I’ll be
honest. I watched today’s movie while
shredding documents and reading Cracked.com.
Why? Because boring, that’s why.
On to the
(half-assed) review!
There’s a
reason that there are no huge werewolf movies in the works. The last one, The Wolfman, tanked. This
was in spite of featuring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. For good
werewolf movies, pickings are slim. An American Werewolf in London is one, Dog Soldiers another, and Ginger Snaps would be the third. Aaaaaaaaaand that takes care of that.
Notice how I
didn’t mention The Howling?
First and
foremost, the biggest problem with The
Howling as a franchise is that there is no fixed protagonist. Vampire movies work as both horror movies and
franchise films because we can identify individual vampires. Dracula is Dracula. Vlad is Vlad.
Bill the asshole vampire is Bill the asshole vampire. Werewolves, however, are interchangeable as
wolves, and nothing special while in human form.
So right off
the bat, The Howling had to find a
way for us to give a shit about the bad guys.
They tried by giving us a crazy serial killer named Eddie The Mangler
(Robert Picardo). In the beginning of
the film, our intrepid reporter Karen (Dee Wallace) is following leads to
Eddie, who wants to give her an ‘exclusive.’
Turns out he wanted to werewolf her face in, but he’s shot
mid-transformation. Karen, meanwhile, is
so traumatized that she forgets the entire incident. The scars are still there, however. Now she can’t seem to handle being back in
the television studio, so she’s sent to a retreat with her husband Bill
(Christopher Stone).
Once at the
retreat, uninterestingly named ‘The Colony,’ things get 'strange.' Weird things start happening. Also, werewolves.
Fortunately,
all is not lost, as Karen’s colleagues continue to look into Eddie’s past. With the help of a werewolf-knowledgeable
bookstore owner, they find out that The Colony may be
something…dun-dun-DUUUN…dangerous!
Despite
sounding at least half-interesting on paper, this entire movie is boring. Even for 1981, there’s no suspense. Everything is predictable as hell and the
special effects hurt my feelings. An American Werewolf in London came out
the same year, and the transformation scene was phenomenal. The secret?
They knew that they didn’t have the technology to show a seamless
transition, so they didn’t. They just
gave us bits and pieces, letting us fill in the rest.
Nobody told The Howling that, so viewers are forced
to watch a slooooow transformation (seriously, it’s over 2 minutes long) in
which the person spends a solid minute looking like popcorn is popping under
their skin. Then…cut to terrible
cartoon?
I really can't
recommend The Howling to anyone. It’s not a good werewolf movie even by the
low standards of werewolf movies. It’s a
terrible horror film by horror standards, and it’s mostly a crappy movie by any
standards. Sorry, Joe Dante, but I don't think you hit your stride until Gremlins.
Program note: I’m moving.
Thanks to the useless, stupid rules in place down here, I have to
disconnect my cable, turn off my account, turn in my modem, get proof of
account cancellation, take that proof to the
same company in another town 9 miles
away, and then make an installation appointment.
See you when I get back!
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