THE HOWLING - SPECIAL EDITION

THE HOWLING originally came out when I was 11, so I didn't actually get to see it until years later - and even then, only with my older sister sitting in the same room to make sure I didn't run screaming into the night. Back then, it was just a cool (and extremely scary) horror film, and most of the subtext of the movie flew right over my head. Watching it now from a distance of more than twenty years, though, I've come to two conclusions: 1) there's nothing better than a horror film produced in the late 70s/early 80s; and 2) THE HOWLING is better than most people realize.

Granted, there's lots of stuff that dates this movie, and even more that would more likely cause a modern 11-year old to howl with laughter rather than howl with fear. It's very much a product of its times, with its hilarious (though not immediately obvious) plot about a self-help colony created by a werewolf psychiatrist (Macnee) to help his fellow lycanthropes cope with their dual nature and the reporter (Wallace) who stumbles upon the whole thing when she's stalked by one of the wolvies posing as a serial killer. The end of the 70s was the heyday of serial killers and things like EST, and they feel pretty odd here if you let yourself think about them too long. And while most of the effects work is still pretty impressive, especially Rob Bottin's full-sized werewolf and the transformation scene with STAR TREK: VOYAGER's own Robert Picardo, some is hard-going, such as the animated wolves in the famous sex scene and the stop-motion wolves in one brief dissolve. But as far as genuine terror goes, this movie's got what it takes.

First of all, forget Jamie Lee Curtis: Dee Wallace is the perfect horror movie heroine. It's noted often in the commentary and in the two documentaries that Wallace often had trouble separating the reality of her character's dilemma from her own, and it shows on screen - this isn't the performance of an actress playing a character who's nearly been killed by a werewolf, this is a woman who has nearly been killed by a werewolf. There's a vulnerability in Wallace that makes us want to reach out and help - and which makes the movie's amazing final scene that much more unsettling. I'd also forgotten about Picardo being the main villain of the movie - you just don't think about VOYAGER's holographic Doctor and this guy at the same time. But of all the wolvies we see on screen - that is, apart from that fantastic one that gives poor Belinda Balaski a hickey - he's the most menacing.

Then there's the direction and photography, a marriage made in heaven between Joe Dante and John Hora. Despite his tutelage at the knee of Mr. Horror-On-The-Cheap himself, Roger Corman (who does a cameo in the movie along with Forrest J. Ackerman), Dante knows how to make a little go a very long way, and only rarely does he resort to any sort of tricky to scare the audience. He also knows how to make horror in the daytime work, as proven by the scene in which Balaski gets chased by a werewolf we hardly ever see in brightest sunlight. John Hora's photography is what really brings it all together, however - his use of gels and fog transforms an otherwise pleasant forest into an eerie setting, and that's never so evident as in this remastered print. When those of us of a certain age look up at a moon covered by clouds and think immediately of THE HOWLING, it's Hora we have to thank for the shiver.

The commentary by Dante, Wallace, Stone, and Picardo is fun and informative, though it may confuse anyone who watches the documentaries on the other side of the disc first to hear Stone here when he's been dead since 1995. Turns out the commentary is from that same year, when the limited edition laserdisc of this movie was released. (This shows how much a novice I am to the whole digital video revolution - I had forgotten laserdiscs could have a commentary track!) The only upshot of this is that when Dante and Wallace are interviewed for the documentaries, they repeat some of the same stuff they said back in 1995 - otherwise, apart from one reference to a movie Dante made with Wallace and Stone that same year, the commentary isn't at all out of date, and Stone's presence is all the more welcome. The "Unleashing The Beast" documentary - five mini-documentaries, totaling 55 minutes in all - is a wealth of information, and interviews with screenwriter John Sayles and Balaski are welcome additions. The contemporary featurette "Making A Monster Movie" is remarkable only in that it features interviews with Rob Bottin (who in 1981 was looking pretty much like a werewolf himself) and Macnee, and the deleted scenes are the sort that make you wish they'd stayed in, as a few of them help make sense of the less obvious parts of the plot. But the real fun here comes from the outtakes, including the scene in which Balaski nearly falls off her perch on Macnee's desk - a scene which Dante admits he left in the movie all the way up to the final edit! Normally I hate what I refer to as "double-headed discs," as they're far easier to damage and they require a microscope to read the print on the miniaturized label, but if doing a double-sided disc is what allows MGM to produce such an extras-filled disc at such a low price, then it's more than worth the inconvenience, especially for a movie like THE HOWLING.