Still HOWLING After All These Years

By: SCOTT COLLURA
Date: Sunday, December 09, 2001

Twenty years after its release, director Joe Dante's THE HOWLING still stands as one of the most memorable werewolf movies ever made, old or newit's right up there, in fact, with THE WOLF MAN, Werewolf of London and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. While the first two picks date back to the classic age of the Universal horrors, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON was sprung upon modern audiences shortly after THE HOWLING, in 1981. The funny thing is, while the John Landis directed AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON tends to be the better remembered of the two, if it weren't for Dante's THE HOWLING, AMERICAN WEREWOLF might never have come to be.

"I think [Landis] possibly could have waited another year or two before he made his picture," says Dante, noting that Landis didn't start his film until he realized he might lose special effects make-up wiz Rick Baker to THE HOWLING production. "I think he was really galvanized into action because he didn't want Rick working on somebody else's werewolf picture. I really do credit the existence of AMERICAN WEREWOLF in 1981 to THE HOWLING in 1980."

Sounds like

some simple friendly competition among fellow filmmakers, with the viewing audience reaping the benefits since the results of this "werewolf race" were two of the better horror comedies to grace screens in years. Like most genre fans, Dante too admires AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDONthough he does note that his film is actually quite dissimilar from the Landis picture.

"It's a different kind of film," he says. "People are always trying to compare those two movies because the transformation techniques are somewhat similar. But it's lit completely differently, and [AMERICAN WEREWOLF has] lots more comedy than our picture. [We wanted] to bring it up to the modern day so that people could enjoy the picture the way people enjoyed them in the '40s and '30s."

With THE HOWLING finally hitting DVD a few months ago, many fans were psyched to finally get their fix of the film in the latest hip format of choice. But others who remember the extensive Laserdisc release from several years back were more than a little disappointed by the new threadbare DVD. Dante himself admits to being a bit bummed about the release, though he reveals that a Special Edition HOWLING DVD is in the works.

"I'm working

with [MGM] on this other DVD which is going to come out next year which is supposedly a Special Edition," explains Dante. "The transfer that they're currently putting out is not a very good transfer which I had nothing to do with. I'm currently trying to upgrade the transfer for the next version because I did a very painstaking transfer for the Laserdisc a couple of years ago which unfortunately is now owned by a different company than [who] owns the rights to the movie, so they can't use that. So it all has to be done over again."

The filmmaker also notes that many of the extra features found on that Laserdisc release will not be returning for the same legal reasons that the transfer cannot be used.

"You won't be seeing any of the extras from the Laserdisc on these DVDs because [of] copyright issues," he says. "And there was a rather lengthy commentary by me and [stars] Dee Wallace and Bob Picardo and the producer and her husband Chris Stone, who's since deceased. So you're not going to get anything like that again. And I don't know what they're going to do in the way of commentary. I might [do another one] if they ask meit just seems a little bit retro to be doing it again. I know they're doing a documentary supposedly."

As disappointing as it is, Dante has seen this sort of problem creep up with other pictures in the past, particularly with semi-small films made during the same time period as THE HOWLING.

"It's all [IMG4R]about these little movies, like these AVCO Embassy pictures that were made in the early '80s," he clarifies. "The company went out of business and the rights have ping-ponged around over the past twenty years to several different companies. The pictures aren't even all owned by the same place anymore. And some of them own just the video rights and some of them own just the theatrical rights and some of them just own the foreign rights. When we did the [HOWLING] Laserdisc it was very, very difficult to find the soundtrackto find the original sound elements. I mean, they were just in Singapore or someplace. For this new DVD they want to do a [5.1] remix, and they can't do it unless they can find the original tracksand as far as I know they haven't found them. They're still looking for part of the negative!"

Despite the quagmire of issues that such legal and technical complications can cause for a picture like THE HOWLING, Dante feels that for that film, at least, the copyright issues might finally be at an end.

"MGM apparently now does own most everything about it," he says.

Clearly, the director has managed to keep tabs on the status of his film after all these years, even if he hasn't had any real say in the ownership or legal aspects of the property. But one area in which Dante admits to being quite ignorant is the realm of the myriad sequels to THE HOWLINGthere have been some half dozen such follow-ups to the original film, though most have been of the direct-to-video schlock variation.

"I haven't [IMG5L]really kept up my scholarship on the subject," Dante laughs. "It is hard to. You don't even know where they're going to come out of, where they're going to show up, or who's making them, or who owns it anymore. I did see the second one because that one was released theatrically, and I was more or less amazed by it. The thing that really seemed odd to me was that they misinterpreted the ending of the [original film] and decided to use as the premise that this woman had turned into a werewolf on TV, but nobody had seen her and that it was never broadcast! And it's like, well, you better not run this on a double bill with the other picture because people are going to say, 'What happened!?'"

Apparently, Dante's lack of enthusiasm for the HOWLING sequels is shared by at least one other well-known veteran of the horror genre.

"When Christopher Lee and I worked together years later, one of the first things he said to me [was], 'I'm so sorry about HOWLING 2. One never knows what one is getting into.'"