The Howling (Special Edition) (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Special Effects	Outstanding
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Well - made, interesting story, good SFX (for the era)
Disadvantages:	Rushed, not loyal to the book

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

When investigative journalist Karen White starts to receive strange phone calls from a man known only as Eddie, she quickly deduces that the voice on the other end of the phone may possibly be that of a notorious serial killer who is terrorising local women. To try and lure the killer out into the open, she agrees to go undercover, continuing to take Eddie's calls and eventually agreeing to meet him. Although wearing a police wire, Eddie lures her to a local sex club where the police signal is broken and Karen is left on her own. In the darkness of the peepshow booth, she is frozen with fear when she finally comes face to face with the killer, and it is only thanks to the quick thinking of two police officers that she escapes the man's clutches. With Eddie dead from a gunshot wound to the head, everyone believes that the dark episode is finally over.

But Karen is unable to recover quite so quickly. Haunted by dark visions of the incident and suffering from a partial amnesia, she is referred to a doctor/psychologist, De George Waggner. Dr Waggner believes that she needs a break from the city and refers her to a small settlement in the woods, known as The Colony. Here, he recommends that she will be able to rest and recuperate, safe in the small, intimate community of like-minded, traumatised individuals. With nothing to lose, she and her husband Bill set off for a break and initially she is happy with what she finds.

But The Colony yields dark secrets. As Karen and her husband drift further apart, a beautiful local woman named Marsha leads the man into temptation. At night, a strange howling in the woods often wakes Karen and she feels as though she is being watched. Back in the city, two of her journalist peers continue to investigate the serial killer case and three days' after the deranged killer was shot dead, his body disappears from the mortuary. As they research the case further, all the clues indicate that they may be dealing with a werewolf - but is it too late to save Karen from the clutches of the lupine fiend?

Gary Brandner's werewolf novel The Howling was the first horror novel that I can recall reading. As a fairly young teenager, the graphic violence and explicit sexual content seemed devilishly enticing, but these things aside, I always thought that the story was excellent too. Genuinely suspenseful, dark and mysterious, it remains one of my favourite novels in the genre. In 1981, three years after his dabble in the water with the Jaws rip-off Piranha, Joe Dante directed the film version of the book, which has since gone on to be an acclaimed episode in werewolf movie history. Indeed, in the following ten years, the film spawned no fewer than five further sequels.

Watching the film now, it is still easy to see why the film was such a hit. Twenty-four years after the film was first released, it remains sharp, atmospheric and enticing. Sure, the special effects would certainly no longer be hailed as groundbreaking, but the film needs to be taken in context. The transition from novel to film is patchy, but The Howling remains an entertaining slice of monster-horror mayhem. Even the movie poster (the cover of the DVD too) is iconic.

One of the things that work particularly well about The Howling is that the events revolve around a genuinely interesting story. The plot flows well, gradually cranking up the tension as more and more clues about what is going on are revealed to cast and audience and as characters start to reveal their true colours. The action in The Colony is offset by the journalistic investigations in the city, but you know it is only a matter of time before the two separate situations collide. Every attempt is made to be eerie too, with Dante using the misty woodland setting to particularly good effect. Notably making an attempt not to be constrained by convention, however, Dante dispenses with some of the lycanthropic limitations of full moons. In The Howling, the shape shifter walks at a time when it suits him, whether it be daylight or not…..

And what of the werewolf? Transforming the man into the monster was always likely to be a technically difficult task to accomplish, but Dante never really shies away from the task. Indeed, he fairly lingers on the transformation. Skin bubbles and bursts, bones break and reform, eyes ooze and mutate and fur and claws seem to sprout from just about every orifice. It's a gruesome, unpleasant and fairly astounding scene, given especially that the film is well over 20 years old. The rest of the film is not overly gory, the director preferring instead to focus on the suspense and drama rather than going for an out and out gore-fest. It's a well-placed decision -The Howling is far more effective as a thriller than a full-on horror film. Dante's love of the genre is evident throughout and if you look closely there are clues everywhere. In the doctor's office, for example, a picture of Lon Chaney adorns the wall, famous for his role as the wolfman in the early days of filmmaking. In Karen's bedroom, a picture of a wolf amidst a flock of sheep sits above the headboard and the novel of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" sits next to a telephone. These are great touches, setting a feeling of (dark) humour and affection amidst an otherwise bleak tale.

Criticisms? The Howling certainly isn't perfect. Much of the darkness in the novel is lost in the transformation to film, due in part to the director cramming so much into what is a fairly short running time. The characters of The Colony are never fully developed and the mystery definitely unravels far more quickly than it does in the book. I rather felt that the sexuality of the story was slightly lost in the movie, too. Marsha's dark, deep sensuality portraying her as more of a psychopathic nympho than a sexual enigma. Karen White, played by Dee Wallace, is a disappointing heroine too, seeming intent to become nothing more than a scream queen. Patrnick Macnee's (The Avengers) portrayal of Dr Waggner is affectionate but generally out of place and the supporting cast of strangers and weirdos could have been exploited far more. The animation employed to portray Marsha and Karen's husband first "climax" results in a very poorly comprised moonlit silhouette that would have been far better omitted than exposing the film's technical limitations.

Nonetheless, The Howling is a competent horror "creature feature", perfectly suited to a dark night huddled up on the sofa. It's exciting, scary, atmospheric and subtly humorous too - a perfect, no-brain movie combination. Set your stopwatch running until the Hollywood remake machine churns out a new version of the movie…

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