Ah… 'The Howling'. I saw this movie the
weekend it came out in 1981, far too young to get into an R-rated movie
on my own, but my older brother always had a lower case G's
back. Oh the movies I got to see because my brother wanted
to see them and my mom forced him to take me along. As a twelve
year old, after seeing 'The Howling', I was pretty convinced it was the
best movie ever made, which was saying something since it was snatching
the throne from 'Empire' which I saw the year before, but it too would
soon to be dethroned by 'The Thing' which I saw the following
year. Thirty years later… now all mature and stuff… clearly 'The
Howling' is not the film 'The Empire Strikes Back' was. Not even
close, and we all know that. It's not even really close to
'The Thing', BUT… if you were to ask me what the best werewolf movie
EVER made was, even today, it's still 'The Howling'. Sorry 'Teen
Wolf II'.
Dee Wallace is hard working TV anchorwoman Karen White, and Karen will
do whatever is necessary to get the story. I can't see Diane
Sawyer going down to porno row to meet with a brutal serial killer with
minimal police protection, but that's just what Karen is doing on this
particular night. Sure enough, the police lose Karen, she goes
down to porno row to meet this cat Eddie Quist, as played by the
universally awesome Robert Picardo, and Eddie has something to show
Karen. Did Karen see what Eddie had to show her? We don't
know because the fuzz finally tracked Karen down and put a series of
slugs in Eddie. Eddie is dead. So to speak. More or
less. Not really.
Now Karen has to report on this occurrence,
but Karen is a total psychological mess. Fortunately, kindly
doctor George Waggner (Patrick MacNee) who is often on Karen's show
prattling on about The Beast Within and other nonsense, sponsors a
retreat that will
help Karen cope with the emotional trauma that she
has just experienced. So Karen and her husband Bill (the late
Christopher Stone) haul off to the campsite for some fun, sun, barbeque
and weirdness.
Seriously, you only had to be at the camp for six minutes to realize
that this isn't the place for any reasonably sane person just by
looking at the freaks that inhabit this place, but Karen and Bill are
in for the long haul. Of course of all the weirdoes in this
joint, there's none more strange than the super weird and crazy hot
Miss Marsha (the late Elisabeth Brooks) whose elevator looks to stop
just a few floors short of the top, but she does have other things she
brings to the table, these things not being lost on Karen's husband
Bill. Now, we should point out that Karen's massive trauma has
put her cookie on lock, and while don't support what Bill might do with
the freaky Marsha, we do kind of understand. Plus Bill was
attacked by a wild beast soon after they arrived which very well
could've been a werewolf. But they don't exist, now do they?
Back home, Karen's producer Chris (Dennis Dugan) and his girl Terry
(Belinda Balaski) are doing some research on this Eddie character and
they find out some stuff that is a little unsettling, but that can wait
because they did promise to drive up to Camp Freaky and help Karen, who
is steadily freaking out at this place and the weirdness of it
all. Terry is coming down to die first… I mean to help out
first. Common sense would dictate that Karen should just leave,
but this is a horror movie.
Turns out werewolves are totally real. Just ask Terry. And
Karen is in a heap of trouble, and her studly husband will be of very
little assistance in helping her out of this trouble.
Fortunately, Chris is on his way down, and he has silver bullets and
he's about to put some werewolves to sleep… but the truth needs to be
told…
Now, it is possible after viewing 'The Howling' again, and I'm not sure
when the last time I saw it was but it has been a while, but it is
possible that maybe… possibly… it's just a little overrated. Just
a little. For instance we love Dee Wallace, always have. I
mean she's E.T.'s mom for goodness sakes, and we just saw her the other
day in The Asylum version of 'Hansel and Gretel' in which she stole the
show, but E.T's mom and her shrinking violet style of acting back then
might not have been the best choice for this role, as opposed to Ms.
Wallace in 'Cujo' in which she was pitch perfect. Also, the first
half of director Joe Dante's movie is a little on the slow side.
I'm sure we were developing character and creating atmosphere during
all of this slowness, but it is slowness nonetheless. Of
course the coolest thing about this movie at the time is probably the
legendary Rob Bottin's werewolf transformation effects, and they are
awesome. But considering it took Eddie Quist a virtual eternity
to turn into a werewolf, maybe then was the moment for somebody to run,
or do something as opposed to just stand there and be in awe of some
dude turning into a monster whose only purpose is to eat your ass.
That being said, 'The Howling' is still the best werewolf movie I've
ever seen. That slowness did setup the atmosphere and character
because the last half hour is about as good as cinema gets. The
gore effects were second to none at the time, and quite honestly still
hold up well today, and it brought back glorious memories of me
bragging to my friends in middle school that I saw this movie, and saw
the titties that came along with it, because I had a supremely
irresponsible older brother. Our only regret is that Dennis
Duggan did not become a bigger star, then this would've kept him out of
the director's chair and possibly kept Adam Sandler's 'Jack and Jill'
from being made.
Maybe not quite as good as I remember, but still the best. That
is 'The Howling'. Now off to see a movie I've never seen,
considered one of the worst Werewolves movies ever made… 'The Howling
II', which seriously can't be too much worse than one of the worst
werewolf movies I've personally seen, the recently released 'The
Howling: Reborn'…. No way.
