I do love the enchantingly Gothic artwork that's put into the animation of the opening scene of the stone church with the yellow full moon hanging ominously in the misty dead of night... This show sure could effortlessly set such a strong tone with its imagery when it had a mind to. The little prologue with the grisly demise of the silly man outside calling for his cat is both macabre and humorous, so like the show itself. "You're no puss-puss!" No. That be a werewolf! This episode is loosely inspired by "Mighty Max Hounds Werewolf", which was a Horror Head miniature playset that had a Scottish castle theme. For the one and only episode to feature werewolves, one of the all-time famous legendary monsters, it's a bit of a lacklustre effort, and not one of my favourite episodes. The villain is very weak, it's just a lame frumpy crazy woman committing cruel experiments on captured werewolves in an effort to make herself immortal, like these particular lycanthropes are. I thought the bizarre werecerberus that she could transform herself into was threatening, but just looked kinda silly and all over the place. Ha, she'd been milkin' the werewolves o' their essence! And the werewolves themselves weren't particularly impressive or well animated, although it was an interesting and different kind of twist making them the good guys instead of just savage beasts, and also having them be a clan of immortal warriors, which was a little like that movie "The Howling". Tony Jay was quite good as the voice of the one-off character Cameron, the werewolf clan leader who mysteriously knew about Max being the chosen one, and who helped him out a little. He sounded like a slightly deeper-voiced Virgil and looked somewhat like a slimmer Norman. There's a small but rather significant first for the series in this episode - I say first, but I'm not sure if they ever dared do it again in any of the later episodes.. Anyway, there are several quick, but definite glimpses of human *blood*, which was quite a big deal at the time that this was made. That just doesn't happen in animated shows that are fundamentally aimed at kids. I think it's a really cool and sharp touch that makes things seem so much more dangerous! I also like the animated effect of the fog that shrouds a lot of the night scenes, it sets a great sinister atmosphere. And another thing about this episode is that it's one of those rare cases where Max fixes the crisis pretty much all by himself with Virgil and Norman sitting this adventure out in a jail cell! I'm pretty sure I've said it before and probably will again before I'm done, but Rob Paulson did such a fantastic job with Max's voice, he gave a character that could have been nothing more than a meaningless attitude life and sincerity. So yeah, toodles! 🌕
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