{"id":16116,"date":"2021-03-15T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=16116"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:16:58","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:16:58","slug":"1981-the-year-of-the-were-wolf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/1981-the-year-of-the-were-wolf\/","title":{"rendered":"1981: The Year of the (Were-)Wolf"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Los Angeles television journalist sent to a back-to-nature community to recover from a traumatic experience learns it\u2019s a secret haven for werewolves. A Polish count executed in the 16th century for being a werewolf is revived in the present day and seeks an end to his eternal torment. A New York homicide detective investigating a series of bizarre murders discovers they\u2019re the work of Native American spirit wolves protecting their ancestral lands. An American backpacking through the north of England survives an animal attack that his best friend didn\u2019t and is told he\u2019ll turn into a monster at the next full moon. A New Jersey high school football star abruptly leaves town after being bitten by a Romanian werewolf and returns 20 years later posing as his own son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do these scenarios have in common? They\u2019re the plots of five films released between March and October 1981, ranging in scale from the generously budgeted An American Werewolf in London<\/em> and Wolfen <\/em>to scrappy underdog Full Moon High<\/em>. Even Spain got in on the act with El retorno del Hombre Lobo<\/em>, the eighth in a series of films starring weightlifter-turned-horror star Paul Naschy as nobleman-turned-werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. At the head of the pack, however, was Joe Dante\u2019s The Howling<\/em>, which paid tribute to the classics of the genre while marking out its own territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since Universal\u2019s Wolf Man<\/em> series set the standard, the methods used to turn men into beasts hadn\u2019t evolved much beyond what makeup artist Jack Pierce engineered in the \u201840s. Following Lon Chaney Jr.\u2019s final turn as Larry Talbot in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein<\/em>, werewolf pictures became few and far enough between that audiences didn\u2019t seem to notice they all relied on the same tricks: cutaways, lap dissolves, and the gradual accumulation\/removal of yak hair. From AIP\u2019s I Was a Teenage Werewolf<\/em> to Hammer\u2019s The Curse of the Werewolf<\/em> to Naschy\u2019s \u201cHombre Lobo,\u201d the emphasis (if there was one) was on making the monster\u2019s final look distinctive, not the intermediate stages. That would change as the \u201980s dawned, though, thanks to the efforts of two special-effects makeup innovators: Rick Baker and Rob Bottin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Baker had been pondering how to effect a werewolf transformation without camera tricks ever since the days of Schlock<\/em>, the directorial debut of John Landis, who hired the then-20-year-old to provide the costume for its \u201cmissing link\u201d creature and told Baker all about the next film he wanted to make while being made up as the \u201cSchlockthropus\u201d every day. (With such a low budget — $61,000 in 1971 dollars — Landis had little choice but to play his own creation.) For Landis, every job after Schlock<\/em> was a step toward getting An American Werewolf in London<\/em>, a script he wrote in 1969, greenlit. For Baker, every subsequent show allowed him to hone his skills, a process fast-tracked nearly a decade later when one-time prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Bottin brought him in as a consultant on The Howling<\/em>, a \u201cgo\u201d project seemingly destined to steal American Werewolf<\/em>\u2019s thunder. Then The Blues Brothers<\/em> became Landis\u2019s third hit in a row and his dream project was bankrolled to the tune of $10 million, $300,000 of which was earmarked for the transformation sequence he and Baker had been batting about for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This left Bottin to tackle The Howling<\/em>\u2019s big moment by himself and he turned it into a literal showstopper, taking three whole minutes to turn serial killer Eddie Quist into a hulking, two-legged wolf man. When the film had its New York premiere on March 13, 1981, audiences had literally never seen anything like it, and what had been tried-and-true for four decades was old hat overnight. The other thing Dante and screenwriter John Sayles (who previously teamed up for Piranha<\/em><\/a>) gave viewers was the uncanny sensation they were watching a werewolf movie in which werewolf movies existed. There\u2019s even a scene where two characters are watching The Wolf Man<\/em> on TV and one is moved to say \u201cIt\u2019s only a movie.\u201d (This comes after they\u2019ve paid a visit to Walter Paisley\u2019s occult bookstore<\/a> to bone up on werewolf lore.) This is echoed by the moment in American Werewolf <\/em>where recently bitten backpacker David Kessler and British nurse Alex Price are in bed and he asks if she\u2019s seen The Wolf Man<\/em>. When Alex asks if it\u2019s the one with Oliver Reed (i.e. The Curse of the Werewolf<\/em>), David corrects her, then follows up with his belief that a werewolf can only be killed by someone who loves him, a conceit Paul Naschy also picked up and ran with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Released in Barcelona on April 10 (the same day The Howling<\/em> went into general release in the States), El retorno del Hombre Lobo<\/em> was just about the last hurrah for the Universal-inspired werewolfery that had been Naschy\u2019s stock in trade for well over a decade. It\u2019s even something of a remake of one of his earlier Waldemar Daninsky films, 1971\u2019s La noche de Walpurgis<\/em>, a.k.a. The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman<\/em>. (For its part, El retorno del Hombre Lobo<\/em> was initially screened in the U.S. as The Craving<\/em>, a nonsensical title later supplanted by Night of the Werewolf<\/em>.) Combining the legend of Elisabeth Bathory with elements of Mario Bava\u2019s Black Sunday<\/em><\/a> and Hammer\u2019s vampire cycle, Naschy brings Waldemar into the 20th century, but keeps his transformations firmly rooted in the cutaway-and-lap-dissolve mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

No such measures are necessary in Wolfen<\/em>, the only fiction feature for Woodstock<\/em> director Michael Wadleigh, since its supernatural wolf creatures are emphatically not shapeshifters. (Edward James Olmos\u2019s character does unnerve Albert Finney\u2019s detective by stripping down and pretending to wolf out, though.) Had it not come out between The Howling<\/em> and American Werewolf<\/em>, Wolfen<\/em> likely wouldn\u2019t be lumped in with them, but it\u2019s still worth seeking out for its gritty sense of realism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bringing up the rear (in more ways than one) is Full Moon High<\/em>, which idiosyncratic writer\/director Larry Cohen fills with so many broad jokes, it plays like an overt parody of the films that came before it. (Instead of mauling his victims to death, perpetual teenage werewolf Tony Walker merely nips them in the butt.) It even includes a scene where Tony rents a camera to film himself turning into a werewolf so he can have irrefutable proof, much like Karen in The Howling<\/em> transforms on live television to prove werewolves exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not the only thing Full Moon High<\/em> and The Howling<\/em> have in common, as both films boast art direction by Robert A. Burns (most famous for his work on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/em>). And Cohen\u2019s punning newspaper headlines (from the London Express<\/em>: \u201cJack the Nipper Still at Large\u201d) are a natural extension of the cans of Wolf Chili, bottle of Wolfe\u2019s Ulcer and Acidosis Treatment, and paperback of Allen Ginsberg\u2019s Howl<\/em> seen in The Howling<\/em>. Finally, Tony\u2019s complaint while he\u2019s transforming for the first time (\u201cGod, this is worse than a root canal\u201d) comes from the same place as Eddie\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m going to give you a piece of my mind\u201d and David\u2019s apology to his dead friend (\u201cI didn\u2019t mean to call you a meatloaf, Jack\u201d) in American Werewolf<\/em>. Since the films put so much of the focus on their bone-popping, hair-raising transformations, it\u2019s only natural they would emphasize how painful the process is. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn American Werewolf in London\u201d is currently streaming on HBO. \u201cFull Moon High\u201d can be seen on Amazon Prime Video. \u201cThe Howling\u201d and \u201cWolfen\u201d are available to rent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was something in the air \u2013 or in the moon \u2013 40 years ago that gave us several classic werewolf flicks, including \u2018The Howling\u2019 and \u2018American Werewolf in London.\u2019 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":16119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399],"tags":[1429,1422],"class_list":["post-16116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","tag-happy-birthday","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22549,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16116\/revisions\/22549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}