Horrorfest 2016: The Howling

The problem with THE HOWLING is that AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON exists. That's not THE HOWLING's fault and not really a fair way to start talking about it, but that's what I kept thinking while watching the film, especially during the climactic werewolf transformation scene.

Still, I'm glad I finally saw THE HOWLING, Joe Dante's werewolf flick from 1981, because it's one of those movies that's a pop culture touch stone that constantly comes up in nerdy movie conversations. You'd think with the number of movies I've seen I'd have seen it by now, but nope.

THE HOWLING stars Dee Wallace of E.T. fame as an investigative television reporter hot on the trail of a serial killer (Robert Picardo of Kevin Arnold's gym teacher fame) who is stalking her. She's using herself as bait to capture him and hopefully get an exclusive in the process. He's seemingly shot to death after an attack on her that is too close for comfort, but then his body goes missing from the morgue.

Wallace suffers from amnesia after the attack and is sent by her therapist (Patrick Macnee)  to a retreat in the country he runs called "The Colony." When she gets there she meets all kinds of great people like a creepy nymphomaniac (Elisabeth Brooks) with designs on her man (Christopher Stone) and a suicidal old guy (the great John Carradine) who howls at the moon before attempting to end by walking into a campfire.

The whole thing is weird and cult like, and there seems to be lots of wolves and wolf-like activity going on, so Wallace enlists her friends from back home (Belinda Balaski and Dennis Dugan) to come out and do some research and see if they can figure out what's up.

SPOILER WARNING: everyone at the retreat is a werewolf and Robert Picardo the serial killer is also a werewolf and is far from dead!

The first half of the movie is cool because you get to see early 80s downtown Los Angeles in all of its seedy glory. When the movie moves to the retreat it loses some of this luster and is kind of slow when it should be suspenseful. It picks up again in the end when all werewolf hell breaks loose, and the afore mentioned transformation scene IS cool, it's just not AS cool as AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON from the same year.

The very end of the movie is especially cool as Wallace decides to prove to the American public that werewolves are real and must be stopped by giving a graphic demonstration on the live evening news, so it's worth sticking around for that.