(Werewolf) 8********skulls

*Blood* *Nudity* *No Strong Language* *Sexual Situations* *Violent* *Gory*

1980/Color/90 Min./Embassy Home Entertainment & Avco Embassy Pictures & International Film Investors & Wescom Productions/Rated R

Director.............Joe Dante (Gremlins, Piranha, The Twilight Zone)

Screenplay.......John Sayles & Terence H. Winkless

Music................Pino Donaggio

Producer...........Michael Finnell & Jack Conrad

Executive Producer.....

Based on the Novel by Gary Brandner (The Howling II)

Dramatis Personae

Karen White.........Dee Wallace (Alligator II, Cujo, E.T., Popcorn)

Bill Neil................Christopher Stone (The Annihilators, Cujo, Blue Movies)

Dr. Waggner.........Patrick Macnee (The Avengers-TV, Waxwork)

Chris....................Dennis Dugan (Can't Buy Me Love, Norman..Is That You?)

Terry Fisher..........Belinda Belaski

Sam Newfield......Slim Pickens (Blazing Saddles, Dr. Strangelove, 1941)

Eric Cantor...........John Carradine (The Bees, The Sentinal, The Nesting)

Fred Francis.........Kevin McCarthy (Dark Tower, Ghoulies III, Piranha)

Marsha.................Elisabeth Brooks

Eddie...................Robert Picardo (Explorers, Gremlins 2, 976-EVIL)

Donna..................Margie Impert

Charlie Barton.....Noble Willingham (The Last Boy Scout, Pastime)

Jerry Warren.......James Murtaugh (The Rosary Murders)

Lew Landers.......Jim McKrell (Love at the Top)

Older Cop............Kenneth Tobey (Davy Crockett, Elfego Baca, The Thing)

Critique: The pace isn't what it could be but the werewolf transformation lives up to the billing as do the other effects although why anyone would wait around for the lengthy transformation escaped us. The ending falls just short of great. Why introduce humor as the main element so late in the picture,. Certainly the cliches and the campy music as well as the clips from Lon Chaney's Wolfman lighten the entire picture, but we were on the edge of our seats ready to be horrified and had to settle for entertainment. Sorry werewolves, that's gonna cost you one skull

Plot Summary: The "flotsam and jetsam" of New York City that have gotten where they're going are the back drop for a special police assignment by wired KDHT-TV reporter Karin White in search of a killer "the Mangler" obsessed with her. She meets the suspect at a violent porno film (portraying rape) but the police (Happy Days Officer Kirk still a cop 20 years later) lose her signal. They arrive in the nick of time and pump the unarmed but no longer quite human suspect, Eddie, full of lead. In the murdered stalker's studio, the police encounter enough artistic evidence to have locked him up. One detective wonders of slow Eddie's landscapes, "Is that a real place?" The simple psychologist, Dr. George Waggner (Get it, opera fans?), brought in by the police, explains it's nonrational, right side of the brain stuff. Bill "Knock Down" Neil, a Stanford man, is the concerned husband who accompanies Karin to spend a few weeks at "the colony", the doctor's own psychological resort, after she can't have sex and freaks out live on Channel 6 update news. the psychologist recommends that she Sexist/racist news General manager. where Dee hears wolves. A visit to a local morgue shows the body of " missing and the chamber all bashed up from the inside. A mangled cow. The chief of police leads the patients on a coyote hunt. Meanwhile the detectives are on the cold trail of a body snatcher, Eddie's missing from the morgue investigating an occult book store, where they are informed that the only way to kill the damn things is with silver bullets. One of the locals along on the hunt is kind of a wolfy man and he sends Bill to his sister to get his rabbit cooked. When he flees her advances, he is bitten by a stray dog or something and has a sudden change in his vegetarian tastes. I get hungry enough I'll eat anything" as he tears into a piece of barbecue. He then arises in the middle of the night and has a sexual situation with the wolfy woman and becomes drooling a wolfy man. The detectives, visiting Bill and Karin, discover that the landscape of the colony matches those in the drawings, which, along with the discovery of more drawings and happy faces at the colony, may not be in their best interests. Karin's paranoia and jealousy are becoming critical while the coyotes become bigger and more aggressive. Its about time to check that occult shop to see if they still have that case of .306 silver bullets. Why are there Happy faces all over the place?