After a bizarre and near deadly encounter with a serial killer, a television newswoman is sent to a remote mountain resort whose residents may not be what they seem.
After a short break on the Horror franchise reviews I’m back. As usual you voted for it, you got it! This should be fun.
There are certain names you hear that put a smile on your face. for me Joe Dante is one of those names. I remember discovering his films at an early age and it was one of the first times I sought out films by a Directors name and his name is one that when I hear it brings back some great memories. Because of all this I had high expectations of this feature, fortunately I wasn’t disappointed.
This was a film that I initially discovered in my teens, as I know many other viewers did too, and I was still pretty new to the whole werewolf thing. I knew of the myths such as the silver bullets and such but this was more adult themed than I was used to at the time, I remember feeling somewhat awkward during the opening scenes in the porno shop ha ha.
As I’d not seen this for a long time I had to re-watch it to refresh my memory about it and there’s one thing about the feature that seriously bothers me. That whole opening sequence jumps in to the middle of a story, a story that seems seriously interesting and I’d love to have seen more of that and I feel it would’ve given us more of a story.
In all honesty this film has not aged well but the Werewolf scenes do still stand up and as with all Joe Dante films it has his charm all over it, a signature we would see in his later films such as “Gremlins”. Plus with Horror favourite Dee Wallace you have a great lead actress, so there is some truly great things about this film that viewers will love.
“The Howling” has a cult following and for good reason, it is a great Werewolf film and one that you can just put on, sit back, switch off your brain and just enjoy.
Miscellaneous facts about the film:
Rick Baker was originally doing the special effects for this movie, but he left to do An American Werewolf in London (1981), leaving the effects job for this movie in the hands of assistant Rob Bottin. Both this movie and “American Werewolf” were released the same year and both received praise for their makeup work.
There were times during shooting when Robert Picardo was very despondent about the hours he had to spend in makeup. On the Special Edition DVD, he remarked, “One day, after spending six and a half hours in the makeup chair, I was thinking, ‘Trained at Yale, two leading roles on Broadway. My first acting role in California, my face gets melted in a low-budget horror movie.’ All the crew had to say to that was, ‘Bob, next time read the script all the way through first!”‘
In the scene where Terri calls Chris from Dr. Waggner’s office, we see a picture of Lon Chaney Jr. on the wall. Chaney played the Wolf Man in five movies (The Wolf Man (1941), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). He was the only actor that played a Universal monster in the original movie and many of its sequels.
Robert Picardo improvised the line “I want to give you a piece of my mind” before pulling out a bullet from his head.
The final transformation had to be done all in close-up because this movie had exceeded its budget by then, and this had to be shot in Joe Dante’s office because they had no money for sets anymore.
Because of their work on this movie, Joe Dante and Michael Finnell received the opportunity to make the movie Gremlins (1984) for Steven Spielberg. That movie references “The Howling” with a smiley face image on a refrigerator door. Eddie Quist leaves yellow smiley face stickers as his calling card in several places all through this movie. Also James MacKrell’s character as news reporter Lew Landers appears in both “The Howling” and “Gremlins”, which suggest both movies share the same universe.
This was Dick Miller’s favorite of his movies.
Dee Wallace (Karen White) and Christopher Stone (Bill Neill) were engaged in real life when shooting the movie.
Filmed in 28 days plus days of reshoots, this movie was notable for its special effects, which were state-of-the-art at the time.
Dee Wallace was very uncomfortable in the porn shop scene. The discomfort on her face can be clearly seen.
Art director Robert A. Burns had previously worked on the sets for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). In fact, many of the grisly set dressings for this movie were hold-overs from “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”; most notably the corpse in the armchair seen in Walter Paisley’s bookstore.
Jack Conrad was originally set to direct and write this movie, but troubles with the studio forced him to leave the project. In addition, Terence H. Winkless was writing the screenplay at one point, but he left the project when his version proved unsatisfactory. This eventually fell into the lap of director Joe Dante, who brought aboard John Sayles, with whom he had previously worked for Piranha (1978), to write the screenplay.
The coroner tells a story about a “case” named Stuart Walker. Stuart Walker was the director of Werewolf of London (1935), the first Hollywood werewolf movie of the sound era.
The following characters are named after werewolf movie directors: George Waggner, Roy William Neill, Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, Erle C. Kenton, Sam Newfield, Charles Barton, Jerry Warren, Lew Landers and Jacinto Molina (an alternate name used by Paul Naschy).
To add to the hidden puns through this movie, there is a book placed near a phone during one scene: “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.
When Karen White is looking in the shack in the forest, there is a can of “Wolf” brand chili on top of the fridge.
Annette Haven was offered the role of Marsha Quist, which she turned down because she was opposed to the violent content of the screenplay.
A picture of a wolf attacking a flock of sheep can be seen above Karen White and Bill Neill’s bed.
In one scene, Erle Kenton (John Carradine) mentions UFOs and cattle mutilation. Around the time he wrote the screenplay for “The Howling”, John Sayles was also working on a screenplay for Steven Spielberg known as “Night Skies”, which involved UFOs and cattle mutilation. However, the project was dropped when Spielberg chose to make E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) instead.
This movie won the 1981 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and had been nominated for Saturns also for Best Make-Up and Best Special Effects.
At one point, Sam Newfield (Slim Pickens) is seen eating from a can of “Wolf” brand chili.
Robert Picardo’s debut cinematic appearance.
The porn loop playing during the sex shop scene was created just for the movie. The entire loop consisted of two sequences–one with a woman being sexually assaulted on top of a car by three men and one with a gagged woman sexually assaulted on a bed by one man (the sequence shown in “The Howling”). These scenes were to be included in their entirety as part of a DVD release but were banned by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) because of their eroticization of sexual assault.
The silhouette of Bill Neill and Marsha Quist making love as werewolves is obviously a cartoon animation. Joe Dante attributed this for budgetary reasons.
Director Joe Dante and screenwriter John Sayles had previously collaborated about three years before on Piranha (1978) in those capacities with Sayles taking a role in the director’s later movie Matinee (1993).
This horror movie is ranked at the No. #81 spot on Bravo’s “100 Scariest Movie Moments”.
The late Elisabeth Brooks (Marsha Quist) received an “introducing” credit.
It is unknown which werewolf has bitten Bill Neill, but many fans have speculated that this was possibly either Marsha Quist or her brother T.C., but many have accepted Marsha as the werewolf who has bitten him.
This took about four years from the time Gary Brandner’s novel was published in 1977 and to when this movie was made.
The name of the television station was “KDHB”.
Karen White is a newscaster. When she first arrives at the Colony, she is speaking to a character played by James Murtaugh who played a newscaster in Blue Thunder (1983).
Dirk Miller’s character is named a Walter Paisley as it was in A Bucket of Blood. In addition, the former film was directed by Roger Corman who had a cameo in this film as the man in the phone booth.
The nickname of R. William Neill (Christopher Stone) was “Bill”.
Variety magazine claimed that the biggest flaw of “The Howling” is that the impact of this initial transformation is never topped during the climax of this movie.
Rob Bottin’s most celebrated effect was the on-screen transformation of Eddie Quist, which involved air bladders under latex facial applications to give the illusion of transformation.
Stop-motion animation by David W. Allen, and puppetry was intended to give the werewolves an even more non-human look.
Forrest J. Ackerman: Uncredited cameo, as a bookstore customer in the book shop carrying a copy of his magazine “Famous Monsters of Filmland”.
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