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The Howling -- a review

Even as a kid, I was never that crazy about werewolves. A monster that only appeared during the full moon seemed like a pretty easy creature to beat. Just like how sharks stayed in the ocean, rendering them impotent as long as you stayed out of the water, werewolves could also be easily avoided just by staying inside during nights of the full moon. It didn’t matter what the werewolf movie was--from the original Wolfman, to An American Werewolf in London--werewolf movies never really held an allure for me.

But then The Howling was released.

Director Joe Dante’s Little Werewolf That Could was released in 1981, and in honor of it being released in 4K this month, I decided to revisit The Howling. I first watched it on video (VHS!) back in the day, and enjoyed it. The main reason was because it was the first werewolf film that I saw that presented the big, furry bastards with a twist: they could change into a wolf any time they wanted; to hell with waiting for the full moon. Thanks to this simple change in the premise, werewolves were made scary for me in a fun, frightening film with a great cast that was sturdily helmed by Dante, who genuinely loves the horror genre and filled The Howling with a lot of great cinematic in-jokes.

The always-good Dee Wallace stars as Karen White, a news reporter for a Southern California TV station who becomes the focus of Eddie (Robert Picardo), a serial killer who directly contacted her. Eddie states that he wants to meet with Karen, in a porno shop, and Karen--despite being terrified of coming face to face with this maniac--agrees to his wishes. After all, she’s being tracked by the LAPD, along with her own news station, so what can go wrong?

Plenty. Meeting with Eddie in a porn movie booth winds up being a close call for Karen, who blanks out on the experience with no memory of what happened. Except…well, maybe it was a trick of the light from the projected film, but Karen could have sworn that Eddie was changing when he was with her. But have no fear, for Doctor George Waggner (Patrick Macnee), a noted psychiatrist, has just the place for her: his secluded retreat, where Karen can get away and get in touch with her inner werewolf.

Forty years later, The Howling still holds up wonderfully. It’s become a period piece, what with people needing pay phones to call each other on the street, and they had to get actual books in order to research such arcane subjects like werewolves, but the story is still gripping. The werewolves, free from the stupid full moon troupe, finally feel like a true threat that can strike anywhere at any time.

Dee Wallace is well-cast in the lead; she ably carries the weight of the entire film by being an extremely sympathetic character. Just a year later, she would star in Spielberg’s E.T. the Extraterrestrial, and a year after that, Cujo, which was based on the Stephen King novel. Wallace also starred in the first Critters film, and has been working steadily in film and TV right up to today--even appearing in other horror movies like Rob Zombie’s Halloween, The Lords of Salem, and in Ti West’s House of the Devil.

Robert Picardo, who makes the most of his small but unnerving part as Eddie, went on to work with Dante again in Explorers, Innerspace, Amazon Women on the Moon, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Matinee, and Small Soldiers. Picardo has become a great character actor who is best known for his roles in the TV series China Beach, as well as Star Trek: Voyager. I recently caught him on The Orville, where he probably had the best line in that entire series: “Humans. The hillbillies of the galaxy.”

The Howling also had Dante’s favorite company of actors, featuring such screen legends as John Carradine (Billy the Kid Versus Dracula), Slim Pickins (Dr. Strangelove), Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and Kenneth Toby (the original The Thing) and the legendary Dick Miller. The screenplay was co-written by writer/director John Sayles (Eight Men Out), who has a funny cameo as the coroner.

The werewolf effects by Rob Bottin still hold up, seeing how Dante shoots them--especially the transformation scenes--in as much darkness as he can get away with. So I’m really glad to hear that The Howling is receiving a spiffy new home video release on 4K, because it’s a classic that deserves to be preserved on the best format possible. -- SF

The Howling on 4K can be bought here.

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