In short: The Last Wolf: Karl Edward Wagner (2020)

If there’s a documentary about a literary figure whose mere existence makes me a bit giddy, it is this love letter to the often grievously undervalued or ignored sword and sorcery, horror and weird fiction writer and editor Karl Edward Wagner as directed by Brandon D. Lunsford and Brian M. McKnight.

Formally, this is related to your typical talking head documentary in so far as interviews are the backbone of the film – but this is not a case of the filmmakers cutting together soundbites, and rather one of them editing parts of the extensive amount of interviews they made with Wagner’s family, friends and peers so they paint a chronological and thematical picture of Wagner. Some of these interviewees have died themselves in the meantime, so now their interviews here preserve a part of oral literary history that might otherwise have been lost to us completely. Apart from making a great case for Wagner – the availability of whose work is still spotty beyond his sword and sorcery anti-hero Kane, though the great Valancourt Books have at least republished his wonderful collection “In a Lonely Place” since the film was made – this is also a bit of portray of a small-ish circle of horror writers who were probably too idiosyncratic to dominate the field in the 70s and 80s, but whose stories certainly should have, and sometimes have, left a mark.

It’s not as if all of the material about Wagner used here were completely new – Stephen Jones’s forewords to those ridiculously priced and limited Centipede Press Editions that always bring out the socialist in me apparently mine comparable sources (I wouldn’t know, because I’m not rich) – but the interviews bring parts of Wagner’s personality to life in a more direct way than a foreword can. The film is doing its best to not only use the interview footage, but also a treasure trove of photos, book covers, as well thematically appropriate bits and bobs to illustrate some readings of Wagner’s prose.

The project doesn’t shy away from the alcoholic crappiness of Wagner’s later years, when the functioning bit of the functioning alcoholic seems to increasingly have gotten lost in Wagner. There’s certainly no attempt at prettying up the end of Wagner’s marriage and what came after, though there’s also no sensationalist wallowing in nastiness; this is clearly aiming to be truthful about Wagner. That The Last Wolf takes a sympathetic and sad eye to these last years instead of a judgmental one is a major strength to my eyes.

Which really should make this a great documentary for anyone interested in Wagner at all, and probably an interesting film to see especially after you’ve read the Valancourt reissue or one of the Kane books.