After Action Report: An American Werewolf in Paris

Greetings WingNuts,

An American Werewolf in Paris was kind of a surprise: it really was a 'so bad it's good' style movie, which are actually a rarity! We all had a great time watching it swerve in crazy directions with awful CG werewolves and crazy jags of slapstick comedy followed by untenable gore and weird sex. A terrible movie that contained multitudes, there's no doubt! Kind of like another film we love…

We will skip some of the funny coincidences–like a character who clearly would've been played by Freddie Prinze Jr. were he available, a climatic 'here me baby, hold together' and the fact that it also concludes with the French female lead being attended to on a stretcher in favor of a couple of fascinating real connections, but there was a lot to watch for for imaginative Wng Commander fans! (I will mention one memory was that the movie came out on Christmas in 1997… a day many of us remember playing with our new copies of Wing Commander Prophecy and/or original 3Dfx cards!)

At the outset we mentioned that the big connection (beyond the production company and the tax shelter) was that this movie used the same former ammunition factory for its Gothic cathedral set as Wing Commander did for the Tiger Claw's flight deck. We weren't sure that would actually mean anything we could see on the screen… so we were pretty surprised to see how obvious it was that they were the same locations! Compare these two establishing shots (remembering that the flight deck is actually mirrored; only one side existed)!

It turns out the German BluRay of the movie contains extensive extras with almost two hours of featurettes about the making of the movie. You have to be pretty obsessed to want to watch all this but there is extensive footage (and discussion) of the cathedral set in Luxembourg!

You can also download these from the Internet Archive here and here. And if you really want to celebrate this weird movie, you can even download a Microsoft Plus theme!

According to the IMDb, Wing Commander and Werewolf share 24 below the line credits… which means there's about a 10% overlap in the crew between the two films! Here's the complete list, which you can see includes everything from second unit assistant directors to set builders to stuntpeople!

• Willem de Beukelaer - Stunts
• Roger Simonsz - Camera Operator / Director of Photography: Second Unit
• Roland Goddijn - Stunts & Special Effects Assistant
• Graham Johnston - Video Assist Operators
• Harry Wiessenhaan - Special Effects Supervisor
• Jill Robertson Kibbey - Assistant Model Maker
• Rozenn Le Pape - Production Coordinator
• Tiffany Rodenfels - Assistant Prop Electrician
• Rick Wiessenhaan - Stunt Coordinator
• Laurent Dumas - Unit Manager
• Diana Wiersma - Stunts
• Philippe Lebreton - Utility Stunts
• Claude Ludovicy - Second Unit Assistant Diector
• Guillaume De Esteban - Dresser
• Carlo Thiel - Focus Puller
• Seppe van Groeningen - Boom Operator
• Bruno Zenatello - Construction Manager
• Jean-Luc Simon - Third Assistant Editor
• Jan Bernotat - Motion Control Operator
• Martin Lader - Stunts
• Frederic Roeser - Location Assistant
• Manuel Demoulling - Stand-by Props
• Pascal Charlier - Location Manager
• Veronique Souques - Third Assistant Director

And here is the werewolf for your consideration. Could the, ah, quality of CG that a mid-budget film was capable of in 1997 be the reason the producers pushed back against Chris Roberts' desire to do the Kilrathi that way? It's cold comfort, but this may help you appreciate the rubber Kilrathi a little more!

Another aspect of the werewolf is that we occasionally get first person 'smell vision' scenes where we see out the werewolves' eyes. Wing Commander imagined and even shot such sequences for the Kilrathi, too! This is likely a coincidence, though, as the Kilrathi POV scenes appear in Wing Commander's script.