Finally, some real werewolves! And with Katie Sackhoff!

[SJP]

Yeah, I much prefer the creature type designs. If it's just a wolf, that's not interesting. If it's just a Robin Williams who hasn't shaved in a few days, that's not that creative either. I like a genuine creature.

I will say that I liked the werewolf designs in Van Helsing a lot, I just hated that they were done with bad CGI.

True.  It's just the idea of putting a little thought into it, and there's just something real, even if it's a guy in a rubber suit, that's just cooler than CGI.  That's why Underworld's close-up shots and even Dog Soldiers impress me more...a guy who has to stand with his feet jammed into metal struts at a weird angle for 12 hours gets a lot more sympathy from me than someone rendering stuff on a computer screen.  Not that sitting in a hot computer lab is fun, but I doubt it's anywhere near as taxing.

But case in point...when I was a kid (I'm guessing 6 or so), we had taped a documentary off of TV called "Skintricks" off of the Discovery Channel, which is about Christopher Tucker, the makeup artist behind David Lynch's "The Elephant Man," Mr. Creosote from "Monty Python's Meaning of Life," and "The Company of Wolves."  A good portion of the documentary talks about each, but the focus at the beginning is the transformation sequence with Stephen Rea...and then they show it.  The whole thing.

Let's just say, when this scene came on (and the subsequent times my brother watched it, mostly just to freak me out), I didn't just cover my eyes, I left and hid in the laundry room.  Yeah, some of it does look pretty fake by today's standards, but this is what I point to when I want to show the power of realistic effects over CG for the scare factor.  Between this, Tarman from Return of the Living Dead, and the Librarian from Ghostbusters, it's a wonder I slept during the '80s.

Youtube video here:

Spoiler

[Nunyerbiz]

It's just the idea of putting a little thought into it, and there's just something real, even if it's a guy in a rubber suit, that's just cooler than CGI. 

I think this speaks to the double-edged sword that is CGI... On one hand, you have the obvious bonus of "OMG, we can do anything imaginable!" ... on the other hand, you've got the all too common "Damn guys, show some fucking restraint... Wile E. Coyote running into a cliff wall on rocket powered roller skates did a better job of suspending my disbelief!"