Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 5

 

Hotel Transylvania

2012

D: Genndy Tartakovsky

**********

Pros: Animation, Some funny jokes, Werewolves look cute, Surprisingly good voice acting from Adam Sandler

Cons: Crude humor, Hackneyed romantic plot, Bad music

      I never found Adam Sandler funny.  I know a lot of people talk about the days when he was “funny,” but they seem to be referring to this.  That, along with its uninspired premise, makes Hotel Transylvania look like a perfectly missable animated film.  I went to see this movie mostly because it was Genndy Tartakovsky’s directorial debut (well, that and the werewolves look cute), and I’m a fan of his.  I don’t like how imitation of his style has made flat, drab animation the norm on TV.  However, he has earned my respect with Clone Wars, Samurai Jack and Symbionic Titan.  Perhaps he will inject some quality into this project.

      The movie’s plot begins with Count Dracula preparing for his daughter Mavis’ (Selena Gomez) 118^th birthday party.  She has lived most of her life in a massive hidden fortress called Hotel Transylvania, which Dracula had designed to protect her after humans killed his wife Martha (Jackie Sandler) and provide a safe haven for all monsters seeking relaxation.  He has promised her that she can venture out into the world on this day, but he is very overprotective and wants her to stay safe in the hotel.  Therefore he stages a fake human attack on Mavis in a fake village which convinces her to stay put.  In addition to the usual guests, Dracula’s friends show up to celebrate the event, and the main cast consists mostly of Sandler’s Happy Madison cronies.  They are Frankenstein (Kevin James), his wife Eunice (Fran Drescher), Murray the mummy (CeeLo Green), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), Wayne the werewolf (Steve Buscemi) and his heavily pregnant wife Wanda (Molly Shannon).  I’m not a very big fan of celebrity voice acting, but Sandler’s is surprisingly good in this movie.  Really surprisingly.  He makes a great Dracula impression and he acts in it as well.  You can kind of tell that it’s Sandler, but it’s good.  In fact, most of the cast is also surprisingly innocuous.  Selena Gomez is a blatant celebrity voice who’s mostly there so that the movie can have bad music, as is CeeLo Green.  Green sings a song so heavily Auto-Tuned that I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not, but his voice is distinctive and fits the character well.  Spade’s Invisible Man has one crude sight gag, but he’s mostly okay.  Frankenstein ends up having the worst fart joke in the movie.  He frames it on Murray while the latter is trying to hit on an attractive female mummy (mummies are a species), producing a large cloud of green gas and effectively cockblocking poor Murray from what might have been his soulmate. 

     The most consistently irritating character is Jonathan (Andy Samberg, whom you know from parody music videos that were funny the first three times you heard the mand annoying ever since), a human who bumbles his way into Dracula’s sanctuary.  Like Mater from Cars, Jonny is a nice guy so it feels bad to hate him, but his slang is pretty grating.  A panicked Dracula dresses him up as a Frankenstein monster to keep him from frightening the guests, but things get complicated when Jonny and Mavis fall in love.  They “zing,” which is what vampires do when they fall in love because we all know “love at first sight” is an immutable law.  He does some nice things for Mavis, like showing her her first sunrise, which is a remarkably bad idea.  Their screen time together is disappointingly low for a movie that revolves around their romance, and their chemistry is lacking.  In fact, most of conflict in this movie is between Dracula and Jonathon as the former tries to get the latter to leave her.  For all Mavis’ involvement in the plot that revolves around her, she might as well be a suitcase with unknown contents.   

      The female characters of this movie seem to get put into the background with little active involvement.  Considering that one of those characters is voiced by Fran Drescher, that may not be such a bad thing.  Still, you’d think we’d at least get more clichéd scenes of Mavis venting her feelings to her girlfriends.  Even Dracula’s male friends get utterly pointless scenes, like when they’re being assholes to zombie versions of classical composers because they want to perform at the party.  This culminates in a a very early 90’s cliché scene in which their supposedly lamer performance is shown up by Jonny’s “cooler” song number.  In the end, Dracula enlists their help to solve the movie’s problem while their wives don’t do anything.  But then again, I suppose I’d rather watch a movie that underrepresents women than have to listen to Fran Drescher’s voice for 90 minutes.*

      Despite this, Hotel Transylvania pretty much throws every annoying romance cliché in the book.  Overprotective parent of female character?  Check.  Someone weaves Web of Lies and eventually gets caught in it?  Check.  Love at first sight?  Justified by magic.  One of the lovers is convinced that the relationship cannot work and therefore reluctantly breaks up with her while holding back tears?  Check.  Someone gets chased down in an airplane?  Checkmate.  The only thing missing is a love triangle.

      When dealing with Jonny, Dracula seems reasonably tolerant for someone who fears humans for having murdered his wife.  You’d think he’d be more vicious, but he mostly treats Jonny as an annoyance until he eventually begins to hit it off with him.  They form a friendship, but then Dracula uses that to finally talking Jonny into leaving Mavis.  Unfortunately, Jonny’s humanity comes to the attention of what passes for an antagonist in this movie.  Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz), the hotel’s chef, finds out and tries to kidnap him in order to make him into a dish.  It results in a well-animated but pointless chase scene and Dracula freezes him with his powers.  He eventually overcomes this and publicly reveals the secret at a party where Jonny reluctantly rejects Mavis at Dracula’s behest and leaves the hotel.  Also, Dracula lets slip to her that he staged the village incident, making her angry with him as well.  He later tries to comfort his heartbroken daughter over the breakup when she reveals to him that she and Jonny “zinged.”  It’s established in this scene (which is surprisingly poignant in its execution) that this only happens once between two destined lovers.  She theorizes that Jonny didn’t “zing” back, and that she can never find love.  Dracula, realizing he did the wrong thing, gathers his friends to track Jonny down and bring him back.  Of course this results in chasing down an airplane, what kind of movie do you think this is? 

     Along the way the guys are helped by a group of humans performing a monster-themed parade.  The humans’ acceptance of them makes it apparent that they no longer have to worry about this prejudice any more.  Not because people have just gotten more tolerant of diverse races nowadays, but because they just love the old Universal monster movies and think it’s “cool” when they find out that monsters do exist, which doesn’t make sense.  I mean love Darth Vader as a character, but that doesn’t mean I want him to be real.  Recent fiction may have trained us to see such monsters as groups of people, but doesn’t apply to the character of Dracula, who is consistently depicted as a symbol of evil.  I would have played this for laughs with the combination of Dracula’s characterization of being out of touch with the present.  Dracula doesn’t just have the cultural hurdle of being an archetypal monster, he’s universally maligned as an individual.  I somehow doubt that this movie will change any minds about that.  They arrive at the airport only to find that Jonny’s plane has already taken off.  Dracula decides to risk his life by turning into a bat and chasing the plane down in broad daylight.  I must point out that this movie’s Dracula is the toughest heliophobic vampire I’ve ever seen.  He’s catching up to a jet while trailing and small burning pieces of himself because having Andy Samberg for a son-in-law is apparently worth that.  Dracula takes control of the plane and lands it back in Transylvania.  Jonny and Mavis are reunited and the movie ends happily with a closing credits sequence that features Tartakovsky’s 2D animation style, because the only way people will let you get away with 2D on the big screen nowadays.

      I must say that Tartakovsky adapted to 3D animation superbly.  The animation looks good and has the detail needed in 3D while being stylized, lively and zany.  I particularly like the animation on Dracula, and his body language is part of the things that make him a surprisingly likable character.   Genndy is great at sight gags, comic timing and choreography, which makes HT visually fun to watch for all its flaws.  While I love zanily stylized animation tropes, people tend to mistake them for actual humor too much, which is one of the things that holds Western Animation back.  There are some good jokes scattered here and there, but there are also many crude ones as well as one sadly predictable Twilight dig.  Character designs are good.  Murray looks cool, and I like how the Invisible Man’s glasses change shape to reflect his expressions.  I especially liked the look of the werewolves.  They looked the way I expect werewolves to look, although in a cute art style.  It’s funny that of all the werewolf movies I’ve reviewed so far, this silly fart cartoon is one of the few in which I actually approve of the design.

The werewolf kids look adorable.  I like how their design is reminiscent of the classic wolfman while adding a muzzle.  It also helps that Steve Buscemi and Molly Shannon are probably the two most reputable cast members of this movie (Shannon’s presence adds a creepy element if you consider how disturbing her character from NBC’s Hannibal was), and the werewolves get a disproportionate amount of good dialogue.  However, they’re not the best parents.  While Wayne occasionally makes impotent attempts to correct the pups, Wanda allows her extremely naughty children to run rampant throughout the hotel.  I certainly don’t subscribe to Malthusianism, they shouldn’t be trying to make more babies when they clearly can’t control the insane amount of children they already have.  Unfortunately, this results in some of the pups urinating in public, and by the way, movie, thanks for lingering on that shot of an animate sponge gleefully absorbing that yellow puddle for five whole seconds.  That was truly necessary.  One of the funnier moments in the movie is when their daughter Winnie (Sadie Sandler, who also voices young Mavis) uses her sense of smell to tell the guys where Jonny went very specifically.  She turns out to be the most active female character in the movie.

      Hotel Transylvania has plenty of good jokes and animation, but it’s brought down by a poor plot and crude humor.  Genndy deserved a better project than this for his first film, but I’m happy it was successful, since it will probably help his career.  Had it not been, Hollywood would not have learned to stop making stupid cartoons, but instead never give the director another chance.  Fortunately Tartakovsky is slated to make an upcoming Popeye movie, a project which he seems passionate about.  The sneak preview looks promising.  

*Okay, that was immature.  Dissing on Fran Drescher for her voice is unprofessional and John Simon-like.  It didn't help, though, that the entirety of her characters was accusing humans of having loud and annoying voices despite her own.       

QUOTES

[Dracula is walking past shrunken head door signs]

SHRUNKEN HEADS: Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.

WITCH: Good morning, Count.

SHRUNKEN HEAD (LUENELL}: Mae, clean this room.

[The werewolves have exited the taxi at the hotel]

WAYNE: Yeah, it’s a mess back there. [hands zombie busboy money]

WAYNE: Hey, kids, reel it in.  You’re only supposed to make Mom and Dad miserable.

[To Wayne]

DRACULA: You’re family looks beautiful.  Let me just clean up their filth. 

DRACULA: [aside] And Mavis.  If she saw you, she would know that I lied.  No!

JONNY: Who’s Mavis?  Is this her room?  I’m good with a roommate.  I had six brothers growing up, so I can totally share.

DRACULA: [aside] Can’t kill him.  It would set monsters back hundreds of years.

JONNY: One time in Hamburg I roomed with this dude who I caught stealing my shampoo.  I said, “Whoah, man,” and he threw a flower pot at me, but he was cool.

[seeing a female skeleton]

JONNY: Whoah, check that costume out!  Wow, seriously, I just have to ask you, how are you pulling this off?  I mean it looks so real, like I can just put up my hand right [puts hand between her ribs] through…

[female skeleton gasps and slaps him]

MALE SKELETON (ROB RIGGLE): What do you think you’re doing?

JONNY: [realizing that he’s in a room full of monsters] Uhh…she’s-she’s real…you’re real!

JONNY: “I’m Dracula, Blah!  Blah-blah!”

DRACULA: I've never said that in my life. 'Blah, blah-blah.' I don't know where that comes from.

JONNY: Wow, No one ever tried to eat me before, except for that one weird guy at a Slipknot concert.

DRACULA: Listen to me, you are never to return here. Your are to stay away and tell no humans about this place. Or I will track you down, and suck every ounce of blood from you body, until you look like a deflated whoopee cushion!

MR. FLY (CHRIS PARNELL): Wait, I speak Frozen. 

MAVIS: Dad, can you do me a favor?

DRACULA: Yes!  Yes, of course, darling, anything.

MAVIS: Will you erase my mind?

DRACULA: No no no no.  I won’t do that.  There’s too much I want you to remember.

MAVIS: You were right, Dad.  The humans hate us. 

DRACULA: Sweetheart.  There are so many eligible monsters out there.  Y-you’re so young…  What is it?  What are you reading?

[Mavis hands Dracula a booklet reading “True Love – by Mom – For your 118^th birthday”]

MARTHA: Two lonely bats crashed in the night.  They felt a zing.  Love at first sight.  They knew right then they would be husband and wife.  For a zing only happens once in your life.  Your zing will come my love.  Cherish it.  Love, Mommy.”

MAVIS: I thought we zinged, Dad. 

DRACULA: [gasps] You and Jonny?

MAVIS: I…guess it was only me.  But you should be happy, Dad.  There’s no reason for me to leave.  I have no more dreams.  I’m just like you now. 

WAYNE: What’s this minibar charge?

WANDA: Honey, the kids through the minibar out the window.

WAYNE: And that’s our fault?

DRACULA: I need you to help me find Jonny.

WAYNE: The human?!  He could have killed us!

MURRAY: He touched my guitar!

GRIFFIN: He put his hand in my mouth to see if it would disappear. 

WAYNE: Winnie!  Front and center!

[Winnie enters and smells Jonny’s shirt]

WINNIE: He got into a car.  A ’86 Fiat.  It needs a little transmission work, but otherwise okay.  It drove through town to the airport.  Flight 497.  8AM departure. 

DRACULA: That’s in fifteen minutes!

WINNIE: Seat 23A.  He ordered the vegetarian meal.

[The guys’ car is blocked by sheep]

WAYNE: I got this one. [jumps out of the car and eats sheep offscreen while the other watch in shock]  What?  Now there’s no sheep in the road.  Let’s go. 

Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 4

 

An American Werewolf in London

1981

D: John Landis

**********

Pros: Comic Relief, Great Direction, Some good characters, Restraint in building up the creature…

Cons: …until we see what the damn thing looks like, Confused tone, Arguably an idiot plot

     Wolfen and The Howling were also released in 1981, but this movie seems to be the cream of that crop.  I find this movie a bit hard to critique since it has its flaws, and its comedic elements are hard to weigh against its serious aspects.  In fact, I was on record of not liking this movie until I rewatched it for this review.  I know “contrarian” remains on my blog’s title banner as sort of a bad punchline, and I like to focus on my more unpopular opinions.  However, people like this movie and not without good reason.  Rick Baker’s Oscar-winning effects and makeup are great, and the comic relief is such that you have to watch it twice to appreciate it.  The movie does have a bit of a tone problem though.  It shifts between humor and horror, which would be fine if it had fewer flaws.  The serious aspects of the movie prevent me from simply brushing them off.  It’s not quite like Army of Darkness, where anything goes.  

     The movie begins with American students David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) hitchhiking in the Yorkshire moors.  They enter a pub called “The Slaughtered Lamb” and notice an upright pentagram on the wall.  The patrons (Brian Glover, Lila Kaye, David Schofield, Rik Mayall)  become cryptic and passive-aggressive when asked about it, and the boys decide to leave, walking into the open during a full moon.  After a suspenseful scene in which they are pursued by an unseen creature, Jack is attacked and mauled to death by a werewolf, which also bites David.  David is temporarily saved by the bar patrons, who arrived to kill the creature after some debate.  The last thing he remembers is seeing a naked man’s body in the place of the creature.  I can’t help but wonder that if these people didn’t want the two boys to venture out into the open when a werewolf was around, then why did they act like that to them?  The scene establishes good chemistry between David and Jack, the cinematography is great, the gore is satisfying, and Landis displays good restraint in depicting the monster.

      David comes to in a London hospital being treated by Dr. Hirsch (John Woodvine) and Nurse Alex Price (Jenny Agutter).  He encounters an amusing cast of characters that includes the hilariously insensitive American embassador Mr. Collins (Frank Oz).  He is interviewed by Inspector Villiers (Don McKillop) and his buffoonish but open-minded partner Sergeant McManus (Paul Kember).  Villiers insists that he was attacked by a madman rather than an animal.  David begins to question his sanity, and this is made worse when he encounters the undead soul of Jack, who tells him that he is werewolf.  His dead friend informs him he must die before he kills more people.  His victims are doomed to wander in limbo until the wolf’s bloodline is broken.  The idea that a werewolf’s kills continue to haunt him is quite clever.  I like how this doesn’t waste the two characters’ chemistry despite one’s death at the beginning.  It’s too bad Landis wasn’t around to consult on G.I. Joe: Retaliation.  It would have been interesting if one of the undead had concluded he was hellbound, and thus was motivated to keep the curse going as much as possible, being in conflict with those who want to be freed from limbo.  The makeup effects on Jack are great, and he goes through more advanced states of decay with each apparition. 

       David falls in love with Alex, even though she should be more wary of such an emotionally disturbed, if nice, man.  Here’s a problem I have with the plot: while it’s understandable that David doesn’t want to believe what he’s going through, he’s arguably being irresponsible.  He got bitten by a huge creature that immediately turned into a human upon death, and his dead friend rose from the grave to tell him in no uncertain terms that he is a werewolf.  He is either hallucinating rather critically or he has seen actual evidence that he is a werewolf.  Neither of these justify brushing off the problem as he just did.  At the very least he needs professional help.  Instead he moves in with Alex and has sex with her.  Apparently, lycanthropy is not transmitted sexually in this movie, even though I tend to think that that would make sense.  While Alex is at work, he transforms painfully into a werewolf in a celebrated scene.  Rick Baker's effects here are great, and the lack of a true reveal of the resultant monster also demonstrates good restraint. The scene serves the story well.  While I like the metamorphosis effects better in The Howling, the overall scene is better in American Werewolf because of Naughton’s acting.  The agony he sells is as important than any effect. 

      As a werewolf, he kills a total of six people that night.  One could argue that his flippant treatment of the problem makes him culpable for these deaths.  A particularly well-executed scene takes place when he kills one man (Michael Carter) in the London Underground.  The scene is superbly shot, not showing the creature up to its end, and even then we  only see a frighteningly subtle glimpse of the creature.  Landis directs a horror movie surprisingly well.  He wakes up naked in a zoo with no memory of the event, and this leads to some funny moments, including his stealing balloons from a young boy (Rufus Deakin) to cover his nakedness.  His humorous demeanor in this scene unfortunately clashes with what would be a logical reaction: horror that he has either turned into a werewolf or undergone a werewolf-themed fugue state.  He should be very worried about what he has done during this night.  He doesn’t put two and two together until he stumbles upon the news of the murders.  Then he gets it.  It’s hard to relate to the protagonist when he lacks common sense. 

      More likable is Dr. Hirsch.  He starts out the movie being amusingly witty, but as he begins to see holes in David’s case, he investigates.  When travels to the countryside to visit “The Slaughtered Lamb,” but is brushed off by all the patrons except one, who tells him the secret.  He still doesn’t believe this talk of lycanthropy, but he knows that something is terribly wrong and tries to track down David to get him to safety.  He turns out to be one of the stronger and more likable protagonists in the film, but he’s a secondary character who ends up having little effect on the story’s outcome.

      That night, a distressed David is led into (for some reason) an adult theater by Jack, who introduces him to the souls of the people he killed that night.  After they try to talk him into committing suicide, he remains in the theater until he transforms again into a werewolf.  Unfortunately, we finally have to see what he looks like as one. 

It looks more cute than intimidating.  The shape is rather awkward and clumsy, not to mention fluffy.  The legendary Rick Baker, for all the skill he possesses at his craft, made the questionable decision to base the design off his Keeshond, and Keeshonden are not terribly threatening dogs.  They are adorable, rolly-polly little balls of fluff that are so friendly that they are often used as therapy dogs.  Maybe I owe an apology to The Company of Belgian Tervurens.  It’s one of the most absurd attempts to pass off something cute as something scary, though I suppose I’ve seen worse.

      David then goes on a bloody rampage in Piccadilly Circus, which results in some very well-executed deaths of many people including Inspector Villiers and a guy played by John Landis.  Alex arrives on the scene and attempts to calm the creature down when the latter is cornered in an alley.  Her pleas momentarily reach him, but he reverts and is shot by policemen.

      An American Werewolf in London does seem a bit confused in its tone, but it’s never boring.  The dialogue is very funny, and consistently so.  It’s not the type of humor that you appreciate in one viewing, so I suggest watching it twice.  Fans of good comedy will love the witty dialogue, and fans of horror will love the violence, effects and atmosphere (even if werewolf fans will be disappointed by the creature design).  The design is difficult to pass of as a joke because of how earnest the effects and direction in this movie are.  The visuals are very good, with wonderful scenery and effects.  Landis truly shows his skills as a director in this movie.  He also introduces many clever ideas into the story.  However, there are many things to criticize about the characters and story.  I would like to say that this is a horror comedy that subverts and deconstructs audience expectations while remaining affectionate to the genre it’s spoofing.  This would justify the serious buildup to a goofy creature reveal, but this theory is somewhat discredited in my eyes by the depressing ending.   Still, if one doesn’t take it too seriously, it’s a very entertaining movie.  I can see why this has stood the test of time better than its contemporaries.       

     

    

 QUOTES 

JACK: Thanks for the ride, sir.  You have lovely sheep.

FARMER: Boys, just keep off the moors and stick to the roads, and the best of luck.

DAVID: Thanks again.  [to sheep] We’ll miss you.

JACK: Bye, girls.

MR. COLLINS: These dumbass kids.  They never appreciate what you do for them.

PORTER (ALBERT MOSES): Don’t ask me.  I’m just an orderly.  I move things around.

JACK: [appearing to David as a ghost for the first time] Can I have a piece of toast?

DAVID: I will not be threatened by a walking meatloaf.

DAVID: [transforming into a werewolf] I didn’t mean to call you a meatloaf, Jack!

CHILD: A naked American man stole my balloons.

Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 3

 

The Howling

1981

D: Joe Dante

**********

Pros: Good buildup, Visuals, Werewolf design

Cons: Characters could have used more work, Awful ending

      Though most people know Joe Dante for the classic Gremlins as well as many questionable family movies he made more recently, he got his start in horror.  His big break was Piranha, which has the reputation of being one of the best Jaws rip-offs, an honor which would be more dubious had that not been the assessment of Steven Spielberg himself.  Dante had enough of a reputation in the genre that the villain of Death Machine was named after him, and that’s got to count for something.  One of his most known horror films is his contribution to the werewolf subgenre, The Howling.

      Based on a novel by Gary Brandner, it begins with Los Angeles anchorwoman Karen White (Dee Wallace) taking part in a sting to catch serial killer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo), who has been stalking her for some time.  As this happens, her network’s therapist Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee) foreshadows the movie’s plot by airing a monologue about repression, animal desires and human nature.  Karen meets Eddie in a particularly oblivious/permissive inner city adult theatre, and he menaces her while playing brutal rape footage.  He’s about to attack her when the two cops on the case show up and shoot him in the ensuing commotion.  Understandably traumatized from the experience, Karen has no memory of what happened in the theatre and has nightmares that vaguely suggest that Eddie turned into a werewolf.  She freezes on air during her report of the event, much to the frustration of her producer Fred (Kevin McCarthy).  In response, Waggner sends her and her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) to a therapy commune that he runs. 

      When they arrive, they meet a few quirky individuals, including a suicidal old man named Erle (John Carradine), a creepy nymphomaniacal hippie named Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks) and Slim Pickens.   Among the oddities, Karen meets the relatively friendly and well-adjusted Donna (Margie Impert) and quickly befriends her.  Bill has an awkward encounter with Marsha in which she subtly comes on to him in a way that reflects her disdain not just for his marriage, but the concept in general.  It’s nice to know that this scene from a 1981 film perfectly captures what it feels like to be on Tumblr.

I've had enough of this Social Justice Wolves.

The commune also takes Bill on a hunting trip when Karen and Donna find a mauled cow.  The fact that a therapy commune in which people are treated for PTSD and suicidal tendencies grants its patients unrestricted access to firearms should be a yellow flag.  I think it’s pretty clear that at least some of these people are hiding lycanthropy.  After all, it’s stated to be a werewolf movie, and if it turns out there are no werewolves after a lot of buildup, the results are generally disappointing.

      Bill’s fidelity to Karen makes him initially likable, but this sympathy breaks down quickly.  When Karen is disturbed by the howling of wolves at night in the commune, his response is unimpressive.  I probably would have pointed out that wolves generally can’t break into houses and so she shouldn’t worry.  Instead, he doubts her judgment, saying, “The wildest thing you ever heard was Wolfman Jack.”  Yeah, well, that and that serial killer that almost murdered her a couple days ago, Bill.  After experiencing another unsuccessful attempt at seduction by Marsha, he is bitten by a wolf-like creature in the woods.  Succumbing to the effects of the bite, he meets the seductress again and they have sex by firelight as they begin to transform.  Predictably, she is shown in full frontal, but he is not.  

      Meanwhile, Karen’s coworkers Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan) and Terri Fisher (Belinda Balasky) are investigating Eddie Quist’s property, finding many drawings, including many of wolfmen and one of coast.  They visit the coroner (John Sayles) to find that the door to Eddie’s storage unit has been dented from the inside and his body is missing.  They also look to a bookstore run by Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) who gives them a few books on lycanthropy.  He also informs them that werewolves can change at will and only silver bullets or fire can kill them.  After Bill’s bite, Terri is called to the commune by Karen and she makes the connection between Eddie and the location by seeing the coast from his drawing.  She looks for answers, but is attacked by a werewolf.  She escapes to Dr. Waggner’s office and makes a call to Chris.  She looks through some files searching for Eddie Quist, and one of the funniest things happens in the movie: just when she finds the file, a werewolf’s hand calmly takes it from her hand from offscreen.  Then we get the first good look at what the werewolf looks like.  Not only is it a great reveal, it’s one of the best werewolf designs I’ve seen.  This is comforting because a disappointing number of movies can’t seem to get this simple task right.   

      Karen confronts Bill over his infidelity, and he responds by slapping her.  Disgusted, she flees to the Doctor’s office only to find Terri’s body and a still living Eddie Quist.  Before he attacks her, we see the werewolf transformation in all its glory.  The effects on it are good and have a B-Movie charm.  There’s also a rather putrid pulsating effect it has on the flesh which is distinctive.  While the metamorphosis is creative and the effects are good, the whole thing is sullied by the fact that Quist is standing in a static pose the whole time.  This really does mess up the credibility of the scene.  Karen also waits until it’s before she throws acid into his face and flees.

     Having heard Terri’s death over the phone, Chris grabs some silver bullets from the bookstore and drives desperately to the commune.  The drive over is well integrated with the rest of the movie and edited well to induce tension.  When he arrives at the Doctor’s office, he encounters Quist with half his face melted off.  He kills Quist before he can transform, which is a shame because I wanted to see what his acid-burned face looked like in werewolf form.  He finds Karen held captive by the other members of the commune in a barn.  They reveal that they are all werewolves, including Dr. Waggner.  Waggner formed the commune as a way to help them suppress their urge to eat humans, but all the others have had enough of him and his ways.  He argues with them a little, but to no avail.  Chris rescues Karen, and they lock the werewolves in the barn.  They then set the barn on fire, which is too bad for the werewolves because they apparently share the Signs aliens’ weakness in regards to wooden doors.  The two escape the commune, but Karen is bitten at the last second by a werewolf who is revealed in death to be Bill.  For no reason whatsoever, there is a momentary full-body shot of two stop-motion wolves, which is distractingly the only time this effect used.

      The final faceoff is actually rather anticlimactic.  Now, I love this trope when it’s done right, but not when the threat is built up as a credible one.  While the twist is fairly obvious to anyone who actually heard of the movie and didn’t just stumble into it accidentally, the buildup is effectively executed and promised to something more.  The werewolves should have been far more of a challenge once all bets were off, and it should have taken a hell more than just one journalist with a bolt-action rifle full of silver bullets to defeat an entire commune of what should be the perfect killing machines.  A lot of this is because the werewolves are apparently idiots.  When Chris tells them that he has silver bullets, they stupidly call his bluff instead of rushing him after he gets the first shot off and has to manually chamber another round.  It wouldn’t have been any less cheap if John Preston had entered the barn and used Gun Kata against all the werewolves, but it would have been a lot more fun to watch. 

      Upon returning home, Karen and Chris agree that the public must be told.  While Karen reports on the communes burning on live TV, she voluntarily turns into a werewolf, with a few funny reactions from her fellow anchor and some TV viewers.  This I think is where the movie should have ended.  It would have left the film with a sense of ambiguity and a little bit of dark humor.  Instead, Chris “mercifully” shoots Karen dead. 

Unfortunately, she had not gotten past the Pomeranian phase of her transformation.

This is not only questionable to say the least, but it makes little sense.  It’s like they wanted to shoehorn a tragic horror movie ending in there just for the hell of it.  Granted, the movie never made it obvious how much control a person has in wolf form, but it was made very clear that the werewolves were people who had a choice in how they acted; it’s just that these particular made a choice in the end to kill.  Also, the finale makes the offensive suggestion that a group of people who have a condition that makes it more difficult to adjust to society should not be given a chance to live at all.  It’s a disturbing (an increasingly more fashionable) idea that people should not make any effort to resist they’re primal urges or practice self-control, and if one happens to have a more harmful, idiosyncratic urge, that person’s life is not worth living. 

        The ending isn’t the only problem.  Characterization in this movie leaves a lot to be desired.  Karen is an extremely passive character until the end.  We don’t get to know Bill well enough before his fall to feel too bad about it.  Terri is the most active and most intelligent character in the movie, but she’s the first to die.  Perhaps the most disappointing character arc is Donna.  She could have been one of the more complex characters in the movie.  She’s a werewolf, but she befriends a human and comes off as likable.  However, in the final confrontation, she shows no conflict.  She doesn’t have Waggner’s back when he tries to reason with the other werewolves even though it makes perfect sense for her take his side, especially when she clearly detests more zealously pro-homicide Marsha earlier.  She and Waggner demonstrate that the werewolves are perfectly capable of being moral, but the movie ignores this in the end.  Karen ignores this in her final speech, and her monologue of the uniqueness of humanity’s ability to make moral choices, which is meant to justify her killing, makes sense in real life, but applies equally to the werewolves in this movie.  If people were to follow the intentions of her murder/suicide, it would result in a tragic persecution of werewolves. 

      While the movie is problematic, it has great style and effects.  The werewolf design is excellent, and my only complaint about it is that that the werewolves have some very skinny digitigrade legs that seem really awkward to stand upright on.  The campfire yiff scene finished off with what looked like the silhouettes of two traditionally animated werewolves.  In contrast with the pointless stop-motion shot later in the movie, it looked stylized and mysterious, helping the atmosphere of the film.  Gore effects and makeup are really good.  Scenery of the woods was very atmospheric as was Pino Donaggio’s score (in a cheesy B-Movie way).   A slight complaint is that the movie is billed as a horror/comedy, but the comedy is pretty sparse, which is a criticism that fortunately does not apply to this movie's more famous contemporary.  The movie has enough style to be worth a look for any werewolf fan, but its ending prevents it from being a truly good horror movie.               

            

QUOTES

DR. WAGGNER: Repression. Repression is the father of neurosis, of self-hatred. Now, stress results when we fight against our impulses. We've all heard people talk about animal magnetism, the natural man. the noble savage, as if we'd lost something valuable in our long evolution into civilized human beings. Now there's a good reason for this.

KAREN: I don’t know if I want to remember.

BILL: What?

KAREN: Doc said once I remember what happened, it won’t scare me anymore.  I’m not so sure.

BILL: Honey, give this place a chance, ok?  We gotta do something.

KAREN: Well, I hope these people aren’t too weird.

[cut to Erle hollering]

[Bill walks up to Marsha’s table and takes some food]

MARSHA: [passive-aggressively] You want some?

DONNA: Haven't you ever done Assertiveness Training? Before I looked into the Doc, I did it all - EST, T.M., Scientology, iridology, Primal Scream... I don't know, I figure another five years of real hard work, and maybe I'll be a real human being.

PAISLEY: We get 'em all: sun-worshippers, moon-worshippers, Satanists. The Manson family used to hang around and shoplift. Bunch of deadbeats!

SAM NEWFIELD (SLIM PICKENS): No, no, don’t bother.  I’ll get the state guys over to the center.  I wouldn’t worry, Mr. Holloran.  I’m sure she’s safe.

[Cut to Terri getting killed by a werewolf]

DR. WAGGNER: [upon being shot] Thank God.

KAREN: Good evening.  From the day we’re born, there is a battle we must fight. [teleprompter is clearly showing something different]  A struggle between what is kind and peaceful in our natures and what is cruel and violent. 

FRED: What the hell is this, an editorial?

KAREN: That choice is a birthright of human beings, and the real gift that differentiates us from the animals.  It is as natural to us as the air we breathe. 

FRED: [to Chris] Did you pass this material?  This is not reading on the prompter

CHRIS: We changed it a little bit. 

KAREN: But now for some of us, that choice has been taken away.  A secret society exists and is living among all of us.  They’re neither people nor animals but but something in between [Fred chuckles and facepalms]  Because of this mutation their violent natures must be satisfied.  I know what you’re thinking because I’ve been where you are. 

FRED: That’s enough.

CHRIS: Leave it.

FRED: Leave it?  Cut!

CHRIS: Leave it!

KAREN: But I have proof and…tonight I’m going to show you something…to make you believe. [transforms into werewolf]

ANCHORMAN: Holy Shee-it!

GUY WATCHING TV WITH WIFE: What is this?!

BOY: Wow!

MOM: What are you kids watching?

GIRL: The news lady’s turned into a werewolf!

PAISLEY: Hoo-boy.

[final lines]

MAN: Hey Ernie? Put that pepper steak on for me, will ya? And a hamburger for the lady.

ERNIE: How do you want that?

MAN: How you want it, honey?

MARSHA: Rare.