The Howling (1981) | 31 Days of Gore

It’s the tenth anniversary of 31 Days of Gore, in which I feature one horror movie each day for the month of Halloween.

I’m in love with the way director Joe Dante opens The Howling: in the fast paced world of a television news station. Behind-the-scenes personnel are rushing around as the on-air talent get into makeup. Meanwhile, Karen White (Dee Wallace) is nervously walking down the scuzzy, neon-lit streets of Los Angeles’s grindhouse district, wired with a radio that’s transmitting her voice to the police. We have no idea what’s going on at first, but it’s instantly engaging as Dante drip-feeds the information to the audience.

We eventually learn that Karen has agreed to take part in a sting operation to catch a serial killer (an exceptionally effective Richard Picardo) who has become infatuated with her. The killer instructs her to meet him in the back of an adult video store containing a private movie booth. Once there, the killer forces her to watch a snuff film of his own making before the cops manage to shoot him dead. Karen is so traumatized by the event, her therapist suggests she should vacation at the countryside resort where he treats patients in a group setting.

While Karen finds trouble connecting with her husband intimately (whenever he tries to kiss her, she flashbacks to a close-up of the killer’s flickering tongue), her newsroom buddies discover the killer’s body has gone missing from the morgue. Their investigation leads the reporters to an occult bookstore run by Dick Miller who, as far as I’m aware, has never not appeared in a Joe Dante film. Miller tells the reporters they may be dealing with a werewolf and suggests they buy a box of silver bullets. When they ask him if he really believes in that kind of stuff, he replies, “What am I, an idiot? I’m makin’ a buck here!”

I don’t want to spoil who’s a werewolf and who’s not, but I will say the reveal is amusingly macabre. There’s a huge cast of character actors including Christopher Stone (who Dee Wallace married in real life), Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, and Slim Pickens. Dante also packs the film with uncredited cameos by his buddies: Roger Corman, Forrest J. Ackerman, John Sayles (this film’s writer), and Mick Garris were the ones I recognized. I’m sure I missed others.

While I think the showdown between Karen and the killer should have been a bigger deal (and a little less routine), the finale does not disappoint. We also see what has to be the longest werewolf transformation ever captured on film, the effects of which are provided by Rob Bottin, who would later go on to work on The Thing. Rick Baker is also credited for the effects, though he jumped ship (with Dante’s blessing) to work on John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London, which is overall the inferior werewolf film in my book.

By my count, there are two similarities between this picture and Romero’s Dawn of the Dead: both films open in a news station and both films feature unusually strong character work in their middle sections. In this film, John Carradine’s character watches two young lovers on the beach with a sense of longing and regret that’s expressed entirely without words. It’s a moment that’s extremely rare in these types of movies, elevating it to one of my favorites.