“We should never try to deny the beast – the animal within us.”
As I may have said before, I’m not a huge fan of werewolf movies. I don’t dislike them, but as a subgenre they don’t pique my interest the way things like J-Horror and gialli do. I’m never going to say to myself “gotta catch that hot new werewolf movie!” Not that there have been a lot of recent werewolf movies, hot or otherwise. There are only a handful of films featuring lycanthrops that I know I’ve enjoyed – at least enjoyed enough to be able to list them. Dog Soldiers, Ginger Snaps, An American Werewolf in London and today’s film, The Howling.
When I think of ’80’s werewolf movies’ those last two are really the only two that come to mind. I mean, I know there’s The Wolfen (also released in 1981), but I actually don’t think of it as a werewolf movie. There are also more Howling movies after the first one. I’ve watched… five of them, I think? I don’t really remember much about them other than Christopher Lee and Sybil Danning in the second, and that I didn’t hate the fourth one. There was also a sequel’ to Landis’ film called American Werewolf in Paris, which was… not very good.
I used to say I preferred The Howling to American Werewolf in London, but that’s no longer true, and I’m not sure if it ever was, really. What I preferred was the werewolf design. It’s still a damn fun film, though.
The Medium
I have a copy of the Scream Queen Double Feature Blu-ray put out by Shout Factory, which contains both The Howling and The Fog. I think I bought this at a discount job lots store for a buck. The films look great, but I don’t think there are any extras for either film on the disk. If you’re looking for those, the individual releases from Shout are the way to go. If you’re looking for two great 80s horror flicks for cheap, though, this is a decent alternative.
For streaming options, The Howling is available for free on Kanopy, free with ads on Tubi and for subs on Amazon and BFI Player. There are currently no digital options for rent or purchase.
The Movie
Released in 1981, Joe Dante‘s second feature (after Piranha) plays out like a skeezy 1970s crime/slasher flick for the first 10 minutes or so. Part of that is the grimy, rundown look of the nighttime streets of LA – including a sleazy porno shop – that feels more like 70s era Times Square. It’s also partly the subject matter – attractive reporter meeting with her serial killer stalker as part of a police sting, which of course goes horribly wrong. This whole sequence could be the final scene of a Dirty Harry movie.
Dee Wallace, who plays the reporter, Karen White, would grace screens as the mom in E.T. a year later. I know I saw that movie first, so it was weird seeing her in this role a couple of years later when The Howling was on HBO or on VHS for rent. Christopher Stone, who plays Karen’s husband, Bill, was also Wallace’s real-life husband at the time. (I mention this because I wasn’t aware of that fact until recently.)
Karen survives her meeting with Eddie Quist – a barely recognizable Robert Picardo – but the trauma of it leaves her with amnesia. Her therapist, Dr. Waggner (the always awesome Patrick Macnee) sends her and her husband to ‘The Colony’ – his mental wellness retreat in the country.
Now it feels like we’re squarely in 80s country. The whole self-help aspect is a genius take on the need for werewolves to fit into modern society. And yeah, spoiler, it’s werewolves – the whole damn place is full of ’em. It seems dumb of Waggner to send her there. I know he’s trying to discover if she remembers Eddie started transforming in that porno booth, but it seems like something he could easily do in therapy sessions. Sending a reporter to a place where werewolves can ‘be themselves’ just makes it seem like he’s hoping to be discovered.
And of course that’s exactly what happens. Karen’s husband is seduced by the less-than-subtle wiles of Marsha (Elizabeth Brooks) (a Quist as well, it turns out) and is turned into a werewolf. Her friend Terry (Belinda Balasky) arrives and promptly runs afoul of the Quists – including Eddie. Yeah, it turns out .38 Special slugs don’t work too well on werewolves, and Eddie has taken his leave of the county morgue. The scene in which Terry is going through files in Dr. Waggner’s office, only to have a clawed hand reach into the shot and take the file folder from her is one of the all-time great jumps.
Terry’s boyfriend Chris (Dennis Dugan) happens to be on the phone with Terry when she’s attacked, and so he rushes to The Colony, armed with silver bullets. There are the requisite fight/chase sequence before a public transformation – on national television. Of course, it’s the 80s – we’re all too savvy to believe everything we see on TV, right?
It was interesting to see that even in the early 1980s there was too much distrust of mass media to simply accept that seeing something on the news would make people believe. Nowadays, with AI models allowing for realistic video clips almost impossible to discern from the real thing, it would be even harder.
John Sayles provided the screenplay, which is the usual dark delight from him (he’d previously worked on Piranha with Dante and also penned my favorite killer alligator movie, Alligator). He skewers the police, the media, the self-help movement and psychology in general.
There’s a lot of fun to be had for long-time horror fans in picking out all the Easter eggs and cameos – including Roger Corman, Forrest J. Ackerman, Kevin McCarthy and John Sayles himself as a morgue attendant. In-jokes include stuff like The Wolfman playing on TV, Allen Ginsburg’s Howl on a table, and cans of Wolf Brand chili. Even the names of the characters are references to old monster movies. And you can’t go wrong casting John Carradine, that classic old monster himself, as an older werewolf getting a little long in the tooth.
I’m sorry, I’ll get my coat.
The special effects are pretty great, with fleshy transformations provided by Rob Bottin, who would outdo himself on The Thing a year later. I really love the werewolf design in The Howling – long snouts, big ears, and standing on two legs. They’re tall and lanky looking and I just prefer them to the stumpier wolf in An American Werewolf in London. The big transformation sequence is excellent (if including a little too much bladder work), but it goes on a bit too long and some of it is re-used in a later scene that ends up feeling repetitive. The fireplace/werewolf sex transformation is – as budget required – a slight letdown of simplistic animation, but the scene up until then is excellent.
The Bottom Line
The Howling was my favorite werewolf film for a long time, and I think it holds up well even 44 years later. The creature designs are very much my preferred ‘wolfman’ look, though the transformation is a little ‘bubbly’ for me now. Sales and Dante provide a great update to the werewolf myth, setting it clearly into the present day (of 1981) while also paying (often humorous) tribute to its history. Very much recommended.
