Review

Anchorwoman Karen has a meet setup with serial killer Eddie, which just so happens to be in back alley Adult's Shop. On the bright side she gets to watch some porn in a movie booth as Eddie begins his schlock in the dark behind her. Thankfully her Network and the Cops are trailing Karen and Eddie meets an inglorious end as he's gunned down by an overtly nervous patrolman. Karen can't remember what happened in the movie booth, it was so traumatic that she only remembers glimpses of what went down and is having recurrent nightmares about Eddie to such an effect that she goes to pieces on camera.

Enter Dr Wagner, groan, who runs a retreat called "the Colony" that helps people get back on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately for Karen and husband Bill the retreat also harbours a dark secret, one that is only waiting to howl at the moon. Can our traumatised couple get through rehabilitation or will they either become doggy chow or the latest members of the pack? Over rated to some cult classic to others, let's run a jaundice eye over Joe Dante's classic flick.

The Howling attempted to bring the werewolf movie spitting and snarling into the then modern era and pretty much achieved it's gaols but suffered from two major drawbacks. First the vastly superior An American Werewolf In London was released in the same year completely overshadowing Howling and forcing it back into the cult arena. I actually caught the movie at the time in a backstreet cinema, no not a porno one, while the far more illustrious American Werewolf was playing the main street cinemas. Surprisingly Howling was the movie that generated a franchise of increasingly disappointing "in name only" sequels, while American Werewolf was pretty much killed off by the ill fated second movie set in Paris.

The second major problem for Howling, and something that can't be blamed on any external situation, was star Dee Wallace's adamant insistence that her character wouldn't undergo the same lupine transformation as other characters. This simply blew chunks; if you don't want to undergo the makeup work then don't take a fracking role in a werewolf movie! Anyway Wallace does transform on screen, but into a freaking Muppet, she ends up looking like a Hollywood fracking lap dog destroying any chance of Howling nailing a memorable ending. Joe Dante should have walked off set and told Wallace to stick her snotty attitude up her arse, horror is horror baby, if you aren't going to get into the trenches then head over to House of Mouse and make singing teapot schlock.

So that's the bad, on the flip side of the DVD box you get some pretty engrossing lycan times as things move from an almost porno feel in the opening gambit to out and out mayhem as the transformations go down, the silver bullets fly, and our intrepid news workers get whittled down. Dante really gets his man versus animal thing on with a tale that shows trying to civilise something that is meant to be wild is never going to work. It's like a Pygmalion conceit on crack cocaine, and I was digging things right up to the penultimate scene.

A movie that is remembered with fondness that doesn't delivery on the rose tinted glasses hindsight people have.

The movie is permanently in a state of twilight, it's dark yo not sparkling vampire time, with a wash out feeling and a sort of claustrophobic close and personal approach to the filming. There's very few scenes in the entire movie where the camera pulls back to give us an uninterrupted view of the scenery. We're on the way to Grandma's house in the woods and Dante isn't about to broaden our outlook to anything but the path through the dark forest we are on. There's a certain amount of intimacy and immediacy Director Dante has going down in his movie that works to bring the wolf out of the fairytale and into the real world.

While the wolf transformations is what everyone talks up from Howling there's a pretty good "B" grade story going down. A colony of werewolves howling at the moon in seclusion from the modern world simply works like a brought one. Scribes Sayles and Winkless aren't trying for anything above their "B" aesthetic and real nail the requirements to have the audience rocking out to their beat. Don't expect anything beyond a detour into the state of humanity versus the wild, this flick is all about the wolf, and nothing is allowed to stand in the way of that requirement.

The transformations in Howling match the achievements of American Werewolf but Dante goes one step beyond to raise the stakes slightly. We get a severed forearm, scene is worth dialling into the movie for, a dude digging a bullet out of his skull - hope it was a bullet at least, and all manner of attempts at grossing out the audience. We're not exactly talking gore here, but then we aren't talking a tea party at your Auntie's place either.

For people hoping to dial in for the action, bad luck, surprisingly - considering the number of wolves running around the screen - there's not a lot on the kinetic front. This movie spends a whole bunch of time with talking and then a bunch more time with dramatic pauses, then it ends.

Dante throws on a movie full of lupine references, gives it a sleazy porno feel, and immerses everything in that 1980s aesthetic that pretty much keeps it murky and dark. I was for the most part grooving to the flick, great start, but fell off toward the end as the movie makers ran out of money and Wallace got a carrot up her bum about things. While a whole bunch of people are talking words like "cult" and "classic" I'm talking "B" grade and just another 1980s horror flick that has some interesting ideas mixed in. Worth a look to see where the modern werewolf movie came from, and it's got to be said how neutered they have become, but if not having a requirement to watch every movie in the dark genre then give this one a miss and catch American Werewolf instead. A movie that could have been a whole lot better for mine, Dante doesn't try for anything beyond a hometown lycan romp.