Werewolf Flicks: The Howling (1981)

I have quite an interesting history with The Howling. Like a lot of contemporary horror films, I first became aware of it when I saw the VHS cover in the horror section of my local video rental store. Well, that film as well as the covers for the myriad of sequels. I remember being really freaked out by the werewolf that was shown on the cover for The Howling V. That got to me for some reason. But, that's neither here nor there. In any case, I didn't understand what these movies were about. I knew they had something to do with wolves but since the titles and such didn't just come out and that they were werewolf movies, it wasn't until I read the synopsis on the back of one that I realized that was the case. Since it was a series, I naturally assumed that they were all one long story about the same werewolf, like how Larry Talbot went on and on from one film to another. It wasn't until years when I bought John Stanley's Creature Features guide book about horror movies that I found out that wasn't the case and that the original Howling was by far the best one. I also figured that since the first one was the only one I saw in real video stores and in the video section of Wal-Mart. Reading about it and looking on the back of the VHS and DVDs, it looked interesting and, being a big fan of werewolf movies, my interest was piqued. I finally saw it on DVD in 2003 when I bought it, along with many other movies, with the money my family had given me for my birthday. By this point, I had already seen and become a big fan of An American Werewolf in London so I was looking forward to The Howling since it came out the same year as that film and was rumored to have the same type of amazing makeup effects.

And, I must confess, The Howling didn't exactly grab me the first time I saw it. I think the problem was I was spoiled by the rather fast-pace of An American Werewolf in London whereas this film has much more of a slow, deliberate build-up and for the first half hour or so, you wouldn't think it was a werewolf movie if you didn't know ahead of time. I thought the direction, the look of the film, and especially the makeup effects were solid but still, I came out of the movie with mixed feelings. Still, I liked it enough to buy the special edition DVD when it came out in 2003. By watching the film more and more as well as listening to the audio commentary and checking out the making of documentary on the DVD (which is really good, I might add), I slowly but surely began to appreciate the film more and more. By this point, as I'm writing this review, I can safely say that The Howling is one of my favorite werewolf movies. It's much more than just a special effects showcase or even a typical werewolf flick. It has some great acting, nice use of some familar faces, has fun with its genre in the form of some sly humor and references, and even works as a satire on some subjects. It is, by and large, a very unique flick.

After receiving numerous phone calls from a stranger who calls himself Eddie, Los Angeles news anchor-woman Karen White agrees to take part in a police sting operation to capture the man, whom the police feel may be the violent serial killer who's been terrorizing the city lately. Karen meets Eddie in a projection room in the back of a porno store, where he forces her to watch a film of a young woman being raped. Eventually, Eddie tells Karen she can finally look at him, saying he wants to give her something. When she does so, she sees something that horrifies her and Eddie attacks her. Before he can hurt her, the police officers who have been trailing Karen manage to shoot Eddie. Though unharmed, Karen suffers from traumatic amnesia and can't remember what happened inside the booth. After she continues suffering from the trauma, to the point where pieces of what happened start to come back to her in her dreams and she's unable to proceed with a newscast at one point, Karen's therapist suggests that she and her husband, Bill, go to "The Colony," a secluded resort in the California countryside where he sends only a select group of patients. The majority of people at the Colony are enthusiastic at the prospect of Karen being there and welcome her with open arms. Karen, however, begins to hear eerie howling sounds in the woods at night which are followed by other spooky happenings such as the cows in a nearby pasture being found half-eaten and Bill being attacked and bitten by a monstrous, dark creature one night. Back in Los Angeles, two of Karen's colleagues at the news studio begin investigating the background of Eddie Quist and discover links to Eddie's crimes and old tales of werewolves; moreover, they discover that Eddie's body has disappeared from the morgue. After more strange events occur at the Colony, Karen soon discovers that everybody there, including her therapist, is a werewolf and while her therapist wants Karen to become one of them, the majority of the others have decided that they'd rather have her dead than left alive to possibly reveal their secret to the world.

The entry on the film in the book 101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die said it best by saying you shouldn't expect Joe Dante to make a typical werewolf movie. This was Dante's third film as director (or, as he jokes, his second and a half film since he co-directed Hollywood Boulevard with Allan Arkush) and although it started out as a fairly straight-forward adaptation of the Gary Brandner novel of the same name, Dante and his producer Michael Finnell eventually decided to discard that and do whatever they wanted. To that end, Dante brought in John Sayles, who had worked with Dante on Piranha and, at the same time, was also writing the script for Lewis Teague's Alligator. Together, they constructed a movie that kept the same basic idea of the book but has the self-aware, satirical and referential style that you always see in Dante's movies. To that end, I must say that The Howling has one of the most unsual tones I've ever come across in a movie. On the one hand, the demoninant feeling is one of a very serious horror film with a lot of genuine scares, atmosphere, suspense, and nightmarish and disturbing imagery and ideas. And yet, there's also an undercurrent of satire and self-awareness as well as Dante's trademark tongue-in-cheek humor and references to other films. With all these different styles and tones bouncing around in the film, you would think that they would clash and that the shifts between them would become jarring. Somehow, though, Dante is able to make it feel very natural and the humor never interferes with the horror. I don't know how he does it but Dante is able to shift between tones in a lot of his movies with the same type of skill, like how in Gremlins, he's able to go from a whimsical, Spielberg-type movie to a true horror film and then to an out and out live-action cartoon in the style of Warner Bros. and Tex Avery. It truly shows what a talented and underrated filmmaker he is and, to that end, I think The Howling is right up there in his filmography.

No horror actor deserves the title of Scream Queen more than Dee Wallace in my opinion. From The Hills Have Eyes to Cujo, Critters and so on, she is truly one of the most recognizable women of the genre. I also think she deserves the title because she really does scream her head off. In every horror movie she's been in, there's at least one scene where she seems like she's about to faint due to hysteria and boy, if she isn't like that a lot in The Howling! I have mixed feelings about her character of Karen White. On the one hand, it's always possible to sympathize with Wallace because not only she is very pretty but, in this film in particular, she has a real fragility to her. You really do feel bad for her as she goes through the trauma of having narrowly escaped with her life from a deranged killer, developing a sense of intense fear over whatever happened to her inside the projection booth, something that she can't remember, and having to deal with a husband who, while supportive and caring, is unable to understand what she's going through and is starting to become frustrated. With the stuff that she's going through and the feeling you get that she's one step away from breaking all the time, you can't help but become attached to her, especially when she figures out what's really going on and how much danger she's in. When she gets bit near the end of the movie, I always really feel for her when she cries, knowing that she's doomed to become a werewolf herself. On top of that, she decides to sacrifice her own life to warn people that werewolves are real by transforming in front of everybody during the evening news and having her friend Christopher put her out of her misery. So, she is a likable and empathatic character. However, I can't help but criticize a couple of aspects to her performance. For one, I feel that she's a little too much of a damsel in distress. The only real way she fights back in this movie is when throws acid on Eddie Quist after he becomes a werewolf right in front of her. Other than that, all she does is scream and cry and has to be rescued by somebody else. Now, that does damage my ability to empathize with her and I know not everybody is capable of kicking ass when the need arises but I would have preferred it if she had played Karen a bit more like the way she did Donna Trenton in Cujo, as in fighting back against the threat that she's up against. I know Karen is a different character from Donna but I would have liked to have seen a little more of that tenacity in her. Also, some of Wallace's reactions to certain things have always seemed a little... off to me. The biggest one to me is when she finds Terry's mutilated body at her therapist's office. She's just found the body of her best friend with her throat ripped open and all she does is let out a brief sob and then she covers the body up. If I found my best friend dead, I would think I'd have a stronger reaction than that. I also think I would have reacted a little stronger upon finding the slaughtered body of a cow in the middle of the woods at night too. Maybe Wallace and Joe Dante felt differently but I just think those reactions could have been done better. So, I like Mrs. Wallace in this film as I do in all the movies I see her in but I just have a few minor gripes about some bits of her performance here.

I've heard a lot of people rag on Christopher Stone's performance as Karen's husband, Bill Neill, saying that he plays Bill as a thoroughly unlikable character. I actually kind of disagree with that. I think you can tell that at the beginning of the movie when Karen is going to contact Eddie Quist and Bill sees footage of his crime scenes, he is genuinely concerned for Karen, especially when they lose contact with her. He also comforts her when she has her first nightmare about what happened in the projection booth. However, he does start to grow a little frustrated because he can't truly understand what she's going through and also because their sex life has stalled due to her trauma. Once they get up to the Colony, Bill gets the attention of the place's resident nymphomaniac, Marsha. Her desire for Bill comes to a head when Bill brings her a rabbit that he shot during a hunt to cook. Interesting thing is when Marsha comes onto him, Bill seems to go along with it at first and it takes a a few moments before he finally fights her off. Also, it's right after that when Bill is attacked and bitten by one of the werewolves. Since it came right after he resisted Marsha's advances, I wonder if that werewolf was Marsha, deciding to take matters into her own hands and doing something to ensure that Bill would become hers. If not her, then it at least could have been her weirdo brother T.C., who talked Bill into taking the rabbit to Marsha in the first place. After he's bitten, Bill seems to have mixed feelings about being a werewolf at first. On the one hand, he gives into the call one night and goes out to have sex with Marsha by a camp-fire, the two of them eventually turning into werewolves while doing so. However, when he comes back as a normal human the next morning, he looks at Karen in an odd way and tries to touch her but when she moves, he pulls back from her. Maybe at that moment, Bill truly realizes what he's become and he's afraid. He seems to have another set of mixed feelings later on when Karen accuses him of having been with Marsha. First, he hits her but then immediately looks sorrowful when she starts crying and he tries to comfort her but she tells him to stay away. The next exchange of dialogue has always puzzled me. When Karen says that she's going to leave with Terry, Bill says, "You don't know what it's like." Karen responds, "I don't want to know." Now, by this point, Karen doesn't know that there are werewolves, moreover that Bill is one of them. However, I think it's clear to say that what Bill meant is that Karen doesn't know what it's like being a werewolf. So what did Karen think he meant? Did she think he was talking about the sexual potency that she believed he had now found with Marsha and, therefore, she meant she didn't want to know what their filthy relationship was like in any way? I guess it doesn't matter because when she finds out the werewolves, she wants no part of them either so you could look at it both ways. Bill seems a bit hurt when she walks away from him and something tells me that might have encourage him to take matters into his hands the same way Marsha probably did with him. At the end of the movie, we find out that Bill was the werewolf who ultimately bit Karen but he's killed immediately afteward. While it could have been coincidence that he ended up being the one who did so, I like to think that he was determined for her to become a werewolf like him, as if saying, "I want you to be a part of this! I'll make you!" Who knows, maybe he would have kicked Marsha to the curb once Karen had become a werewolf. That's how I like to see it, anyway. Bottom line, I see Bill as a sympathetic guy who truly loved his wife but was frustrated by her lack of communication and when he became a werewolf, desperately wanted to have her as one too.

Patrick Macnee brings a touch of class to the movie as Dr. George Waggner, Karen's therapist who is also intent on having people understand that they shouldn't repress or deny their primitive, animalistic impulses. By the end of the movie, we learn why he feels this way: he himself is a werewolf and created the Colony to help other werewolves channel and control their affliction, that they can live with it without the fear of harming other people. His ultimate goal for the place is to use it as a safe haven to plan to become part of society. He feels that they can co-exist among human beings and to that end, he's had them raise cattle for their food instead of preying on humans. Some viewers may wonder why he brought Karen and Bill up to the Colony since that would definitely risk them being exposed. In a deleted scene, Waggner says that he had to know if Karen saw Eddie Quist change into a werewolf in the projection booth. If her memory had returned to her while she was in therapy back in Los Angeles, their cover would have been blown. One thing I don't quite get is why Waggner allowed Karen to meet with Eddie in the first place and why, according to Fred Francis, the TV station manager, he had been giving her advice on how to talk to a psychopath. The only thing that I can guess is that Waggner hoped that Eddie would turn her into a werewolf and then he could help her control her wolf side. I was about to say that maybe he was hoping she would lead the police to Eddie and they would kill him because he, in killing and mutilating people, was doing exactly what Waggner was striving against for the Colony. But that's out since the police wouldn't be packing silver bullets. Maybe Waggner felt that, with Karen on his side, she could help him encourage the members of the Colony who were reluctant to follow his advice to do so, including Eddie, who obviously wanted Karen to be with him (we'll go deeper into that shortly). In any case, though, Waggner loses control of many members of the Colony and they rebel against him, deciding to indulge their wolf-sides rather than control it. He tries to keep them from killing Karen but he's overwhelmed and it's ultimately Christopher who saves her. He's the one who also kills Waggner when he tries to attack him. I think the brief moment before his death shows just how skilled Waggner is in controlling his wolf side since, despite his audible growls, he never changes and he was probably going to change just enough to either bite Christopher or kill him and then change back. The only reason I feel he didn't do so was because he had put too much of a leash on his wolf side and he couldn't make it come up fast enough before Christopher shot him. Once he's shot, Waggner's dying words are, "Thank God." In the end, he felt that it was probably better to die than continue being what he was.

I can't help but like Belinda Balaski and Dennis Dugan as Karen's friends Terry and Christopher. Balaski is a Dante regular and I always enjoy seeing her because I think she's both attractive and is a good actor. Terry's a pretty straightforward character. She's Karen's best friend and you can tell how much she cares about her. She's the one who helps Karen out of the news studio when she freezes up during a report and she quickly rushes up to the Colony to meet with Karen after she frantically calls her and Christopher and tells them that Bill was attacked by a wolf. She also listens sympathetically and understandingly to Karen's fear that Marsha may be trying to make a move on Bill and that he may give in to it. Terry is also a great investigative reporter, uncovering clues about Eddie Quist and reading up about werewolves when she feels that Eddie's crimes may be connected to old werewolf lore. When she's staying at the Colony and she hears a lot of howling in the woods outside, he breaks out her tape recorder and records the sounds. She's also the one who discovers that Eddie was once at the Colony by figuring out that a landscape he drew is actually part of the general area. Her investigative instincts put her in great danger, though, when she snoops around Marsha's cabin and is attacked by the werewolves. She's ultimately killed in Dr. Waggner's office by one of the werewolves. The last thing I have to mention is that Terry is actually quite a bit stronger than Karen. When she and Christopher are investigating Eddie's apartment, a vicious dog suddenly pops up at the window and although she's at first startled as anyone would be, Terry immediately throws something at the dog, yelling, "Get out of here!" When she's attacked by the werewolves at Marsha's cabin, she fights one off with a hatchet and ultimately cuts his arm off. When she's attacked by another werewolf in Waggner's office, she fights back, turning a spotlight on in his face and even when the werewolf has her by the throat and is about to kill her, she still smacks at him. It doesn't work, though, but at least Terry was a fighter to the end. Like I said, I also like Dugan as Terry's boyfriend, Christopher. He's a lot like Terry in that he cares a lot about Karen, convincing Fred Francis to not make her go on the air right after she meets up with Eddie Quist and he's genuinely concerned as well when Karen calls them to tell what happened to Bill. He's also an investigative reporter like Terry and while he's at first reluctant to believe in werewolves, when Terry tells him over the phone that she's been attacked by one and hears her get attacked again, he immediately picks up some silver bullets from a novelty book store and sets off for the Colony. Christopher ends up becoming the real hero of the movie and he becomes quite a bad-ass, shooting werewolves left and right, trapping them a big group of them in a barn and setting it on fire, fending off werewolves as they attack the car he and Karen are in, and even getting into a shoot-out with one of the rifle-wielding werewolves. Finally, he's the one who helps Karen warn the world that werewolves are real and also puts her out of her misery after she changes, even though he tells her he's not sure he can do it. So, I thought Dugan did quite a capable job as Christopher.

As he usually does, Joe Dante filled the various supporting roles in the film with familiar genre faces. Kevin McCarthy, star of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, plays Fred Francis, the TV station manager. He's the embodiment of the film's satire on the media in that he acts like he's genuinely concerned about what they're reporting on and about Karen's well-being but in the end, all he cares about are the ratings. My favorite scene with him is after Karen freezes up during her report and they play a pre-recorded clip of Francis talking sincerely about "the culture of violence" that has been prevalent in the media lately. At the same time that clip is playing, Francis is on the phone, saying about Karen, "Who knows? Maybe she's pregnant," and then says, "Listen, get in touch with that Fugiyama, Fugimoto, or whatever the hell her name is and get her ready for the 11:00 report." After he hangs up, he looks at himself on the screen and tells everybody in the room, "Now there is a pro." He's just a dick. John Carradine, whom I was struck with in how he looked and sounded the first time I watched this movie, plays Erle, one of the werewolves at the Colony. While Carradine's acting was great as always, I find it a little hard to get a handle on his character. When we first see him at the Colony, after he mingles around this beachside party for a little bit, he tries to throw himself into the bonfire, saying, "I want to end it. It just goes on and on." Clearly, he's talking about his werewolfism and Waggner manages to calm him down and keep him from burning himself. After that, though, he doesn't seem as despondent about being a werewolf, even though he still acts rather eccentric. By the end of the movie, he's become very forceful about sticking with the old ways, as in preying on humans and indulging their wolf sides. When Waggner tries to stop them from hurting Karen and he's incapacitated by a few of the werewolves, Erle tells him, "You can't tame what's meant to be wild, doc. It ain't natural." So what caused that dramatic change in his behavior? The only things I can think of are either Erle's just senile, he was drunk, as Jerry put it, or he turned into a werewolf later that night and was reminded of how awesome it felt. I kind of lean toward the latter since when Karen is dreaming about Erle trying to throw himself into the fire that night, his yelling transitions right into the howling that Karen hears when she wakes up. I think that was meant to suggest that Erle is who we hear howling. In any case, Erle is definitely a memorable character. Slim Pickens has a small role as Sam, a local police officer who's stationed near the Colony. Basically, Pickens is just playing the typical, jolly redneck cop who is basically the only law in the area. And, as we find out at the end of the movie, he's a werewolf as well, meaning his entire demeanor is just a facade. Not much else to say about him other than Pickens plays him with his usual charm and likability.

One of the most memorable residents of the Colony is Elisabeth Brooks as Marsha Quist, the sexy, seductive nymphomaniac who has her eye on Bill as soon as she sees him. That woman is so attractive that it would be quite difficult to resist her and there's also a mysterious quality to her in that she dresses in black, doesn't say much, and lives in this bizarre cabin decorated with animal skins and bones in the woods. She makes it clear what she wants, though, due to her advances on Bill and, as I said, it's not too far fetched to think that she was the werewolf that bit him. In addition, she's the one who disapproves of Waggner's ideas about co-existing with the human race. By the end of the movie, she's become the biggest proponent for the werewolves turning against Waggner. She tells them, "You wouldn't listen to me, none of you!" She then says to Waggner, "We can fit in, you said. We can live with them. You make me sick!" She sort of becomes the new ringleader, telling Waggner, "You're through, doc. She's ours, now." And we find out at the end of the movie that she survived the burning barn she was trapped in at the Colony. It's a shame that they didn't do the sequel right because I would have liked to see her become the main villain. Marsha has a weirdo brother named T.C. (Don McLeod) who, just as Marsha sets her sights on Bill, becomes a little too interested in Karen. We see him staring at her during the get together on the beach and he's milling around her and Bill's cabin at night, watching her. He's also just a strange guy, always wearing animal skins as part of his clothes and has animal-like movements and stances even in his human form. He acts as a tracker during a hunt the men of the Colony take part in. As Sam says, "That boy's part bloodhound." He's seemingly a bit impressionable in that Marsha angrily gives one of Waggner's books back to him, saying that she doesn't want her brother reading it. You get a sense as well that he's loyal to his sister, sending Bill up to their cabin so she can seduce him and if Marsha wasn't the werewolf that bit Bill, I think it's safe to assume that it was T.C. In any case, T.C. is the werewolf that attacks Terry in the small woodshed outside of their cabin and gets his arm chopped off. We see him change about half-way into a werewolf when he's about to attack Christopher but he gets shot dead.

After seeing Robert Picardo play much more comedic roles in other Joe Dante films like Gremlins 2 and Small Soldiers as well as the many other movies and television shows he's been in, it's odd going back to this movie where he plays a serial killer and a rather creepy one at that in the form of Eddie Quist. You don't get a good look at his face at the beginning of the movie save for closeups of him licking his lips and a quick shot of the upper half of his face at the very beginning. Otherwise, his face is obscured by the darkness in the projection booth and you don't get a good look at him until much later in the movie when Karen runs into him at Waggner's office at the Colony. The biggest question with Eddie is why he was so interested in Karen and why he wanted to meet with her. I think it's obvious that he wanted to turn Karen into a werewolf and for her to be his mate. As he himself says while making her watch a film of a woman being raped (I assume he was part of the making of that film), "She didn't feel a thing, Karen. None of them do. They're not alive, the people here. They're dead. They could never be like me. But you're different, Karen. I watch you on TV... and I know how good I can make you feel. I'm gonna light up your whole body, Karen." That's when Eddie backs away into the darkness and, in ever deepening voice, he says, "Turn around now, Karen. I want to give you something." I don't think you could ask for a more clear cut answer than that. He feels Karen is the only one who could truly enjoy the pleasures of being a werewolf and wants to make her one so she will be with him. However, when he meets up with her again at the Colony, he's furious at her for bring the police down on him, saying, "I trusted you, Karen." After pulling a bullet out of his head, he turns into a werewolf (that transformation is the centerpiece of the movie, which we'll get into later) and was more than likely going to kill her before she threw acid at him and escaped. He's finally killed by Christopher later on.

One interesting werewolf character is Margie Impert as Donna, a woman who becomes Karen's friend at the Colony. She seems to genuinely like Karen and when she's brought to the barn at the end of the movie, Donna is the one who's telling how great it is when you're able to control and use the werewolfism or "the gift" as they call it. It's weird because once the other werewolves turn against Waggner and attempt to kill Karen, she doesn't really do much except stand back there and let them try to kill her. A reason for that could be that her husband Jerry (James Murtaugh) in on Marsha's side and tries to help everyone else kill Karen. She probably couldn't do much to stop him. Like most of the other members, Jerry was very welcoming to Karen and Bill when they first arrived but at the end of the movie, he's become very vicious towards Karen, saying that it was a mistake to her bring her there, and he tries to shoot Chrstopher but it killed before he can do so. He was one of the best lines in the movie, too. When Christopher says he has silver bullets in his gun after shooting T.C., he responds, "Silver bullets, my ass. Get up, T.C." He's turning into a werewolf while saying that so his voice suddenly deepens in mid-sentence and it's unintentionally funny. A similar character is Charlie Barton (Noble Willingham), who is even more jovial in welcoming Karen and Bill to the Colony than Jerry and is just as vicious at the end of the movie, telling the other werewolves to put Karen in her car along with Terry's body, set the car on fire, and send it down the coast road. It's also interesting because he's the one whose job it's been to raise cattle for the werewolves to feed on and it's one of his head that's found with its throat torn out. Did Charlie get a little restless and attack one of his own cows or something? Jim McKrell has a memorable part as Lew Landers, a newscaster who puts on a deep, strong voice like Gary Owens when he's reading the news but in reality, has an Andy Griffith-like drawl (he kind of looks like Griffith as well). My favorite moment with him is at the beginning when he's rehearsing his newscast in the bathroom but you don't realize he's in the bathroom until Bill comes in to wash his hands. Lew immediately drops the rehearsing, speaks in his normal voice, and adjusts his tie while telling Bill, "That's a brave little ol' girl you got there." As soon as Bill leaves, he starts rehearsing again. I just thought that was amusing. Kenneth Tobey, the star of many beloved 50's sci-fi flicks like The Thing from Another World, has a small role at the beginning as an elderly police officer who, along with his younger partner, track down Karen to the porno store and his partner is the one who shoots Eddie. And, of course, it wouldn't be a Joe Dante movie without Dick Miller, who plays a fast-talking, wise-ass bookstore owner (the character is supposed to be named Walter Paisley after the character Miller played in Roger Corman's A Bucket of Blood but he's never named in the film). I love Miller in these types of roles. He's awesome. I like how he's a big expert on the subject of werewolves, explaining the rules of the creatures to Terry and Christopher, but when he's asked if he believes it, he says, "What am I, an idiot? I'm makin' a buck here. You want books, I got books. I got chicken blood, I got dog embryos, I got black candles, I got wolf-bane." He goes on to describe how somebody ordered some silver bullets but never picked them up. I also like what he says about the people his occult-theme store attracts: "We get 'em all: sun-worshippers, moon-worshippers, Satanists. The Manson family used to hang around and shoplift. Bunch of deadbeats." But I think his best line is the simple thing he says when he sees Karen change into a werewolf on the news: "Ooh, boy." That's so awesome. Dick Miller is the man!

Not only is The Howling a great werewolf flick but it also serves as an interesting satire on a couple of subjects. One is on psychiatry, particularly on the self-help movement that became prevalent in the late 1970's and which was also explored in Philip Kaufman's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's an interesting concept that a man who is werewolf has found a way to control and channel his other side and actually has created a place where other people afflicted with this condition can learn to do the same. This kind of makes the age-old idea of the werewolf as a metaphor for the id, the primitive, animalistic side of people, concrete. For one, these werewolves can transform whenever they want to, day or night. Their animal side is not unleashed by an outside force as in most werewolf movies. And yet, in spite of that, they live in a world where we're taught to be civilized, to repress our primal emotions, and be upstanding members of society. This is what they're doing at the Colony. Dr. Waggner himself even says, "We need this shelter to plan, to catch up with society. Times have changed and we haven't. Not enough." That's why he's trying to teach them how to control their much more pronounced animal sides. While he doesn't think that the wolf shouldn't be completely ignored or denied, he, like any civilized person, thinks that it should have some limitations. However, a good majority of the werewolves have grown tired of trying to deny their wolf-sides, feeling that Waggner is, as Eddie Quist puts it, the one who's truly repressed. Therefore, they decide to let it out, to just accept what they are and go with it. The best scene that examplifies this is the infamous sex scene between Bill and Marsha by the campfire. It starts out as a typical sex scene that you would see in movies but then, the sound of howling absolutely fills the woods. And it's not long after that that Bill and Marsha transform into werewolves while still continuing to have sex. Obviously, sex is a big part of the id and to that end, it's feasible that as Bill and Marsha get closer and closer to orgasm, their respective ids come out and they start to become werewolves. Therefore, I think it's safe to surmise that the moment that finally reach the orgasm is when they become full-blown werewolves. Eddie is another good example of this concept in that he just goes with his werewolf side and does whatever he feels, preying on people in Los Angeles, no doubt raping women as well as slaughtering them and so on. And at the Colony, the other werewolves to decide to follow his lead as well as that of Marsha, to prey on humans instead of cattle as Waggner has had them do, gettin rid of Karen, the only one who knows about them, and so on. In the end, it all comes down to what Erle tells Waggner: "You can't tame what's meant to be wild, doc. It ain't natural." I don't see how you can make a metaphor more concrete than that!

The other subject that's parodied is the media, most specifically a local news station. As I said earlier, the scene that is the best example of this is the scene where station manager Fred Francis is talking on a telephone while a sincere-sounding pre-recorded tape of him is playing on the monitors behind him and is what is being seen by the viewers at home. It shows the two faces of Francis, and, to a larger extent, the station, right there. On the one hand, you have the public face where they come across as genuinely concerned about the viewers and are doing a public service, giving people information about horrific events that are going on in the city and so forth. However, you have the face behind the news camera, where all they care in actuality are the ratings. When Karen is about to go on the air to give her first-hand account of what happened when she encountered Eddie Quist, Francis tells her that they're going to, "make ratings history tonight." But, when she freezes up and is unable to give her report, Francis is angrily shaking his head and, with his attempt to make ratings history blow, calls in a replacement story for Karen's, while people who really care about her well-being are helping her leave the studio and tell her she can take all the time she needs in recovering. Heck, you get a feeling that Francis would have made her go on the air right after her encounter with Eddie had Christopher not talked him out of it. It's not limited to just Francis. Lew Landers may work with and even possibly like Karen as a person but her report where she's putting her life on the line is just another job that he's obligated to participate in and do a news voice-over for, as seen when he's memorizing his lines in the bathroom, including a line such as, "Tonight, in an act of bravery we here at KDBH are all very proud of..." Life on the line or not, it's either all about the ratings to the studio or just another job to the other newscasters. It's also interesting to see how the age of rampant media affects something as monumental as the discovery of real werewolves in the eyes of the public. When Karen transforms into a werewolf at the end of the movie in the news studio, the viewing public reacts in a variety of ways. Some are genuinely shocked, while others are blase and think it's either just special effects or some bizarre program that they have no interest in watching, in the case of the guy whose reaction is, "What is this?" and still others are genuinely entertained by it, as earth-shattering and frightening a revelation as it should be. I think we can also assume that the program immediately switching to a dog food commercial in the middle of it didn't help its credibility. Speaking of which, it's ironic that Fred Francis, who wanted to make ratings history, orders the station to switch away from something that is sure to generate ratings. Even for this money-hungry guy, it was a little too much, showing that the media can have some odd limits in regards to what it will and won't allow the public to see to ensure their attention.

One of my favorite aspects of The Howling is its very look. First of all, it's not a dull movie visually.  Joe Dante says that he feels if you're not going to use color, then you should just make a movie in black and white and you can clearly say that thinking here. This movie is very, very colorful. The colors are bright and vibrant that it almost looks the way Technicolor did when it was just getting popular and becoming the norm. In short, it's very pleasing to the eye. Also, the movie goes through different emotional tones and even genres due to its settings. The beginning of the movie where Karen is walking through downtown Los Angeles makes it feel like an urban crime movie, as Dante himself has even said. The city just looks very seedy and tacky, with bright red and blue neon lights illuminating everything, graffiti on the walls, dirty-looking streets and back-alleys, and so forth. The pornography store that Karen meets Eddie in just breathes sleaze, with the tacky red lights, the red beads separating the back room from the rest of the store, and, of course, the actual pornography, since the place was a real porno store. It just radiates the feeling of a scummy place that makes you want to take a shower once you come out of it. We also get to see the apartment that Eddie Quist lived in, with drawings of animal-like people covering the walls, other drawings like that of the landscape that turns out to be of the Colony, and just a genuine feeling of squalor. That, coupled with the looks at the inside of the news studio, Dr. Waggner's office, Karen and Bill's home, and the occult bookstore would make you think you were watching anything but a werewolf film. Once the action shifts to the Colony, the film begins to have an air of what it really is. The dense Californian woods of the Colony (which, if I'm not mistaken were shot at Mendocino) give a real fairy tale feel to it. The place looks beautiful at day but at night, the enormous amount of fog combined with cinematographer John Hora's creepy lighting gives an eerie sense of foreboding, like there really is something lurking in those woods. Those shots of the woods backlit with streams of light coming from behind the trees mixed with the mist spells dark, creepy fairy tale to me. Finally, there's my favorite setting in the entire film, which is Marsha's cabin. That place is so damn eerie, with the animal skins and bones used for decoration as well and the inside of it just has an uncomfortable atmosphere to it. It's no doubt due to the work of art director Bob Burns, who had worked on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and brought a lot of that same queasiness here. As a result, the cabin does have a similar look and feel to the house of the chainsaw family. (I've read trivia that the mummified corpse of Grandma Sawyer from that film is supposed to be in the bookstore but I've never noticed it before.)

As I've said, it takes so long to get the very idea of werewolves in this movie let alone the actual creatures that it really threw me the first time I watched it. Looking at that first twenty minutes alone, would you ever think it was from a werewolf movie? I sincerely doubt it and neither did many people when the film was first released because the marketing downplayed the werewolf aspect (although I think the actual title The Howling should have tipped at least some people off). It's not until quite a ways into the film that you get your first look at one of the werewolves after their presence has been suggested by the slaughtered cow, the howling in the woods, T.C. lurking in the woods outside of Karen and Bill's cabin, growling softly while doing so, and the gradual reveal of what was happening to Eddie in the shadows in Karen's dream sequences (which is very freaky, I might add). Heck, the word "werewolf" itself isn't even uttered until a few scenes before that. I must say that I find the first shot of one of the werewolves as it watches Bill walk from Marsha's cabin to be creepy as hell, with the closeup of its yellow eye gradually moving as it watches Bill. You don't get that good of a look at it when it attacks Bill as it's shot in the dark with very quick editing but you get a sense of what it looks like. The bit of werewolf action in the film (no pun intended) is Bill and Marsha transforming during the sex scene. Besides making the metaphor concrete, this scene is just surreal to say the least, starting out with them having sex like two normal human beings accompanied by the loud howling of wolves filling the woods and then before you know it, they're growing fangs and fur and growling and roaring as their sex continues. I find their respective second stages during this scene to be very freaky looking, especially Marsha's. Unfortunately, as Joe Dante himself admits, the film's budgetary limitations become apparent as their final transformations are done in silhouette with animation. It doesn't ruin the scene, mind you, but it is painfully obvious.

My absolute favorite section of the entire film is after the sex scene when Terry investigates Marsha's cabin up to when she's ultimately killed in Dr. Waggner's office. The scene at the cabin is just so eerie with the absolute silence save for the sounds of the woods for the most part and as she enters the cabin, we see that she's being stalked (I find that brief shot of a werewolf's legs to be quite creepy). When Terry is attacked inside the cabin, what makes it so freaky for me is that all you get are quick glimpses of the werewolf as it tears down the door but you hear it snarling and growling like crazy. And then, Terry is attacked in the wood shed by another werewolf, chops his arm off with a hatchet, and then watches in horror as the severed limb turns into that of a human. While I do have some misgivings about the bladder effect when it's used during the epic transformation, I think it's effectively eerie here when you see the arm convulse, deflate, and then inflate again in the form of a human arm. That is just so creepy. And this is all happening in the daytime. Can you think of another movie where you get glimpses of werewolves in broad daylight? There ma be some obscure ones but right now, I can't think of any. Finally, when Terry runs into Waggner's office, we get to see one of the werewolves in all his glory. I must say that while I think An American Werewolf in London did better in the actual transformation effects, I think The Howling succeeded more in the actual look of the werewolves. These are some bad-ass monsters right here, with how they basically are just big, bipedal wolves, although very demonic looking with their snarling, expressive faces, big ears, and front paws that are more like clawed hands. This particular werewolf that attacks Terry, which I think I'm safe in assuming is Eddie Quist, is especially frightening to me just because of the faces he makes and how he actually stalks Terry around the room before attacking her. The way he actually kills her is one of the creepiest damn things I've ever seen period. He holds her up by her neck, snarling at her while she smacks at him, and after doing so for quite a while, kills her by biting her neck. But he doesn't violently tear it out. No, instead there's a long moment where you can hear him quietly biting and munching on her neck. That image, coupled with the lighting and music, is so damn eerie that it's unreal. I think this entire scene brings to light something all the more troubling: these werewolves are completely aware of what they're doing. Unlike most werewolf movies where the person turning into the wolf has no control over his or her actions, these people, since they can change at will, still have control over themselves when they become werewolves, know what they're doing, and they love it. That werewolf could have just killed Terry right then and there but nope, he drew it out and even when he finally caught her, he still let her fight back a little bit before finally killing her. But what's creepiest of all is that you saw the werewolf turn on a tape recorder to record Terry's death. That should send shivers down your spine right there.

The main reason why The Howling and An American Werewolf in London are compared so much is because of their big transformations that serve as the centerpiece of the films. Not only that but both transformations have very similar aspects to them and there's a good reason for that. Rick Baker was originally supposed to do the effects work for The Howling but right when he was about to start, John Landis called and told him that he finally had the money to make An American Werewolf in London. So, Baker served as just a consultant on the makeup effects while his protege Rob Bottin, who is an awesome effects artist in his own right, actually did them. As a result, both films used basically the same techniques to accomplish their transformations and, as I said, while I do think Rick Baker and his crew did a much more impressive job with the transformation of David Kessler, Eddie Quist's big transformation here is still awesome. His claws coming up through his fingers (causing them to bleed, which makes me wince), his clothes ripping to reveal his fur-covered body, those wolf-ears pushing up through his head, and, of course, his face contorting and ultimately stretching outward into the snout of a wolf are all still spectacular to behold. The popping and cracking sounds that you hear as he changes make your skin crawl as well (although I think a good deal of that may have just been the latex). Some people complain that after a certain point, you can tell it's a fake head and no longer actually Robert Picardo but I think the fake head has a creepy, inhuman quality about it that adds even more to the scene. But the aspect of the transformation that I don't get is the bubbling skin on Eddie's face or why his throat blows up like a bullfrog. Exactly what does that have to do with turning into a werewolf? It just looks silly to me, especially when Eddie starts to change again after half his face has been melted off by acid. He really does look like a bullfrog in that moment because his throat inflates to such a large extent. Speaking of which, the makeup of his melted face is really well done, with great details like being able to see a little bit of his skull in spots.

I think the sounds the werewolves make are very frightening too, with their snarling and growling as well as when you're able to hear them roaring and howling at the same time in some instances, mainly when you hear them in the woods at night. The way T.C. as a werewolf howls in pain after his arm is hacked off is really disturbing in just how loud he's screaming and it almost makes you feel bad for him. Speaking of T.C. the brief shot you see if his face stretching into the snout of a wolf later on is a nice visual as well. Going back to the actual design of the werewolves, while they look good for the most part, I think their half-changed appearances when they're all trapped inside the barn that Christopher sets on fire are really bad. While some of them are typically just people with fangs, some of them look just plain silly, like this woman with a bloated face and this other one that looks more like an ape-man than a werewolf. There's also this other guy who keeps looking around wildly, making sounds like, "Eeraah!" That's unintentionally funny to me. The good thing is after that, we get some more full-blown werewolves and, for a movie with limited resources, they did a good job of making it seem as if there are a bunch of werewolves attacking the car while Karen and Christopher try to escape the Colony and they even managed to make them look different from each other with different faces and so on. There's a brief shot of stop-motion werewolves in the middle of a dissolve as Karen and Christopher finally escape and, as brief as it is, I thought it looked cool as did the other stop-motion effects that were created but weren't used in the final film. I can see why they didn't use it, though, because it doesn't look nearly as realistic as the other effects do (although I think that deleted scene of a stop-motion werewolf stalking Karen in the woods is eerie). Finally, I have to talk about Karen's transformation into a werewolf at the end of the film. I'm just going to come out and say it: she looks laughable. I know why they made her that way, because she had been resisting it the whole time but you know, resistance or not, I think you would probably still look the same as those who are willing. The shot of her in mid-transformation looks okay but in the shot of her fully changed, she looks more like an overgrown lapdog than a werewolf (even Joe Dante says that she looks like a Pekingese). Again, I know why they did it but that doesn't mean I have to like it and in this case, I don't.

As one of the first movies depicting werewolves in the modern day, this film takes on the idea that, thanks to old movies and such, everybody knows what a werewolf is but, at the same time, a lot of the accepted werewolf "lore" and rules are purely products of the movies, namely from the writing of Curt Siodmark, the screenwriter of The Wolf Man. To that end, the film uses that aspect to establish its own rules, with Walter Paisley explaining to Christopher and Terry when he hears them talking about trying to find out whether Eddie Quist's crimes took place on a full moon, "That's a lot of Hollywood baloney. Your classic werewolf can change shape whenever it wants, day or night, whenever it takes a notion to. That's why they call them shape-shifters." The film mentions nothing about wolfbane but it does keep the old adage that silver bullets are the only things that can kill werewolves. Paisley also mentions fire but, as the ending teaches us, that's not a sure way of killing them. So, basically, this film throws out some of the accepted rules of werewolves while mixing others with its own. Thinking about it, it was an interesting way to bring the werewolf legend into contemporary times.

As he usually does, Joe Dante put a lot of clever in-jokes about werewolf movies as well as horror movies in general into the film. The most notable one is that a lot of characters named after people who directed werewolf movies: George Waggner, the director of The Wolf Man (I like how the character who is more or less the leader of the werewolves is named after the man who directed the most well-known werewolf movie; Bill is named after Roy William Neill, who directed Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (they were going to have him be called Roy originally but I think they decided not to in order to avoid confusion with another person named Roy Neill); Terry is named after Terence Fisher, who directed The Curse of the Werewolf for Hammer Films; Fred Francis is named after Freddie Francis, director of the obscure Legend of the Werewolf; the John Carradine character is named after Erle Kenton, who directed House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, both of which feature the Wolf Man (Carradine also played Count Dracula in both of those films); Sam Newfield is named after the director of The Mad Monster; Charlie Barton is named after the director of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which features the Wolf Man; and Lew Landers is named after the director of Return of the Vampire, which had a werewolf in it. (Apparently, there's also a character named Jack Molina, named after Jacinto Molina, one of Paul Naschy's alternate names but I don't remember that character.) There are plenty of other references including a quick glimpse of a picture of Lon Chaney Jr. in Dr. Waggner's office, a cartoon featuring the Big Bad Wolf is seen playing on a TV, there's a quick glimpse of the book Howl at one point, Wolfman Jack is mentioned at one point, and, of course, there are a few scenes featuring pictures of wolves in the background. There's even really obscure references like Wolf Brand chilli and such. A really strange one is the last thing you see in the movie. Not only are Christopher and Terry watching The Wolf Man at one point but right after the ending credits, there is a brief shot of a TV playing the scene in the film where Maleva says to Larry Talbott, "Go now and heaven help you." I don't know if it's meant to have some bigger meaning, like that's a warning for anybody watching the movie, or if it was just meant purely as a joke. Finally, there are some cameos, like Roger Corman appearing outside of a phone booth that Karen uses at the beginning of the film, Forrest J. Ackerman showing up as a custome in Walter Paisley's bookstore (carrying some copies of his own magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland), Bob Burns has a brief appearance in the porno store at the beginning, and, most notably, writer John Sayles appears as a morgue technician. I can't help but like the stuff that Dante does in his movies. You can truly tell that he makes them for fans of the genre, since he's one himself.

Besides the slow build-up to the actual werewolves, another thing I wasn't expecting when I first watched the movie was the music score by Pino Donaggio. While I didn't think it was bad music in the slightest, it wasn't the type of music I was expecting. It has a very old-fashioned sound to it, like something you'd hear in horror films in the 40's, which I didn't anticipate to hear in a film from 1981. But, after watching the film a few more times and getting over that initial surprise, I grew to appreciate what a good score this film has. It's very memorable, with a lot of distinct cues and themes. There's a really eerie, haunting theme that plays whenever Karen is having nightmares about what happened to her in the projection booth, which has something that sounds like either voices chanting or even a sound akin to howling in the background. There's some great horror music for the truly frightening scenes, like when Terry is attacked in Marsha's cabin and when Eddie transforms in front of Karen. My personal favorite piece of music is the frantic theme that plays when Terry escapes from Marsha's cabin and runs through the forest to Dr. Waggner's office. It's a really awesome bit of music and fits the scene well. The soft music that plays when Terry is slowly bitten to death by the one werewolf is very creepy and makes that moment all the more nightmarish. There's also some sad music that plays in the film, most notably when Karen is hysterical after having her first nightmare about Eddie and in the climax when she becomes a werewolf in the news studio. The music that plays during the sex scene between Bill and Marsha starts out very pretty and dreamlike but then becomes absolutely horrific when they begin turning into werewolves. Finally, there's some really beautiful music that plays when Karen and Bill are driving up to the Colony, a bit of which plays at the start of the ending credits but then that becomes more country-sounding as the credits go on (can you think of another movie whose ending credits play over footage of a hamburger being cooked because I can't). While I wouldn't say it's one of my favorite film scores ever, I still do enjoy the music to this film.

Before we end, I feel must touch on the myriad of sequels to this film, if you can even call them that. Now, I have not seen any of those movies and I don't know if I ever will considering how bad I hear they are but from what I can tell, only the second film is a true sequel whereas the others don't have anything to do with this film or each other for that matter. Reading about them and watching other people's reviews on them, they seem like some of the dumbest werewolf movies ever put to celluloid, with incredibly bad acting, shoddy effects work, and some of them barely even have any werewolf action. I just have to wonder how these films came to be. Did somebody ask for all of these in-name only sequels to a werewolf movie that, while quite successful for its budget, wasn't exactly a huge blockbuster? Somebody needs to make a documentary about these movies. I'm dead-serious. I would love to know how these movies got made and what the thinking was behind them. In any case, you've got The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, which stars Christopher Lee (who, when he worked with Joe Dante on Gremlins 2, actually apologized to him for being in this movie) and, despite trying to actually be a sequel to this film, seems to have werewolves confused with vampires in terms of their rules and the action being in Transylvania; The Howling III: The Marsupials, which takes place in Australia and involves kangaroo werewolves; The Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, which is actually a more faithful adaptation of the original Gary Brandner novel but, judging from how boring this movie supposedly is, that doesn't seem to have been a good idea; The Howling V: The Rebirth, a story about a group of people staying in an old castle and one of them turns out to be a werewolf; The Howling VI: The Freaks, about a werewolf at a circus; The Howling: New Moon Rising, which sounds like absolute bottom of the barrel dreck; and, most recently, The Howling: Reborn, which just feels like a poorly disguised attempt to cash in on the Twilight craze. Basically, I just wanted to mention these movies here since it's doubtful I'll ever review them but even without seeing a single one of those sequels, I can safely say that Joe Dante's werewolf flick certainly has one of the most unusual legacies of any horror film (I don't know what's more pointless, these movies or the endless amount of Children of the Corn sequels).

Bad, in-name only sequels and my initial feelings aside, I think The Howling is an awesome werewolf movie. It's well-acted, has memorable characters, lots of familiar faces, some nice satire and in-jokes, some very impressive special effects, the werewolves are quite frightening, and it's clearly made by someone who has a lot of love and enthusiasm for the genre he's working in. If you're going to check it out for the first time, though, you have to be aware that it's quite a slow build and doesn't really feel like a werewolf movie for the first half hour or so. But if you can stick with it and appreciate everything else the movie has to offer in the meantime, it's well worth it. It may have taken myself a while to appreciate it but now, I can safely say that I recommend it as highly as I possibly can. It's simply a classy, smart, and fun werewolf romp.