Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning ::
by William the Bloody
This is the third installment of the Canadian made werewolf film franchise, Ginger Snaps. This chapter, as the title suggests, is the prequel to the other two. It takes place in the 1800s, in a remote section of woodland. Our two sisters are still here, Ginger and Bridget, this time part of a small trade caravan whose boats were overturned in a river, leaving them the only survivors. They trudge on through the winter woods, and Bridget steps on a steel bear trap. A Native happens by, helps her out of it, and takes them back to the fort he resides in with some other men who set up here thinking this may turn into a trade route, in spite of the Native wise-woman's warnings to the contrary. The residents of the fort are not too welcoming toward people they don't know, as supplies are scarce since the team they sent out to the towns has yet to return in two month's time. Ginger wanders out of her room at night and hears sobbing. She follows the sound to a bolted pantry and finds a small boy. She tries to console him, only to have him round on her and viciously bite her. Ginger runs back up to her room to gather her sister and their things and leave as quickly as possible. They manage to unbarracade the door, only to be stopped by one of the fort guards. Suddenly, the fort is under attack, not by men, but by beasts. Now they find out what's going on. The team sent out for supplies was attacked and turned into these fierce creatures, who have been attacking the fort. The fort's Captain lost his wife to one of these onslaughts, but has been secretly keeping his young son, who is steadily transforming, locked up. His son is now on the loose in the fort, set free accidentally by Ginger in her haste to retreat from being bitten. Constantly under attack at the gates, and now from within by a mutating boy, the men of the fort blame their troubles on the girls. Discovering her bite, they cast Ginger out into the woods, but it will take more than that to separate these sisters.
The Good: I was very glad to see that they vastly improved on their werewolf design from the first film. The original Ginger Snaps had the beast looking more like a cream colored, hairless, greasy looking thing, and not at all very wolf-like. This film had some pretty decent looking wolves, who lumbered around in sort of a gorilla type posture, which is fine. Like I said, a huge improvement. The costuming was pretty good for a period piece. The score was also very haunting, often opting for a lonely cello. The love and connection between Bridget and Ginger felt more real and two sided in this film, as opposed to the first, where in the end Bridget fears her changing sister, in this one she still embraces her no matter what.
The Bad: The "conventional" werewolf mythos was nowhere present. No silver weapons were needed to put down these beasts, no sir, any old arrow or shot gun pellets would do. And, yeah, you can "reinvent" the mythology, but it even wouldn't stay consistent with its own ideas. For example, the boy is slowly changing into a wolf, and he's all deformed looking, as he's almost got a dog-like snout coming in, however, when Ginger changes, we get none of this, in fact they make her kind of sexy. Also, the resident medic has leeches on hand, which were common in medical practices then, but the fact that they can be used to detect lycanthropy in a special effects display, just didn't sit right with me. They left out the possible monkshood cure of the first film, which I though was odd especially since they had a Native wise-woman who seemed to know quite a lot about these things. Maybe they just weren't as into freebasing back then. Oh, and back onto Ginger's sexiness, it is severely reduced from that of the first film, where she simply oozed it, now it's hardly even hinted at.
Overall, it is my least favorite of the films so far. The film seemed to try to be more than it was, what with the period setting and all, which just gave out this air of pretentiousness it couldn't live up to. The characters of Ginger and Bridget are lovely, but other than that, the only likable guy is Murphy the medic and he gets killed. There were so many inconsistencies that it made my head spin. No amount of witty retorts or mocking could save this film to even an enjoyable kitschy experience.
C-
