Is this the greatest werewolf movie ever made? | Little White Lies

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Is this the great­est were­wolf movie ever made?

08 Oct 2017

Words by Anton Bitel

Frightening close-up of a twisted, monstrous face with glowing eyes and bared fangs in a dark, shadowy scene.
Frightening close-up of a twisted, monstrous face with glowing eyes and bared fangs in a dark, shadowy scene.
Joe Dante’s The Howl­ing is a per­fect blend of mod­ern hor­ror and prac­ti­cal effects.

Man is a com­bi­na­tion of the learned and the instinc­tu­al, of the sophis­ti­cat­ed and the prim­i­tive. We should nev­er try to deny the beast – the ani­mal – with­in us.”

The speak­er is Dr George Wag­gn­er (Patrick Mac­nee), a mild-man­nered author and behav­iour expert who is appear­ing on KDHB TV to pitch his lat­est book The Gift’ – and who just hap­pens to share his name with the direc­tor of Universal’s 1941 clas­sic, The Wolf Man. Mean­while, this pro­logue to The Howl­ing enacts pre­cise­ly the con­tra­dic­tion that George is dis­cussing on air. On the one hand, it is rapid­ly edit­ed (by Mark Gold­blatt) and medi­at­ed, cut­ting from the tele­vi­sion stu­dio where Wag­gn­er is being inter­viewed to the pro­duc­tion booth and back again, while also show­ing the item being broad­cast live on a tele­vi­sion set in a room fes­tooned with creepy news­pa­per clip­pings and sketches.

At the same time, KDHB anchor Karen White (Dee Wal­lace) is out on the streets fol­low­ing a scoop that is also a dan­ger­ous sting oper­a­tion, as she tries to make con­tact with a ser­i­al killer who has been attack­ing, bit­ing and mur­der­ing women in LA’s Skid Row. Here the sophis­ti­ca­tion of an urban news net­work inter­sects with the bes­tial­i­ty of the killer. When Karen meets creepy Eddie Quist (Robert Picar­do) in the view­ing booth of a porn shop – a place where the city’s men furtive­ly indulge their ani­mal­is­tic impuls­es – she sees some­thing so hor­ri­fy­ing that her mind eras­es the trau­mat­ic mem­o­ry of it.

On George’s advice, Karen heads north up the coast with her hus­band Bill (Christo­pher Stone) to the Colony’, a lit­toral refuge where patients under­go pri­mal ther­a­pies under the doctor’s direc­tion. The Colony may be a hide­away from the stress­es of city liv­ing, but it is still not so very far removed from moder­ni­ty. Its end­less beach par­ties, sing-a-longs and bar­be­cues recall the free-lov­ing exper­i­ments of recent decades, and at one point it is express­ly com­pared to the cul­tic com­mune of Jonestown.

In oth­er words, it is a place thor­ough­ly in keep­ing with George’s pro­nounce­ments on find­ing a bal­ance between old and new. And yet, there are also grum­blings and growl­ings against this com­pro­mised mod­el. Old man Erle (John Car­ra­dine) mut­ters mad­ly about his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with affairs, while ele­men­tal’ Mar­sha (Elis­a­beth Brooks) and her broth­er TC (Don McLeod) live by their own rules out in the woods on the Colony’s periph­ery. And there is some­thing else out there, watch­ing and cir­cling and killing the cat­tle and howling.

Silhouettes of figures in dark, dramatic lighting with a beam of light illuminating one person seated and playing an instrument.

For mod­ern view­ers, it is well-nigh impos­si­ble not to know that The Howl­ing is a were­wolf movie. Indeed, it was one of three, along­side Michael Wadleigh’s Wolfen and John Lan­dis’ An Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don, to come out in 1981, all revi­tal­is­ing the lycan­throp­ic sub-genre with new ideas and state-of-the-art effects. Yet it is impor­tant to observe for just how long the film sup­press­es its true iden­ti­ty, before final­ly let­ting the beast out.

Reunit­ing after their suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion on Piran­ha, direc­tor Joe Dante and writer John Sayles care­ful­ly with­hold any notion of the super­nat­ur­al at the begin­ning of their film, at first focus­ing on all-too-human mon­strous­ness before even­tu­al­ly set­tling on that Uni­ver­sal crea­ture that com­bines both mon­ster and human in hybrid form. For The Howl­ing starts as a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, with an amne­si­ac hero­ine and the promised return of her repressed mem­o­ries, and only grad­u­al­ly trans­forms into a full-blown were­wolf movie.

What The Howl­ing gains from the slow­ness of this meta­mor­pho­sis is metaphor­i­cal heft, as the film repeat­ed­ly asks what shape the tra­di­tion­al lycan­throp­ic mythos (glimpsed with­in the film in sec­ond-hand gri­moires, in illus­tra­tions from Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood, and on back­ground tele­vi­sions show­ing snatch­es of The Wolf Man) can take in the mod­ern era. Times have changed,” frets George, and we haven’t – not enough.” He is giv­ing expres­sion to the cen­tral anx­i­ety of a film that keeps reflect­ing upon its own rel­e­vance and place in a world where peo­ple are not even sure that they believe in the moon land­ings, let alone in the oth­er mon­strosi­ties that they see on their TV screens every day.

The Howl­ing is very loose­ly adapt­ed from Gary Brandner’s nov­el of the same name. Sayles, him­self a suc­cess­ful indie writer/​director always hap­py to earn mon­ey on the side to fund his own projects, was called in to have a pass at ear­li­er drafts by Jack Con­rad and Ter­ence H Win­k­less, and essen­tial­ly rewrote the script, fill­ing it with his char­ac­ter­is­tic wit and irony (although Win­k­less is still cred­it­ed as a co-writer). Sayles also cameos as a morgue atten­dant, while B‑king Roger Cor­man can be spot­ted wait­ing out­side a tele­phone booth for Karen to fin­ish mak­ing her call.

The trans­for­ma­tion effects were orig­i­nal­ly designed by Rick Bak­er, but then hand­ed over to Rob Bot­tin when Bak­er went to work on to An Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don. Exe­cut­ed with make­up, latex and pros­thet­ics, they remain impres­sive, offer­ing us visu­al evi­dence of a phe­nom­e­non that the film repeat­ed­ly reminds us leaves wit­ness­es unable to believe their eyes. Still, whether we are con­vinced by what we see or not, we should nev­er try to deny the beast within…

The Howl­ing is released by Stu­dio Canal as a new­ly restored edi­tion DVD, Dig­i­tal Down­load and Blu-ray on 9 Octo­ber, 2017.

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