I’m sick and tired of catching flack for taking my emotional support dog with me everywhere I go. I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and my dog is basically my medicine. You wouldn’t tell someone “Hey, you can’t have insulin at this coffee shop” or “Say now, that Lexapro should be crated and kept with the luggage” so why is my four-legged helper any different?
I think the solution is a more intimidating dog. People had no problem confronting me and my beloved therapy Pomeranian Scraps, but now that Scraps is helping people with their PTSD in heaven (rest in power king) it’s time to up the fear factor. I’ve decided my next therapy dog will be adopted from a werewolf movie.
I’ve been doing a deep dive (thanks ADHD!) looking at all the options and I think I’ve narrowed the search down to these 25 films. So which of these bloodthirsty lycanthropes is going to be my emergency cuddle buddy? Let’s break it down!
25. Wolfcop
There’s nothing I find less emotionally supportive than a narc. While I believe that police dogs can be retrained into productive members of k-9 society, Wolf Cop chose to be a cop in his human form, and you can’t train someone out of being an asshole.
24. The Wolfman (2010)
If you’re the type of person who wants a pet werewolf, you certainly don’t want them to be boring and forgettable despite a stellar cast.
23. Teen Wolf Too
In his human form, at the right angle, in the right light, for just a second or two now and then he looks like Michael from “Arrested Development,” but most of the time he looks like a tall baby. It would be way too distracting to soothe my anxiety.
22. Silver Bullet
Sure, Reverend Lowe is good at ACTING supportive, at first, but then he gets all preachy and “Come to Jesus.” I can accept an emotional support animal who terrorizes my town with its bloodlust every month, but not one who is a textbook Christian hypocrite on top of that.
21. Twilight
Dogs make us feel good because they always act like they love us, but based on his performance as Jacob, I don’t think this dude could sell it even in wolf form. I imagine it would be as if you could see him thinking “I’m wagging my tail now to show my character’s affection.” I don’t have the budget for dog training and acting classes so Jacob is out.
20. Werewolf by Night
If I get a black and white service animal he’s going to be in beautiful celluloid and he’ll be lit properly, not just shot on digital and lazily de-saturated with fake CGI cigarette burns in the corner of the frame because, awww, he thinks he’s a real movie!
19. Werewolves Within
Never get a pet adopted from a video game, sorry, nerds, it just doesn’t work.
18. Underworld
Admittedly we’ve never seen these but just going off the trailers, it seems like taking a werewolf from the Underworld franchise as a pet would just be kind of a lot. Seems like it would involve tons of leather and Evanescence songs, it would just be exhausting.
17. Ginger Snaps
If you need emotional support the last place you should turn is to a teenage goth going through puberty. Everything is all about them. “Do boys like me?” “Am I cool enough?” “Am I a bad feminist if I shave my fur?” What about me Ginger? What about my needs?
16. Dog Soldiers
As any dog owner knows, when fireworks are going off, suddenly you are the emotional support animal. It’s just part of the deal, and while I’m willing to accept the responsibility for an ordinary K-9 or lycanthrope, these boys have seen combat. I’m not sure I’m equipped emotionally or physically to calm a werewolf with full-blown PTSD. Feels like a blanket wouldn’t quite cut it.
15. Trick ’r Treat
Sure the idea of having Anna Paquin on a leash lifts our mood, but is that psychologically healthy? Probably not.
14. Werewolf (1996)
As a person in need of an emotional support animal I’ve got a mountain of anxieties and insecurities to deal with. I don’t need to add “The MST3k Guys are ripping my dog a new asshole” to my mounting pile of concerns.
13. The Howling
I need an emotional support animal that I can trust, not one who’s going to act like my friend only to turn around and air all my dirty laundry on the evening news before turning into a monster. I respect the hell out of Karen White’s journalistic integrity, but if you’re going to be my service animal my emotional well-being needs to come before your big scoop.
12. Cursed
My last dog came from a breeder and I never heard the end of it for not adopting from a shelter. Imagine the kind of flack I would get for getting a dog from a Miramax movie. “Do you know how many dogs are euthanized every year? Do you know what Harvey Weinstein did?!”
11. Bad Moon
He’s cute in an offbeat sort of way, like those little weird hairless guys who win best in show now and again.
10. The Company of Wolves
This would satisfy both my need for a constant cuddly companion and my love of Victorian-period whimsy! I just need to train him to stop reminding me that he’s an allegory for male sexuality every 5 seconds. Do they have classes for that?
9. Curse of the Werewolf
You know I feel like we might just get each other? We both have a lot of baggage. Leon was born to a servant girl who had been raped by a crazed prisoner (who was driven to madness after being wrongfully condemned by a sadistic Marquese) and doomed to live as a werewolf because his Christmas day birth was an affront to God. And me? Well, I had a mom who could be very passive-aggressive. Let’s go play some fetch and work out these equally devastating traumas, whaddya say, boy?
8. I Was a Teenage Werewolf
There’s nothing cuter than a dog wearing human clothes, and our boy looks snazzy as hell in a Letterman jacket, but he has some behavioral problems. He’s a jumper, you can’t get him off the furniture, and he wants to kill everything in sight. Plus he’s a teenager, so I feel like I would be doing the bulk of the emotional support.
7. The Monster Squad
He attempts to turn himself in for murders he committed in his full-moon frenzy, so you know he’s a good boy. Unfortunately, this wolfman famously has nards. I wouldn’t want him to sacrifice his trademark just to be my therapy dog, but an un-neutered male dog can be exceptionally hard to train.
6. Werewolf of London
Sure he’s responsible for a series of grizzly murders, but I read that name and all I can see is an adorable montage of us hiking, playing fetch, and doing bath time set to that Warren Zevon song.
5. The Wolf Man (1941)
Larry Talbot is a stone-cold classic breed, basically the golden retriever of werewolves. My only concern would be that I don’t live in a great environment for this sort of pet. My neighbors are Dracula and Frankenstein, and he’s known to be aggressive towards those types. Maybe if I had a bigger yard and lived next to Abbot and Costello, we could make it work, but until I get my shit together I don’t think it’s a good fit.
4. Wolf Guy
It would be cool to have an emotional support animal with superpowers who solves crime. Unfortunately “Wolf Guy” never actually transforms into a wolf, so it would just be me with Sonny Chiba on a leash and that’s bad optics.
3. Wolf (1994)
In his wolf form he could give me the affection and sense of security I desperately need, and in his human form, he can help me finally get my shitty novel published! He does like to piss on shoes, but that’s a fairly even trade if you ask us! It’s a very bad book.
2. An American Werewolf in London
David is a good boy overall, but I see two major drawbacks. One, his transformation sequence takes like, forever. It’s impressive as hell, but do I really want to sit through it every time I wanna take him out for a walk? Secondly, unlike filmmaker John Landis, David is haunted by the the lives he’s taken.
1. Teen Wolf
Perfect! A great dog is like a best friend, but Scott is your best friend who is also a dog. You wanna talk about emotional support? Just look at what happens when Scott struts down the hallway in his adorable Letterman jacket, people just come alive around this dude! He’s just got a super positive energy you want to be around. Plus my name is Styles and I’m always pulling schemes, so really this is a match made in heaven!
Paul Radin is an asshole who tries to trick three enemies from his past into apologizing to him by making them think he and his survival shelter their only hope for salvation from the nuclear apocalypse. When they refuse to apologize and request to leave because he is just that much of an asshole, Radin is driven insane by the revelation that they would prefer to endure a nuclear holocaust than be trapped in a confined space with him. The episode itself is fine overall, but as far as acting challenges go the role of Radin would be a dull slog for a thespian of Nic Cage’s caliber. With the exception of what would undoubtedly be a classic Cage meltdown performance when Radin loses his mind the rest of this episode gives the man little to work with.
Jason Foster is soon to be dead. And to ensure that the self-absorbed fucks that he calls a family really earn their inheritance he makes them all wear grotesque-looking masks, neglecting to tell them that the masks will transform their real faces into facsimiles of their real personalities. As Foster, Cage would add a much-needed sense of “more yelling at my shitty, shitty children” than the episode originally intended. The only deterrent here is that he might also request to wear a mask, which could be more confusing than anything.
Any genie story is like catnip to Nic Cage’s tabby-like persona – and yes that analogy fell apart as soon as I typed it, but much like the incomparable Mr. Cage I have learned to embrace my mistakes. Speaking of mistakes, the main character in this one makes a lot of them as he imagines the different wishes he would ask of the genie (who just so happens to be Grandpa Joe from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”). The third act when Nic Cage pretends to be the President during a UFO crisis and later just takes over being the genie isn’t exactly high art, but something we want to see nonetheless.
Look, we have no intention of slandering the great William Shatner – but the cold hard fact is that Mr. Cage could act the pants off of every character that Shatner ever played. That’s just how good he is. So while in the original episode we’ve got Willy S. chewing the scenery over a fortune teller machine that’s taking him for a ride, in our reimaging Nic Cage somehow convinces the fortune machine that it’s actually the one that’s crazy. Honestly, it wouldn’t take much for him to pull it off.
We really didn’t mean to go back to back with the “Star Trek” cast members in this ranking, that’s just how things shook out. But seriously, how cool would it be to see Nic Cage and George Takei act off of one another? Adding to the fact that this episode is a stark depiction of racial disharmony after wartime you really have something to sink your acting teeth into. Shit, should we just cast Nic Cage in “Star Trek” too? Well, we guess we’ll save that for another list sometime.
When two state troopers stop at a roadside diner to investigate a UFO sighting, paranoia ensues as the occupants speculate wildly as to which of them doesn’t belong. Now, of course Mr. Cage will be playing the role of the alien – but with his subtle facial cues and not-at-all-gargled tone of voice, will you even be able to tell that it’s him?
Once again we have a main character having a complete mental breakdown, but this time it’s because twenty years prior he left a bunch of his navy buddies to rot in a submarine and now their ghosts are back to drag him into a watery grave. You know, PTSD metaphors used to be way less subtle, and really, it’s a point in television history that we could all do with a revisit to. Also, Nic is gonna act the fuck outta this role.
A lone man wanders an abandoned town with seemingly no reason for his solitude and eerie allusions to his situation from the very environment he’s trapped in. Fortunately for Nicolas Cage, screaming about his deranged loneliness in a ghost town is second nature to him. Just look at his most recent arrest after accidentally ingesting bath salts in that derelict pioneer village – it won him an Emmy somehow!
Commander Stansfield is a man in love who also happens to have terrible timing. He’s about to leave Earth for a forty-year space flight which he’ll spend in suspended animation, but, not wanting to have to bang an old lady when he gets back, removes himself from hibernation as she ironically puts herself into hibernation. What would Nicolas Cage do when left to his own devices in outer space for four goddamn decades? We’re going to take the high road on this one and guess he would use that time to perfect his poetry, all of which would be about old boobs and that one dinosaur skull he got sued into returning to Mongolia. Clearly the man’s range does not stop just because the cameras are off.
Nicolas Cage often works best when a scene is wall-to-wall panic with weird xenophobic undertones strewn all throughout. Well in the classic episode “The Shelter” he’ll have no shortage of inspiration as a group of neighbors desperately try to break into his bomb shelter only to then discover that this nuclear false alarm made all of their uninstigated racism somehow even more uncalled for.
What would happen if Nic Cage was a meek little man who suddenly became obsessed with the lives of dollhouse figurines? Actually, wasn’t this already a Nic Cage movie at some point?
Mr. Cage has his choice of meaty roles in this episode. Should he play the stoic, godly leader of a town eradicated by nuclear fallout? Or the desperado-like army officer who tries to seize power and drink radiation-tainted liquor? Or the insane supercomputer who lives in a cave and rules the remnants of humanity like a god? Let the man explore his options!
Though it may seem counterintuitive to have Nicolas Cage play a role where the entire intent behind it is that he’s a character that isn’t allowed to speak, trust us, that energy is going to come out in other ways. And the idea of Nic Cage throwing himself around a glass jail cell, unable to speak, trying to win a bet against an arrogant socialite is exactly what this episode needs.
Edward Hall is convinced that if he falls asleep he’ll die. Why? Well obviously, because “the Cat Girl” is going to make him ride a roller coaster until his heart explodes.Look, this show doesn’t always make the best sense – but if you need an actor to make watchable something that is otherwise incomprehensible gibberish, Nic Cage is the man for the job.
Here we have kind of a difficult episode to approach. A group of petty thieves find a camera that takes pictures of the future. What really makes this a tough situation is that everyone, literally every person in this episode, is fucking stupid.Now we have no reservations that Nicolas Cage is perfectly capable of playing any of the dumbest human beings ever put on film. The real question is, in what ways does this episode improve when even just one of its protagonists is being played with anything other than what we would describe as “rock chomping stupidity.” Our best guess, Nic Cage actually figures out how to replace the film in the camera. Miraculously this is a huge plot point in the episode.