Grade: B-
Synopsis: After a traumatizing encounter with a serial killer, a TV newswoman (Dee Wallace) travels to a remote retreat whose residents seem to be hiding something.
The Howling is a visceral update of the werewolf film, bringing a gritty reality to a genre that had grown stale.
Much of the film’s success is due to its opening: a sequence involving lead Dee Wallace seeking to interview a suspected serial killer, but finding something so terrifying, she ends up traumatized and unable to work. What makes it work so well are all the dirty details: the harsh neon, the adult video store where the two eventually meet, the dark peep-show room, the grainy photography; all of it drags the werewolf out of the fog-laden moors an into our modern cities. But not the nice, posh, uptown areas you feel comfortable in, but the seedy underbelly, where monsters just might lurk.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film ranges from pretty good to plain hokey as the setting shifts to a remote retreat in the northern woods. Lead Dee Wallace is underwhelming as a protagonist; coming across a bit too whiny, but Patrick Macnee does a fantastic job opposite her. The special effects are hit and miss too, ranging from some very effective transformation sequences, to some blatant animation-substitutions that just feel jarring.
Ultimately, The Howling may not be as solid as An American Werewolf in London (1981) which came out later the same year, but the near-perfect opening makes it worth a look.
Finally, as an in-joke for fans of the genre, all the retreat members were named after werewolf film directors: George Waggner, director of The Wolf Man (1941), Sam Newfield, director of The Mad Monster (1942), R. William Neil, director of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Lew Landers, director of The Return of the Vampire (1944), Erle Kenton, director of House of Dracula (1945), Charles Barton, director of Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Terry Fisher, director of The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), Jerry Warren, director of Face of the Screaming Werewolf, Fred Francis, director of Legend of the Werewolf (1975), and Jacinto Molina, aka Paul Naschy, who’s probably written and starred in more werewolf film’s than anyone on earth.
