THE HOWLING (1981 - HORROR ) **** out of *****
(So much for a relaxing few weeks in the country...)
CAST: Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, Christopher Stone, Belinda Balaski, John Carradine, Slim Pickens, Elisabeth Brooks, Margie Impert, Robert Picardo, Kevin McCarthy.
DIRECTOR: Joe Dante
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and even more compelling reasons to keep your ass in the city as far away from farm country as possible - straight ahead...
IT'S LIKE THIS: In our last Halloween review, DEADLY BLESSING, we saw what happened when two L.A. city girls (Susan Bruckner, Sharon Stone) went into the ass-end of Pennsylvania to support a good friend and fellow L.A. girl (Maren Jensen) following the death (murder?) of her country-boy husband (Doug Barr) involving a rogue tractor (don't ask). Unfortunately, it turned out machinery-gone-wild was the least of the Los Angeles lasses' worries - as it appeared someone from the local religious cult nearby (like the Amish, but somehow more square) really wanted them dead and gone so that the house and land could be reclaimed by the cult. All in all, a pretty strong case for breathing in some good ol' fashioned Wilshire Boulevard smog and soaking in some heavy 405 traffic congestion.
Now, in our latest Halloween review, we have another Los Angeles girl who goes to the sticks for some peace and quiet - only to find out, omigod, that the woods totally suck and are full of things that will tear you apart, eat you, and pick their teeth with your bones. Before shitting you out onto the forest floor to be eaten by even more critters. Holy shit, dude, don't these chicks watch horror movies? If they did, they'd know better than to venture past Malibu to the north, Montebello to the East, or Redondo Beach to the South. Stay where the concrete is, girls, and you will be just fine. From werewolves and insane religious cults, anyway. I can't promise anything about muggers, gangbangers, or shifty used car salesmen.
Anyhow, our heroine is Karen White (Dee Wallace), an intrepid TV news anchor for KDHB-Los Angeles/Channel 6 who is investigating a series of brutal murders by "Eddie The Mangler." Apparently, Eddie (Robert Picardo) has been terrorizing the L.A. area for the last year - and he has contacted Karen because he, well, has a crush on her. Seizing this opportunity to try to nab the killer, the LAPD and Karen's cutthroat, ratings-obsessed boss, Fred Francis (Kevin McCarthy), decide to use her as bait to lure Eddie out and trap him. Finally, Eddie agrees - and tells Karen to meet him in L.A.'s red-light district which, as you would know if you've been to L.A., covers several hundred thousand square miles.
Anyhow, the fateful night arrives and the LAPD and her schmuck boss send Karen out into the seedy underbelly of the City of Angels to meet up with the psycho killer who has been gutting women for the last year - armed with nothing more than lipstick and a wonky surveillance tracking device. Fucking great. "Don't worry," says the LAPD to Bill Neill (Christopher Stone), Karen's understandably concerned football player husband, "We've got her covered." With what exactly? Dead air?
It goes without saying that Karen's rendezvous with Eddie goes pretty bad. First off, the tracking surveillance wire on Karen's body goes dead. And second, the cops in this movie are apparently a bunch of hopeless nitwits who couldn't find their own asses even if their palms were super-glued directly to their buns. Fortunately, these assholes decide to earn their pay and manage to catch up to Karen in an utterly seedy (even for L.A.) porno joint where Eddie is just about to fillet her in a private booth in the back. They unload about ten pounds of lead into Eddie's ass - and Karen manages to crawl the fuck outta there to report the story of a lifetime.
Or does she? As it turns out, Karen ends up with some serious amnesiac PTSD, and can't remember a goddamn thing from the moment she entered the porno shop to the moment the borderline-useless Keystone Cops of Cali showed up to finally save her in the nick of time. In short, she remembers nothing about her few minutes in the private booth with Eddie. Karen's psychiatrist, Dr. George Wagner (Patrick MacNee) tells Karen that she just needs time to recover - and eventually she will remember what happened. Karen rightfully says she's not sure if she wants to remember.
Nevertheless, Dr. Wagner advises Karen and Bill to head up north to "The Colony" - his therapeutic village nestled among the redwoods of Northern California. In other words, it's a hamlet made up of wackos, nutjobs, and recovering basket cases like Karen - all of whom Dr. Wagner is treating. Wonderful, doc. Talk about a healthy environment. It doesn't help that one of the patients, a slutty brunette vixen with cat eyes named Marsha Quist (Elisabeth Brooks), starts making frank sex talk to Bill right in front of Karen. Donna (Margie Impert), another patient, helpfully points out to Karen that Marsha is a nymphomaniac. To which Karen politely responds something along the lines of "Thanks for the fucking breaking news flash, lady..."
Then weird things start to happen. I mean, even weirder than the whackjobs that Karen now calls her neighbors. The following occur with increasing frequency: (1) scary howling in the woods at night; (2) mutilated cattle corpses turning up in the middle of the paths; (3) Bill disappearing for hours on end and coming back with scratch marks down his back; (4) something creeping around in the bushes outside their cabin; and most terrifying of all: (5) Sam (Slim Pickens), the Colony sheriff, lurching up to Karen and in sickeningly-earnest-gushing-fan-boy-with-a-Kentucky-Fried-Accent mode, telling her "Say, yer somewun faymus, aintcha? Yer much purdier in purson. Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk." Jesus Christ, if this clown came up to me and said that in that fucking voice, I'd be in my car and driving - fast - back to L.A. within five minutes. Forget the werewolves - this guy is the real monster.
Anyhow. what exactly is going on in The Colony? What is behind the cattle killings and the eerie howlings late at night? What secrets are the Colony patients hiding from Karen? And where does Bill go to every night? And why does he come back with scratch marks up the wazoo? Is he porking that whore Marsha? And what happens when Karen's news station coworkers back in Los Angeles, Chris Halloran and Terri Fisher (Dennis Dugan and Belinda Balaski), discover that Eddie's body has disappeared from the L.A. morgue? What does this mean? Wasn't Eddie shot to shit by the useless Keystone Cali Cops? And what is Dr. Wagner true agenda in operating The Colony and bringing Karen to it? Will she live to tell the tale? Or will she end up howling at the moon?
Hard to say for sure. What I know for certain is this: if Karen survives her "vacation," I highly doubt she will venture twenty feet off Sunset Boulevard ever again.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: In 1981, two back-to-back werewolf horror films were released and quickly became instant hits - and eventual classics. The first was THE HOWLING in April 1981, which made its budget many times over at the box-office and was quite profitable. The second was AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON a few months later in August 1981 and was an even bigger hit, with its blend of black comedy and classic horror elements. These two movies often divide horror fans, specifically as to which one is the better film - and it is a very tough call. In the end, though, if we are to judge the film on its scare factor and atmosphere, I would have to give the title to THE HOWLING.
AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON chronicled what happens when two backpacking American college students (Griffin Dunne, David Naughton) are attacked one night on the isolated moors of rural England. One dies, the other survives - with bite marks. The survivor is taken to London, where he recovers with the help of a kindly doctor and a pretty nurse (Jenny Agutter) whom he begins an affair with. Unfortunately, he also starts to... change. I can see why AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON was more popular than THE HOWLING at the box-office, what with its juxtaposition of many crowd-pleasing elements: horror, thriller, mystery, comedy, romance, action. There was pretty much something for everyone here.
With THE HOWLING, however, we have a full-blooded horror film. While director Joe Dante and co-writer John Sayles bring some threads of black humor to the story, they don't let them take over the plot the way AMERICAN WEREWOLF did at certain points. THE HOWLING never loses sight of its focus: to scare the hell out of you. It may not necessarily be the better film out of the two, but it is certainly the better horror film. I hope you folks can see the distinction. While AMERICAN WEREWOLF had its own atmosphere (what with being set in England and all), THE HOWLING has a taut sense of steadily mounting, claustrophobic dread that the former doesn't quite have, despite its scary setpieces.
Some critics have knocked the setting of "The Colony" - an isolated therapeutic village that serves as backdrop for the unfolding events. I think it is perfect because of the off-kilter vibe we get from the very beginning because of it. And when the other narrative shoe drops in the latter part of the story, the strange setting makes perfect sense. In the novel of the same name by Gary Brandner, the place was just an average small town. However, how many times have we seen the "ordinary town that turns out to be evil" in horror films?
By changing it to a more clinical setting, Dante and Sayles are able to gracefully tie-in all the story's subtexts about repressed aggression and animal instinct in the midst of normal human society. In fact, they bring shades of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and THE STEPFORD WIVES into THE HOWLING with this element of an innocent woman arriving at an isolated community with strange people sharing a dark secret between them. Making it more of a therapeutic retreat keeps the story fresh and inventive - and quite spooky.
One thing that THE HOWLING has over the AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is its ominous rural setting - the redwood forests of Northern California have never looked so spooky. Eighty percent of the story unfolds in this remote wilderness setting, and the movie is all the more atmospheric because of it. In AMERICAN WEREWOLF, we had some evocative scenes on dark English moors and in the nearby rural village filled with weird locals, but they were only a few. Most of the story unfolded in the modern capital of London. This in itself isn't a bad thing, as London has its own atmosphere - but it can't compete with a dark forest full of strange shadows and sounds.
Dee Wallace is terrific as Karen White, and I like how she manages to make the role consistently human and vulnerable without turning her into a wimp. Wallace would go on to bigger fame as Elliot's mom in E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL the following year in 1982. She would also end up marrying her male lead here, Christopher Stone, in real-life. Watching them onscreen as Karen and Bill, you can kind of tell something was cooking in the kitchen, so to speak. Wallace and Stone have a very compatible air, and make for a handsome couple.
Patrick Macnee is suitably ambiguous as the mysterious Dr. Wagner, who may know more about Eddie The Mangler than he lets on. Macnee hits the right notes of avuncular warmth and gracious elegance, but also adds an air of distance that makes the character a bit inscrutable - perfectly appropriate for someone with a hidden agenda. Actually, it would probably be more appropriate to say that Dr. Wagner's hidden agenda has hidden agendas of its own. It's a fairly complex and layered role that Macnee essays well.
Dennis Dugan and Belinda Balaski are immensely likable as Chris Halloran and Terri Fisher, Karen's colleagues and friends from the TV station who get pulled into the fray even though they are far away in L.A. Dugan would go on to be an accomplished director himself, stepping behind the camera to helm many of Adam Sandler's comedies like GROWN UPS 1 & 2, HAPPY GILMORE, JUST GO WITH IT, JACK AND JILL, YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN, and more.
As far as Balaski, well, this woman was my biggest crush growing up (right next to Lesley-Anne Down and Kate Jackson), and her character of Terri Fisher is my fave in this film. I like how Terri is the first to intuit that something is wrong at The Colony - and is also the first to connect the events in Los Angeles to this isolated community way up north. The beach sequence where Terri realizes (SPOILERS) Eddie's involvement with Dr. Wagner through a picture that Eddie left behind in his L.A. pad, and her ensuing extended chase scene through the woods and several buildings at The Colony, is now a classic horror setpiece. Balaski starred in the classic PIRANHA, and appeared in GREMLINS a few years later - both directed by Joe Dante. Gorgeous, gorgeous woman with real talent...
The various bizarro inhabitants of The Colony are vividly played by Margie Impert, Slim Pickens, Elisabeth Brooks, Robert Picardo, and many more. Picardo, who would go on to feature prominently in one of my favorite TV shows ever, CHINA BEACH, is particularly scary and effective as the serial killer werewolf, Eddie Quist. These folks and their off-kilter auras are instrumental in creating much of the The Colony's eerie atmosphere. Then there's Kevin McCarthy as Karen's ice-cold boss Fred Francis. McCarthy was the lead in the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and his presence here reinforces THE HOWLING's connection to that movie.
In the end, while AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON may be the more critically and commercially popular film, THE HOWLING is the more effective horror film. And, quite possibly, the more financially successful film: THE HOWLING had a substantially lower budget than AMERICAN WEREWOLF, and made just about the same profit.
Data below:
AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON:
Budget: approximately $10 million.
Final Gross: approximately $30 million.
Expenditure vs. Profit: $10 million/$20 million
THE HOWLING:
Budget: approximately $1 million
Final Gross: approximately $ 18 million
Expenditure vs. Profit: $1 million/$17 million
You folks do the math - and tell me which one was actually the bigger hit...
