the most fun movies to watch. The opening sequence of Bad Moon makes a strong argument in this department, slapping us in the face with one of the most buck-fucking-wild werewolf attacks I have ever seen on film. When the werewolf bursts into Ted and Marjorie’s sex tent like a mid-level celebrity searching for his own name on Twitter, it yanks Marjorie into the air like the titular storm in Twister and proceeds to chew on her head and neck for approximately 60 unbroken seconds. Ted scrambles feebly towards a gun with an impressive claw slash on his chest, while the film frantically cuts between him and extreme close-ups of the werewolf just going to town on Marjorie. It’s intense, it’s disorienting, and it’s actually pretty frightening. Then, we cut to a wide shot of the werewolf as it holds Marjorie away from its body and delivers an overhand smash so devastating it could rewind time. This needs to be emphasized: the werewolf abruptly slaps her into the ground like a poisoned wine glass and it is positively shocking. Dennis Miller could’ve strolled out of the jungle in blue jeans and a blazer and delivered a rant about Bob Dole’s chances of winning the ’96 election and it would’ve been less shocking than watching a werewolf smack a woman into the earth like a vaudevillian strongman. Anyway, Ted finally manages to drag himself to the shotgun and uses it to obliterate the offending monster’s dome in a fantastic display of a Halloween mask stuffed with movie gore getting blasted off camera by powerful air jets. You actually see the wind of the jets ruffling the werewolf’s fur as its head jellies before our eyes. Honestly, the movie could’ve ended after this scene.

The second and arguably most notable aspect of Bad Moon is that the main character is a dog. The entire film is told from Thor’s perspective, and Thor goes through what would traditionally be the hero’s arc in a film like this. His journey is not dissimilar from a Denzel Washington thriller in which nobody believes Denzel (there are many, it’s an entire subgenre of Denzel movies). Just to quickly break it down, Thor suspects something is wrong, he constantly tries to warn everyone but his desperate warnings just make him look crazy, he’s finally provoked to attack the bad guy and it just makes him look like a lunatic, he’s taken away by the authorities, and finally has to break out in the middle of the night to rush back and save the day. Bad Moon is secretly a dog movie, and it handles this aspect of its narrative so well that you don’t even really notice it until it’s too late to ask for your money back. The trailers didn’t really push it either, so it was like going in to watch The Basketball Diaries and being shown Air Bud . I can’t believe we’re all not still talking about this.

Writer/director Eric Red knows a thing or two about subversive horror – in addition to penning classics of the genre like Near Dark and The Hitcher , he also drove his truck into a bar and killed two people, then tried to slit his own throat with broken glass before the cops arrived. (Yes, this actually happened, in 2000.) Bad Moon was his last feature before the accident, and he understandably hasn’t done much since then, having effectively written the book on sudden existential terror after turning The Howling into Homeward Bound and parking his vehicle in the middle of an eatery. I’m not entirely sure what else to say about this incident, other than the fact that it absolutely knocked me on my ass when I found it while researching this piece, and I absolutely had to share that experience with all of you.

bad-moon-mariel-hemingway-michael-pare-social

To be fair, there are many lessons to be learned from Bad Moon , and while I would like to focus primarily on the teachings of “intense werewolf violence” and “secretly having an animal protagonist,” the film offers some powerful examples of what not to do with your horror feature. First of all, the entire movie takes place primarily in a single backyard. No, really – the majority of the action unfolds in the maybe 50-foot stretch of grass separating Ted’s Airstream from Janet’s back door. It’s admittedly difficult to stage an effective horror movie in a well-lit backyard, and the reason why Tedwulf doesn’t just tear his way through Janet’s back door like the banner at a homecoming football game until the last six minutes of the movie is never addressed nor explained. It is a Choice™, and while I don’t necessarily advocate for the results of that decision, I admire its boldness.

Second, Thor kind of sucks as a hero. I’m not coming down too hard on him, as he lacks both the power of speech and the capacity for critical thinking, but his efforts to protect Janet and Brett are shortsighted to say the very least. His primary strategy is to harass Ted every waking moment of the day, even when Ted is trying to shuffle off into the woods to handcuff himself to a tree before he wolfs out for the evening. Thor actually prevents Ted from restraining himself in this scene, which results in the gruesome death of the Depression-Era Grifter and brings Tedwulf the closest to busting into Janet’s house he gets before actually busting into Janet’s house the following night. I just, I’m not seeing the strategy here, Thor. Way to screw the pooch, a.k.a. yourself.

Finally, Ted isn’t doing nearly enough to keep his wolf condition a secret. He goes to a few doctors when he gets back from Nepal and then just throws up his hands and parks his Airstream by a lake at the edge of a dense forest with a popular hiking trail, otherwise known as “the best possible location for a werewolf to create and dispose of bodies without getting caught.” He’s also constantly dropping hints that he’s a werewolf, with lines like “We’re two of a kind, aren’t we old pal?” and “He knows an old dog when he sees one,” and “I’m a wolf, man.” (Only one of those is a joke.) Plus, he keeps close-up Polaroids of his extremely dead girlfriend’s body in his camper. Why would you hang onto those, Ted? I guess you take the photographs for the sake of filing an incident report and an accurate death certificate to explain what happened to her, but it’s a weird thing to keep in your trailer, my guy. Also, at one point in the movie Ted returns to his Airstream after a solid night of wolfin’ with his sweatpants intact, suggesting that he either removed them before he transformed or that the werewolf took the time to carefully take them off and leave them folded neatly beneath a tree for Ted to find the next morning.

The climax, in which Janet has a nightmare about Thor turning into a werewolf, brings up an interesting point about the werewolf curse. Why doesn’t it spread to other animals? Or does it? Are there a bunch of werewolf foxes and trout running around out there in Oregon or wherever they are? Was the question of Thor’s lycanthropy meant to be addressed in an unproduced sequel? Is it something specifically in the werewolf’s blood or saliva that transmits the curse, or is it spread via werewolf dander? Are squirrels picking through mounds of Tedwulf’s shit and then hulking out on their forest rodent brethren under the next full moon? Sadly we may never know the answers to these questions, as a Bad Moon 2 is growing less and less likely with each passing decade.

Bad Moon is not what you would typically refer to as “good” or “entertaining,” but it is hands-down one of the daffiest werewolf movies I have ever laid my two eyes upon. I would stack the opening attack sequence next to the entirety of most horror movies from the past 20 years and I’m pretty confident it would come out on top every time, in terms of both appreciably gnarly effects and flat-out batshititude. It pairs well-done werewolf gore with a unique creature design to create an effective on-screen monster, despite several contemporary reviews slamming its supposedly cheap look. (Seriously, the werewolf looks fine? I don’t know what these people were complaining about.) And the chaotic impulse to make the main character a spunky dog is an artistic achievement that deserves to be the subject of several concept albums featuring guest vocals by Thom Yorke . Seriously, it’s Lassie Meets the Wolfman , and it was somehow made in 1996. Bad Moon is an all-time champion of things that absolutely shouldn’t exist, and its teachings continue to inspire me to create things like this article to this day.

[Blu-ray Review] ‘Bad Moon’ is Trashy Werewolf Fun

Anytime I talk or write about a horror film from that 90’s I feel like I have to defend that era of genre films. For whatever reason the collective we have come together and decided that a decade’s worth of horror is garbage. The more we look back and re-visit those films, the more I think we realize the decade was actually pretty good to horror fans. Our very own Daniel Baldwin is currently in the midst of Exhumed & Exonerated: The ‘90s Horror Project , a wonderful series shedding light on the lesser loved, but still very good horror movies of the 90’s. I’m not making my way through a specific decade the way Daniel is, but I am going through a bunch of Blu-rays. Every so often, and seemingly more frequently lately, these Blu-rays take me back to the 90’s. Today my journey goes back to 1996 with a trashy piece of werewolf fare known as Bad Moon .

Before actually diving into my review I think it’s worth noting that I had never even heard of Bad Moon, let alone actually seen it. This viewing was my first, meaning everything within the film was completely new to me. And that basically means there’s no nostalgia factor tied into this review.

The film opens with a sex scene in a tent with Ted (Michael Paré) and his girlfriend Marjorie (Johanna Lebovitz). It’s kind of a shocking sex scene as these two are full-blown going at it. This is like late night Cinemax stuff, which is basically borderline soft-core porn minus the borderline. As they start to pick up the intensity a werewolf jumps up rips through their tent and easily pulls Marjorie off of Ted and begins to shred her to pieces. Ted attempts to save her but is slashed across the shoulder and knocked back. While Ted struggles to get to his shotgun the werewolf continues to eat away at Marjorie. Eventually Ted grabs the gun and blows the werewolf’s head off, but at that point it’s too late for Marjorie.

This is quite the opening. We go from a hot and heavy sex scene to an incredibly graphic werewolf attack. This. Is. Bloody. The practical effects in this scene are terrific. Everything looks great. It’s a gory, bloody death and you see a werewolf’s head explode. Nothing is left to the imagination. The werewolf looks a little cheesy, but overall it’s pretty impressive. This scene was quite shocking though. I certainly didn’t expect it to open up like this, but I dug it.

The film then jumps ahead and we meet Janet (Mariel Hemingway) and her young son Brett (Mason Gamble). While outside one day playing with their dog, Thor, a passerby approaches Brett and asks if his mother is home. This stranger purposely agitates Brett’s dog and then pretends to be bitten and threatens Janet with a lawsuit. Janet quickly shuts him down advising that she’s a lawyer. The stranger than angrily wanders off.

This scene totally attempts to trick the audience. The stranger provokes Brett’s dog but even before it gets to that point the dog lets it be known that he does not approve of this guy. Given that this scene takes place immediately after a werewolf attack it plants the idea in your head that maybe this stranger is a werewolf. He’s not but it does make you think that for a bit.

Janet and Brett head out to visit Janet’s brother who turns out to be Ted. Ted is living in a trailer not too far away and we learn that he just recently returned home to this trailer. Janet asks about Marjorie and rather they saying she died in a crazy werewolf attack, because that would be crazy, Ted simply says they broke up. Janet can tell something doesn’t seem quite right with Ted and invites him to move his trailer over to their property and live with them. Ted resists at first but eventually decides to take Janet up on her offer.

Due to the attack at the top of the film Ted is now a werewolf. So while Ted agrees to live with his sister he makes it very clear that he will be spending his evenings alone in his trailer. In reality Ted is heading out to the woods to tie himself up to a tree with hopes that doing so will prevent him from attacking anyone. Ted spends his days researching werewolves desperately trying to find a way to reverse this curse.

Bad Moon is so bizarre. It’s almost like two different movies mashed up as one. The middle portion of the movie is like a family drama that you may see on Lifetime or ABC Family or something along those lines. You have a sister and a brother both going through difficult times in their lives attempting to re-connect and assemble some kind of family unit. All of this family drama is bookended by incredibly graphic violence. The werewolf stuff really goes for it. There’s absolutely no playing it safe.

It terms of story there actually isn’t much that happens. Ted becomes a werewolf, tries to figure out how to reverse it and eventually he’s unable to fight it. Even during the days when he’s just a normal dude the werewolf side of him starts to take over. He becomes meaner and it impacts his relationship with his sister and nephew. While Janet is unable to determine what exactly is bothering Ted, Thor knows and will do anything to protect the family. So the film plays with some interesting dynamics into how it affects his family life, but overall there really isn’t much that happens.

This is a pretty basic and straight forward werewolf movie. And that’s fine because it succeeds with what you want in a trashy werewolf movie. You have some werewolf transformations, you get some violent attacks and you’re good. Just don’t expect anything groundbreaking and you can have a lot of fun with Bad Moon .

The new Blu-ray from Scream Factory looks and sounds fantastic. There’s an HD version of the theatrical cut plus a new director’s approved cut of the film. Both of which look great. Each cut has its own commentary, director Eric Red on the director’s cut and then Red is joined by Paré on the theatrical cut. In addition to the commentaries there are some storyboard sequences, an unrated opening sequence from the director’s first cut of the film (different than both cuts on the Blu-ray) sourced from VHS and a pretty good making-of feature entitled ‘Nature of the Beast.’ The making-of features quite a few interviews with different players from the cast and crew, the most interesting I found to be Steven Johnson on the special make-up effects used in the film.

Bad Moon doesn’t raise the bar on werewolf films but it gets the job done. Plus it’s another solid example of why 90’s horror is far better than people seem to think.

Bad Moon is now available on Blu-ray from Scream Factory .

Chris Coffel is originally from Phoenix, AZ and now resides in Portland, OR. He once scored 26 goals in a game of FIFA. He likes the Phoenix Suns, Paul Simon and 'The 'Burbs.' Oh and cats. He also likes cats.

‘Critters: A Four Course Feast’ – Arrow Video Announces Limited Edition Blu-ray Collection

Fans of the Critters franchise probably already own all the movies but Arrow Video is looking to tempt us all with the announce of a brand new 4-movie Blu-ray collection this week.

Critters: A Four Course Feast is a limited edition UK offering, and it features the first four movies in the Critters franchise housed together in a special Blu-ray box set.

The set will be released on December 2 , and it’s up for UK pre-order now.

Arrow Video previews, “The Krites have landed! Carnivorous creatures from outer space! Vicious vermin with very sharp teeth! The beloved sci-fi/comedy-horror franchise makes its UK Blu-ray debut in this special edition box set from Arrow Video. A four course feast of fun, fur, fear and fangs, served with a platter of new and archive extras to whet your appetite!”

The 4-disc limited edition contents include…

– High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentations of all four films

– Original lossless stereo 2.0 and 5.1 audio options

– Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

– 60-page hardbound collectors book featuring new writing on the films by screenwriter Shane Bitterling and film critics Meagan Navarro and Heather Wixson plus select archival material

– Double-sided fold out posters for all four films

– Limited edition packaging with newly commissioned artwork by Pye Parr

– Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Pye Parr

DISC 1 – CRITTERS

– Brand new audio commentary by film critics Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain with screenwriter Shane Bitterling

– Archive audio commentary with producer Barry Opper and star Don Opper

– Archive audio commentary with Critter designers Charles Chiodo, Edward Chiodo and Stephen Chiodo

– They Bite!: The Making of Critters documentary

– For Brian: A Tribute to Screenwriter Brian Domonic Muir featurette

– Behind-the-Scenes Footage

– Alternate Ending

– Theatrical Trailer

– TV Spots

– Image Gallery

DISC 2 – CRITTERS 2: THE MAIN COURSE

– Brand new audio commentary by film critics Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain

– Archive audio commentary with director Mick Garris

– Archive audio commentary with Critters designers Charles Chiodo, Edward Chiodo and Stephen Chiodo

– The Main Course: The Making of Critters 2 archive documentary

– Behind the Scenes Footage

– Additional TV Scenes

– TV Spot

DISC 3 – CRITTERS 3

– You Are What They Eat: The Making of Critters 3, archive featurette

– Trailer

– Promo

DISC 4 – CRITTERS 4

– Archive audio commentary with producer director Rupert Harvey

– Space Madness: The Making of Critters 4 archive featurette

A smart homage to 1950’s B-movies, Critters sees a group of small but toothy extra terrestrials escape from an alien prison and land in small-town America with two shape-shifting bounty hunters in hot pursuit. Directed by Stephen Herek ( Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure ) and starring genre stalwarts Dee Wallace ( The Howling ) and M. Emmet Walsh ( Blood Simple ), the film was a smash-hit on home video, launching a franchise for the ravenous furry fiends. Two years later, Critters 2: The Main Course sees the Krites come back for seconds as leftover eggs hatch and attack the rural town of Grover’s Bend. Directed by Mick Garris ( Sleepwalkers ) with a script co-written by David Twohy ( Pitch Black ), Critters 2 is one big ball of toothy delight.

Celebrated horror author and screenwriter David J. Schow ( The Crow ) comes aboard for Critters 3 , bringing the Krites to the big city. Marking the feature film debut of none other than Leonardo DiCaprio ( Django Unchained ), it was shot simultaneously with the darker, less comedic Critters 4 , in which the ferocious furballs battle series stalwart Charlie (Don Opper, Android ) in outer space, featuring a cast that includes Angela Bassett ( Strange Days ) and Brad Dourif ( Child’s Play ).

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Oct 25, 2019

Bad Moon Blu-ray Review (originally published 2016)

Full, crescent, quarter...each is a Bad Moon for Ted Harrison. By day, he's a photojournalist visiting family in the Pacific Northwest. By night, he transforms into a horrific half-human - a werewolf. Dead men tell no tales, so Ted's sure he alone knows about his vile double life. The secret, however, may be out. The family dog, Thor, devoted to defending the household, has his suspicions. (From Scream Factory’s official synopsis)

Following fantastic, genre-bending screenplays for Robert Harmon’s The Hitcher (1986) and Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987), Eric Red began his brief career as a writer/director, including underseen thriller Cohen and Tate (1988), ill-fated horror movie Body Parts (its release unfortunately coincided with news of the Jeffrey Dahmer murders, 1991), and a werewolf tale entitled Bad Moon (1996). Bad Moon was panned by critics, but, like most genre movies with any kind of brand recognition, it earned a cult following. Critics and the fans both have valid opinions in this case. The screenplay, based on the novel Thor by Wayne Smith (St. Martins, 1992), does bear some of Red’s hallmarks and approaches werewolf lore from referential perspective about a month before Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) made it cool. On the other hand, it is a pretty sloppy adaptation, rife with unnecessary and repetitive sequences that might have fit the broader confines of a novel, but don’t work within the tighter structure of a film. Red stretches a very small amount of story thinly over an already brief run-time and, despite loads of expositional breaks, the non-dog characters are banal archetypes. Red’s cinematic instincts are solid and Bad Moon is a slick, classy-looking production, but he fails to effectively blend creature horror with familial melodrama. At a certain point, it feels kind of like Carroll Timothy O'Meara has been forced to cull footage from three different versions of the story – one that revolves around the dog, one that revolves around the boy, and one that is an actual horror movie.

Perhaps driven by the modest success of Mike Nichols’ Wolf (1994), there was small resurgence of werewolf movies in the mid/late ‘90s. The medium-budget Bad Moon sat between the likes of Alessandro de Gaetano’s high-concept B-movie, Project Metalbeast (a movie Scream Factory should really look into releasing, 1995), Clive Turner’s attempt at rejuvenating the Howling series ( Howling: New Moon Rising , 1995), and Anthony Waller’s belated American Werewolf in London semi-sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris (1997). Red’s film, along with New Moon Rising and American Werewolf in Paris , also had the dubious honor of being the first werewolf movies to feature CG-assisted transformation scenes. Even today, CG werewolf morphs tend to be reviled by the horror fans, but, at the dawning of the technology, such imagery became a joke. I note this for posterity and because Red is aware of the problem. He developed a new ‘director’s cut’ version exclusively for this release, but, unlike most director supervised recuts, this one doesn’t include any new or previously deleted footage (though there was some sex and violence cut to avoid an NC-17 rating, see the extras). Instead, Red has tightened some of the editing and almost entirely expunged the digital transformation at the beginning of the climax. Those that like the CG (which is certainly not the worst of its kind) can still watch the theatrical cut.

Warner Bros. released Bad Moon on barebones, 2.35:1 anamorphic DVD in 2000, then, when that went out of print, they offered the same transfer as part of their manufactured-on-demand Archive Collection. It also ended up in HD on television at some point. Scream Factory’s Blu-ray debut comes fitted with both the R-rated theatrical version (seemingly from the same scan as the HD broadcast) and the brand new director’s version. Since there is no additional footage in the DC, the two transfers are identical. The upgrade in detail is fantastic, especially the complex textures of well-lit, wide-angle shots. Some of the darkest sequences still appear a bit muddy, but there’s not a lot that an HD remaster could do to fix this without softening the otherwise strong black levels. Color quality is punched up and vivid with reds and natural skin tones popping neatly against the lush green and blue backdrops. It’s definitely not a perfect transfer – there are some haloes along the more harshly contrasted lines and some notable blocking (see the last screen-cap, for example) – but fans should still be very happy.

Bad Moon was produced after Dolby Digital and DTS formats existed, but I’m not sure if it was mixed in 5.1 for its initial release. Regardless, Scream Factory has included 2.0 and 5.1 lossless DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks on both the director’s cut and original theatrical cut versions. Thanks to its discrete center and LFE channels, the 5.1 version comes out ahead. It is a bit louder, even though the majority of the directional effects tend to mostly be limited to the left and right speakers. Environmental ambience is nicely situated and the werewolf roars are booming. Daniel Licht’s score is about as pure middle-’90s as you can get, in terms of tribal drums, wild tonal shifts, and overall production. The familiarity is actually kind of soothing, even if the melodramatic cues are the most obnoxious thing about the entire movie. Note that the trims made to the director’s cut have created awkwardly abrupt transitions in the score during the man-to-wolf transformation.

Commentary with writer/director Eric Red (director's cut) – For the first commentary, Red is solo and clearly working from a sort of ‘lesson plan,’ and his statements have been edited (he seemingly took breaks), which is good from a preparation and information standpoint, but makes for a sort of dry listening experience. It’s still a valuable track that compares the film to the book, discusses the casting processes in depth, and breaks down the thematic structure well. Unfortunately, Red dumps on Mariel Hemingway a little too freely and rarely accepts responsibility for the film’s many, many shortcomings. He loses steam about an hour into the track and leaves a lot of blank space.

Commentary with Red and actor Michael Pare (theatrical cut) – The second track is moderated by Arrow in the Head’s John Fallon (who seems to be on speaker phone). There is a lot of overlap, but the tone of the track is more lively. Again, Red falls back into complaining about everything, but his performance as writer/director and Fallon’s buddy-buddy interview tactics magnify the problem.

Nature of the Beast: Making Bad Moon (35:17, HD) – A brand new retrospective featurette that includes interviews with Red, actors Michael Pare and Mason Gamble, special effects make-up artist Steve Johnson, and stunt coordinator Ken Kirzinger. The subject matter covers the original novel, locations, casting, training/working with dogs, physical FX design, digital effects issues, making cuts for the R-rating, and release.

Unrated opening scene (6:07, HD) – The completely uncut footage is here, but has been sourced from VHS, so it looks a bit rough.

Three storyboard sequences (6:30, 9:40, 4:15, all HD)

Note: I haven’t kept all of the discs I’ve reviewed over the years, so some, like this one, will not include screen-caps. The images on this page are not representative of the Blu-ray’s image quality.