September 11, 2018
Written by: Gary Brandner, John Sayles, Terence Winkless
Starring: Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan
Budget: $1,000,000
Quote: "A secret society exists, and is living among all of us. They are neither people nor animals, but something in-between."
Trivia: Because to their work in this movie, Joe Dante and Michael Finnell received the opportunity to make the movie (1984) for Steven Spielberg. That movie references "The Howling" with a smiley face image on a refrigerator door. Eddie Quist leaves yellow smiley face stickers as his calling card in several places all through this movie. Also James MacKrell's character as news reporter Lew Landers appears in both "The Howling" and "Gremlins", which suggest both movies share the same universe.
I hadn't seen this movie for over twenty years. Looking back at it, I was probably eight and way too young to watch the film when I did. I do remember this movie had the first full frontal nudity I had ever seen. Thanks Elisabeth Brooks! More recently in my teens and twenties I've seen a couple of the wonderfully bad sequels: the marsupial one and some other goofy one. After watching the original I have to say I really liked it. Sure, it's slow getting to the good stuff but I found myself caught up in the stories of the odd characters. Also, it has some of the best makeup and special effects of any werewolf movie, aside from maybe An American Werewolf in London (Both movies came out the same year and Rick Baker was originally supposed to do the special effects on The Howling but left to do An American Werewolf. We was replaced by Rob Bottin who did some amazing work).
