Really, heck, who don't, right?
I decided that the other morning while watching the 1972 tv movie The Moon of the Wolf, starring David Janssen as a small town sheriff in Louisiana where... something is killing people. The poster sort of spoils it, while the movie itself is rather like a murder mystery, with suspects and clues, til the third act reveal, where you actually get to see the killer for the first time.
It was pretty by the numbers, but workable for the constraints of the medium In fact, the murder mystery aspect of the story was reminiscent of The Beast Must Die, which was part of my decision to try and watch more in the genre- the idea that werewolf movies- at least the ones where the identity of the werewolf is unknown, like Silver Bullet or Moon of the Wolf, are sort of a cross genre thing, the horror mystery. I'll be getting back to that in future posts.
One the other hand, sometimes the werewolves are right in front of you, a point as old as Lon Chaney's The Wolfman and An American Werewolf in London... and of course, The Howling.
Dee Wallace plays a reporter who, after getting attacked while on an assignment, leaves the city to visit a colony/spa run by a psychotherapist to recuperate.
While there, she hears the howling of wolves and realizes... somethings wrong.
Because, yes, it's a colony of werewolves. Things go downhill for her from there. But not for the viewer- The Howling is full of references to wolfishness, from clips of the original The Wolfman, including an after the credits bit, vintage Big Bad Wolf cartoons, and (my favorite) a copy of Ginsberg's poem Howl on a character's desk.
I haven't seen this in years, and I was really surprised at how similar it was to Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, which was essentially another film version of Gary Brandner's novel the The Howling that the movie The Howling was based on. Similar, but so very much better than IV to a degree of noon and midnight.
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