The Howling (1981)
Episode 391, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, we had such a lively discussion last week about An American Werewolf in London, and wondered why we hadn’t taken so long to get to it. That, I think in the middle of that podcast, we decided, you know, we should just do some other werewolf movies that we haven’t gotten around to.
And, really, number two on the list is The Howling. Ha ha! Another one that’s kind of strange that we haven’t gotten to it. Probably just as notorious as American Werewolf in London. Also came out the very same year. In fact, Rick Baker was working on the makeup effects with this when John Landis pulled him away and said, No, you promised you were gonna work on my movie.
So he left that in the hands of another guy who we’ll end up talking about here. And we got, within the same year, actually three werewolf movies. That all came out, oddly enough. There was the Howling, there was American Werewolf in London, both of which did really, really well. And then a third one called Wolfen, which I’m thinking maybe we should do after this one, because it sounds really interesting and wouldn’t it be sad to do these two and not that one?
It didn’t get any better. All the love that these two got, but I read that it takes a slightly different take on things and is maybe even just a little more thoughtful and profound than these movies are.
Craig: Yeah,
Todd: and
Craig: this was like amongst a whole slew of werewolf movies within like a five year time span.
There were several others and I was surprised. I mean, I don’t know. I just didn’t know that the guy who started doing makeup for the Howling got, like, like he had started doing it, he had started designing it, and then he got pulled away to do an American Werewolf in London. I didn’t know that, but now having seen this, it makes a lot of sense.
A lot of the same techniques. Similar designs. One of the only things was in this movie, the howling, the werewolves are bipedal. They, they walk around on two feet. And that’s what you’re gonna see. You’re the guy who knows the names, the original makeup designer or creature designer Rick Baker. Yeah, that’s how he envisioned it.
And that’s how he wanted it. And he wanted to do it that way in American werewolf in London, too. But Landis was like, now it’s got to be like a hell dog or something.
It’s just kind of fascinating. Yeah. This has also been an interesting experience for me because I’ve never seen this movie and I, wow. Don’t know how I haven’t seen it. It’s not like I’m unaware of it. You know? I, I’ve always been aware of it. I’ve seen at least one or two of the sequels, but I’ve never seen this.
That’s funny. So you have seen a couple, the sequels. At least one or two. I’m pretty sure I saw, there’s one that’s like, the howling, the original story, or the beginning, or something like that. Reborn? I don’t remember, but it’s more faithful to the source novel than this
Todd: movie is. That’s right. Well, this movie’s credited with basically reinventing the werewolf genre, which, Almost up until this point was a little corny.
It was, you know, guys more or less walking around with furry hands and faces. And this took it a little more seriously in terms of the makeup effects and what werewolves might look like. Like you said, American werewolf in London took it down to like, basically like a wolf. He’s a wolf at the end on all fours.
And this one, there’s these giant hulking beasts that are definitely. More animal than man, really. I had attempted to watch this movie twice when I was younger. I distinctly remember falling asleep in the middle of it both times. And then some point, I think in college, I was like, I need to read this movie again at a time when it’s not late at night and force myself to stay awake because it’s an important movie.
I need to see it. But my initial remembrances from those first two times were It wasn’t quite what I’d expected. I was thinking it was going to be a little more jam packed. It’s got a lot of shit in it. But the, the pacing is very, very different from what I had expected. And even what I’d remembered, honestly, I feel like the pacing’s all over the place.
Craig: It’s an odd, it’s an odd story, and it strikes a really odd tone, like, all the time, I’m like, what kind of movie is this? It’s a comedy? I know, I mean, I read that they intentionally went for some Comedy, Joe Dante, what did he done? Just done some comedy just before this,
Todd: right? Well, he did, he did rock and roll high school right before this, but, um, he did piranha piranha years before this.
That’s what I was thinking of, which is definitely a more comedic as far as horror goes. And it kind of has to be Joe Dante. You may or may not remember, got started in with Roger Corman. Actually, I think he did Hollywood Boulevard for Roger Corman. And then he did piranha. A couple years after that, and so he really came out of that school of people we talk about a lot.
In fact, Roger Corman has a, a mini cameo in there. He pops into a phone booth in the very beginning. And so he was very good at shooting things on the cheap and really fast, but, but trying to get, milk it out for high quality and also very much like sort of going for that exploitation sort of fun type movie that’s gonna get butts in seats.
And isn’t always necessarily gonna impress people in the, you know, art community. Ha ha ha! They’re audience pleasers. They do tend to be that way. And Joe Dante’s got a great record for that, by the way. Yeah. He directed and kind of kicked off the Police Squad TV series, which later became Naked Gun. He did gremlins after this we love gremlins even did explorers which I think we’ve talked about how much we love that movie from the eighties inner space which is a movie that still holds up today
Craig: yeah there was a period right there in the eighties where he was cranking out stuff that I really like to burn so you know and he’s continued to do stuff he is is still working in like in horror anthologies he’s often asked invited to direct and wasn’t he the one who directed that.
Segment of the twilight zone where
Todd: a bunch of people died. No, that was John Landis ironically enough who we talked about last week. Yeah Yeah We didn’t bring that up in american werewolf in london, did we no but This project was very much a director for hire type project There was a theater distributor who was very interested in producing more movies And he had optioned the rights to this book because he was a big stephen king fan You And this book that this was based on got a great blurb from Stephen King on it.
Although Joe Dante himself was not a fan of the source material. I think he said it was pretty corny, pretty cheesy.
Craig: He criticized it publicly and frequently and once accidentally in front of the guy who wrote it. I thought that was a pretty funny anecdote. Some guy in the audience like so you didn’t like the book.
No, I really didn’t. Oh, well, I wrote it Sorry, sir, I mean there were good parts
Todd: Right. Well, there were a couple goes at this. There was a script that had been written a Jack Conrad There was another script a version of it Joe Dante eventually hired John sales and John sales has been a very successful writer Of course, he also came out of the Roger Corman school.
He did write Piranha. We did Alligator, which he wrote as well. I don’t know if you ever saw Battle Beyond the Stars, that Star Wars knockoff that Corman did, but a lot of people really hold that dear in their heart. And I actually think It’s a really fun movie. Uh, he wrote that too. And then later he went on to, to write and direct a lot of things.
He, he did some rewrites on Apollo 13. He wrote and directed Lone Star. I don’t know if you remember that with Matthew McConaughey. Actually, he also has a little cameo in this. He’s the guy who is the mortician assistant or whatever, who kind of has a goofy scene there.
Craig: There are a bazillion cameos in this movie.
There are so a bazillion winks and nods about wolves and werewolves. I mean, it would take us all day to point them all out. Like if, if you are really interested and I actually, I found it very fascinating because again, I hadn’t seen the movie before, but I caught A lot of them, you can’t help but catch them because they’re everywhere.
Yes. You know, like the Three Little Pigs cartoon with the wolf on the TV. Somebody’s reading Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Like there’s wolf brand chili. Absolutely everywhere and it was fun it was kind of a fun little like like that page my favorite page in highlights magazine where it’s like find all these different objects that’s what this movie felt like.
Todd: You kind of what once you realize they were doing it then you kind of started looking for it and you were not disappointed it happened a lot which which is part of how you know you could easily tell this movie wasn’t taking itself very seriously. Whereas, on the other hand, there were moments when the movie very much felt like it was going for some serious, heady drama.
The way that it kicks off, that was, that was something else.
Craig: That’s what I’m saying, that’s what I’m like, what kind of movie am I watching? It starts out so seedy. Another reason that I can’t believe that I haven’t seen this movie is because it stars a gorgeous, young Dee Wallace, who I I’m in love with.
You’re on your all time favorites. She’s amazing and she is so beautiful in this movie. She’s just young and fresh and gorgeous and she plays this like on air news personality. Or reporter or whatever, and she’s like undercover trying to meet with a serial killer, right? Yeah. It’s so, and so she’s like in a really seedy part of town.
I have no idea where this is supposed to be.
Todd: I think it’s like basically Times Square, New York, which was very, very seedy in the 80s. Right. It’s interesting because I like the fact that it throws you right into the action without explaining it all for you right away, like you almost feel like you’ve jumped in and you’ve missed some stuff, you know, like you just jumped into a movie and I liked that because I was immediately engaged.
It was a little bit of a puzzle that you sort of had to unpack what was going on, but the gist of it is that she’s a news reporter and there had been a string of murders going on unsolved, but she, I guess because she’s a prominent public figure, had been getting phone calls from this guy. And so because she’d been getting phone calls from this guy, they set up a little kind of trap for him there where she’s connected to radio.
And I guess the police were involved, but initially it doesn’t seem that way. It’s terribly planned.
Craig: There is no like support for her anywhere. There’s nobody nearby. No, it’s, it’s only like when they kind of lose. Her mic goes out and they’re like, Oh, well we better call the cops. And so they called the cops and the cops were like, uh, we’ll find her.
She’s wearing purple. I feel like I would regret it. If I didn’t say that before any of this ever happened, the opening credits are two and a half minutes long. And it’s all just like, it looks like it. An old school TV feed. That’s so fuzzy that you can’t see anything at all. Um, and just a bunch of like disparate audio clips, which I believe are clips from the rest of the movie.
And like, I think it is because you hear her voice and you hear other characters who we will come to meet later. You just hear little tiny clips of things that are happening. And oftentimes it’s people in distress. And I was intrigued. I feel like, why am I hearing these things that I’m sure I’m going to hear again later?
Todd: It was super compelling. I, I mean, you know, I don’t know, it’s just, it was just kind of a brilliant little bit of opening because there’s nothing to see, although it also kind of reminded me of when I used to turn to that special channel, you know, on TV, uh, that was all scrambled and just sit there for, you know, quite a while, try to see if I could make anything out.
Craig: 10, 15 minutes. 10, 15 minutes.
Todd: Oh, who knows? However long it takes, let’s put it that way. And, uh, Ha ha ha ha ha! And, uh, and so, you know, visually, you’re kind of thinking maybe there’ll be something that you’ll see a blip of one thing or another, so you’re kind of engaged there. But then the audio, like you said, it’s all these clips that, that are interesting, and that you kind of want to hear.
Again, you feel like you’re supposed to piece something together. Really, really great way to bring you in. And then, like I said, bring, important’s going on, because even though you’re not quite Sure, yet what it all amounts to everybody’s walking by this woman and telling her. Oh, you’re so brave. You’re so brave to do this.
And then they go to this guy who later turns out to be. Is it her husband or just her boyfriend? I was never clear on.
Craig: No, I was very. I think it’s her husband. I think at least he refers to her as his wife at some. Yeah, but then I could have sworn. That Meshack Taylor showed up for two seconds and said that he was her husband, huh?
I don’t know. I was confused Yeah Well it is It is confusing. Ultimately, they are a couple in the movie, whether they are legitimately husband and wife, I don’t know, but he’s played by Christopher Stone, who they were engaged at the, he and Dee Wallace were engaged at the time. And we’re married for some time because she took his name.
She was Dee Wallace Stone for some time.
Todd: Well, I read a little bit of, of trivia here in that the producers of the movie didn’t even realize they had a relationship when they cast him. She and he were living together and they were having a hard time finding a man to play opposite her that was just the right person.
And she said, well, you know, I actually, I have worked with this guy, I think his last name is It’s like stone or smith or something. So she referred him just so that she would have no, you know, influence on the proceeding. So he auditioned and got the part all on his own. And then the, uh, the producer calls up and thinks he’s calling this guy and she answers the phone and he’s like, Oh, I’m sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number, but anyway, you know that guy you recommended, we’re going to cast him, he’s great.
And she said, oh, actually you didn’t get the wrong number. And there was a moment, and she jumped back in and said, well at least you only need to have one trailer. That’s funny, I hadn’t read that. They had acted together in Cujo before this. She was, they were, I thought, wasn’t
Craig: Cujo after this? I thought Cujo was 84.
Todd: No, you’re right. Cujo was actually 83. Cujo was after this, but they had acted together. Were they together in the Hills Have Eyes or the Stepford Wives? I don’t
Craig: know. I kind of recognized him and he’s been in so much. But that’s another thing about this movie that I can’t believe I haven’t seen it like every minute or two.
I’m like, there’s, there’s somebody else that I recognize from something. And like when, when Dick Miller popped up, I, and it all makes sense. It’s, it’s, it’s all the Roger Corman connection, I feel like. And then Joe Dante. Continued that tradition by continuing to work with the same people over and over again.
So even in like bit parts, small parts, there are so many familiar faces. And for somebody like me who has seen all of these movies, it’s such a treat. Like I so enjoyed watching this, but it’s so weird. Like it starts out like Dee Wallace is like super pretty and soft. And then she is in this terrible part of town and she has to go.
She talks to the killer, apparently, on a payphone, and he tells her to meet him at a porn store, so she does, and she’s totally by herself, and she goes there, and She goes into one of those shady ass back rooms alone. And this creepy ass guy is in there and starts showing her rape porn.
Todd: I
Craig: was like, what, what is happening?
Todd: It’s a very Adult and intense.
Craig: The tone is so weird because it’s hard to tell whether she’s scared or into it or both. Right. Like it kind of seems like she’s kind of into it.
Todd: It had a very Brian De Palma vibe. Like the very beginning of it, I felt like I was watching a Brian De Palma movie. Really, with these, these close ups on her, and kind of the soft focus, and the, the guy in the darkness, and this mystery, and these, very intense score, too.
The score with this movie was very all over the place as well, and it was, um, scored by, he’s an Italian guy, probably had a lot of experience scoring a lot of these Giallo and other kind of pictures that we’ve done, Pino Donaggio. You know, here, again, very intense, very cinematic, orchestral, suspenseful kind of score.
And then there are other times when it’s just like, kind of bouncy and goofy. He scored the Seed of Chucky, by the way, which we did recently. No wonder, and I just found this out just now as I looked it up, but, uh, he scored two O’Brien ended Palmas movies, Dressed to Kill and Body Double. Oh. So that makes perfect sense.
We even talked about how Seed of Chucky, the score was quite good in there. So, uh, he, uh, he scored this. And he scored Piranha, he scored Tourist Trap, which we’ve also done, so he’s The score for that was wild. Yeah.
Craig: It was all just like,
Todd: So then it goes through this, and she has this intense experience, and the cops do end up showing up. And she gets attacked, like,
Craig: ultimately he attacks her, but, like, he’s talking to her, and he’s like, He’s talking about the porn. He’s like,
Clip: I didn’t feel a thing, Karen. None of them do. They’re not real, the people here.
They’re dead. They could never be like me. But you’re different, Karen. I watch you on TV. And I know how good I can make you feel.
Craig: I’m gonna light up your whole body, Karen. And then his voice changes like, and you can turn around now and she does, and she looks at him and we only see like her reaction, which again is horrified and aroused.
Todd: Yeah. And we do see like a glimpse in the shadow of. Him kind of almost a little bit of a werewolf silhouette.
It does give a little bit of that away.
Craig: He just, well, he just kind of looks like a really hairy guy. Like, I mean, we know he’s a werewolf. We know this is a werewolf movie, but he’s not. And that’s another thing about this movie. Like the effects are really great, but one of the things that I like about it are the various stages.
Of wolfing out like, yeah, it’s very gradual and, and they can be like, like a wolf, like a giant walking on two legs wolf. But sometimes. They’re just a little hairy faced and yellow eyed. Uh, but I like that. I like that. It’s kind of like a, it’s, it’s, it’s not just a, you’re a werewolf. It’s, it’s a gradual kind of thing.
And they all look great. The effects all look great in this. There are so many things to talk about. I don’t, I don’t know how to approach this. She starts having lots of nightmares. She talks to this therapist. This is important. His name is Dr. Wagner, Dr. Wagner. He’s traumatized. Seriously
Todd: traumatized. She’s
Craig: very traumatized.
She’s having nightmares. She, she’s a TV personality, but they have to take her off the air because she like freezes on camera. And Dr. Wagner tells her that she needs to go to the colony.
Todd: Is that what it’s called?
Craig: Yep. It’s like a, a
Todd: rest retreat. Yeah, for his patients. It’s hilarious. You can totally see where this is going a mile away, right?
I guess. So I’m just sitting back and waiting for it to all unfold. And everybody in this colony is weird as hell. They’re
Craig: so weird.
Todd: It sounded like the outdoor hippie retreat version of all, of, of getting sent to the insane asylum. You know,
Craig: in a lot of
Todd: these movies.
Craig: I mean, at first glance, it seems like fun, like they’re having like a beach party and they’re barbecuing and people are, you know, there’s music and they’re dancing and stuff and it seems fun.
And then you start to meet every individual and they’re all just weird as hell. Yeah. My other favorite thing about this party is not only is it a barbecue, but every person is like holding a huge, Hunk of meat on the bone and just, it’s
Todd: so obvious. It’s hilarious. And we get John Carradine in here. So he’s like this weird ass old guy.
This was the same year, by the way, that monster club came out as well. Remember him and Vincent price. In the beginning of monster club,
Craig: I had to look him up because I know, I know the name Carradine, you know, he was famous, his sons were famous. I know they’re famous. The reason that I, I recognized his name, but I recognized his voice more than I recognized his appearance because he looks kind of weird and scary in this movie, but I recognized his voice and I’m scrolling and scrolling and I get to the secret of nin and he was the great owl in the secret of nin.
I’m like, okay. That’s it. That’s that voice. That’s why I know that voice. That’s right. And I was giddy about that.
Todd: He’s got a similar kind of role in The Sentinel, which is a movie that is so on the list that I really want to do sometime. We could have a lot to say about that one. It’s quite interesting.
Yeah, he goes back to the 30s and Yeah,
Craig: yeah, yeah. He was in The Grapes of Wrath.
Todd: Oh, yeah. Great character in that movie. The monster club, just the same time this year. He looked exactly the same when
Craig: we were, when we were doing the monster club. And he’s crazy and weird. Everybody’s crazy and weird. He’s just kind of mumbling to himself about nonsense.
I don’t know. And then there’s like this crazy, exotic, horny woman. Yeah. The nymphomaniac, Marsha. She’s so funny. She’s so over the top. She’s so over the top. It’s hilarious. I love her. And she just, she’s constantly like looking at people, like just giving them like death stare. Like, she’s just giving intense gaze all the time.
Uh huh. Um, and she’s super horny and, Even the people who are being friendly are like overly friendly in that culty way. Like, Oh, you’re going to be so happy here. Everything’s so great. Like it’s the, uh, we’re the greatest little community ever. Like, this is weird. And why did she come here? I mean, I guess she was told to go there by her doctor, but why is her husband like, I guess it’s like a couple’s retreat for them?
I don’t know.
Todd: I mean, well, of course, we later find out if it hasn’t become obvious already that this is a, these people are actually all werewolves. This is a colony of were, or whatever you call, a pack. Of werewolves all led up by the doctor. I mean, am I going to just going to spoil it now?
Craig: I mean, it doesn’t matter.
I mean, that’s what it is. I
Todd: think it’s so obvious at this point. And I don’t think he’s trying very hard to hide it either. I think this is part of the comedy of the movie is these funny little background references to werewolves are running right alongside this very obvious. All these people are strange and acting weird and eating meat.
And we know we’re watching a werewolf movie at the same time that this is going on, there’s this parallel story, which apparently wasn’t in the novel
Craig: couple, Terry and Chris Terry and
Todd: Terry and
Craig: Chris. Yeah. And Chris was, Chris is the dad from Can’t Buy Me Love, that was kill, that was driving me nuts! Oh yeah!
I knew I recognized him but I couldn’t figure it out.
Todd: And he’s also the director of like half of everything Adam Sandler’s ever put out. Oh that’s funny, I didn’t see that. Like Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, Don’t Mess With Us, yeah he, he started out as an actor and he still does a little bit of acting now and then but like he’s done almost as much directing as he’s done acting nowadays.
Mostly comedies. Cool guy, actually. I liked him in this movie. I mean, again, it was like these two people are doing this investigation where they go to the house, and I don’t understand how this can even happen, right?
Craig: I don’t even know who they are. Do they work for the TV station? Yeah, they were there.
Because they’re doing all this investigation that police should be doing. Like, where are the police? That’s
Todd: my point. They literally break into the house of this guy who attacked her in the porno theater, which we didn’t say, but the cops sprung in and just blindly shot through the door of that porno booth.
Thank God they didn’t hit her. Shot this guy, Eddie, and so he’s dead, supposedly. So they visit his, they break into his apartment, I guess, before the police get there. And find all these sketches that he’s done and they’re all of werewolves and people and half transformation and there’s a picture of her there, you know, the sketch that he’s done and a sketch of, uh, of, of like a, like a lake.
It’s like a, a seaside.
Craig: Yeah, a coastline.
Todd: And they collect all these things to keep them for themselves and then presumably call the police. Then they go. They go to the morgue, and there’s a goofy morgue guy who is John Sayles. He’s got a hamburger on one plate and brains on another plate. He’s, they’re all kind of like, about everything.
And he’s all like,
Craig: ah, this is nothing. No big deal. That’s such a trope in movies morticians eating sandwiches while cutting up dead bodies. Like,
Clip: I don’t know how you can stand it. Don’t bother me. Only thing that freaked me out since I’ve been working here is the night old stew Walker came in guy who worked here, right?
I say goodnight to him at the shift change a couple hours go by. Then we get a delivery from the Oceanside unit. I unzipped the bag. There’s old stew. Smiling up at me, leaking seawater out his ears. Visitors, Eddie!
Todd: Come on already. It’s all just goofy. And then, of course, he knocks on the door, the thing to slide the body out.
Hey, wake up in there. We’re about to pull you out. And when they open the door, the inside of it’s full of scratches. And he slides the thing out and the body’s gone. Oh, that’s weird.
Craig: Well, yeah, yeah. And the door is full of scratches. Like, something is obviously, like, burst out of there. But they’re, like, Oh, that’s interesting.
Where do you go?
Todd: Right. Oh my God.
Craig: Everything, everything is so obvious. Like this little story. I don’t know when it happens in the movie. Cause it cuts back and forth from the colony and back to these two investigators. But at some point they go to this enormous bookstore owned apparently by Dick Miller’s character, Dick Miller.
I’m so excited to see him and I want to go to this bookstore. Where they also sell, like, occult items, apparently. And, and I think we’re to believe that Dick Miller just knows everything about everything, because he owns a bookstore. That’s right. Because he’s able to tell them every, any question that they have, he’s like, Oh, yeah, that’s, uh, lycanthropy, or, you, you, that’s an old Celtic And yeah, werewolves, uh, they don’t die.
They, they come back, but only after three days and they can regenerate, they regenerate, you know, just like, duh. Everybody knows this. Like, why are you so
Todd: stupid? I think to be fair, it’s supposed to be an occult bookstore, but boy, there’s a lot of books on the occult that he’s got in there. The dude’s up on a ladder being slid around.
Oh yeah. And this book right over here, I know exactly where it is. And he reaches for it.
Clip: They come back from the dead. If you don’t kill them, right. Plus they regenerate, you know what that is? Cut off an arm, cut off a leg, stick a knife in a heart, nothing. They may look dead, but bam, three days later they’re as good as new.
You
Todd: believe in
Clip: this? What am I, an idiot? I’m making a buck here. You want books, I got books. I got chicken blood, I got dog embryos, I got black candles, I got wolf men. Look at this. Silver bullets. Some joker ordered them. 30 06. Never picked them up. I think Bank of America, American Express, Visa, I’m gonna buy that a lot.
Craig: But here they are for later, just in case you might need them. It’s so corny and everything like that, that whole investigation is so funny because it’s so obvious, like everything points in the same direction. It’s obviously werewolves. And I feel like at some point they’re like, Werewolves? I guess. Maybe.
Better go to the colony to find out. Better go to the colony, right, right. And, but that’s also, okay. So stuff happens at the colony. Like Karen makes a friend who like takes her around and talks about how great everything is. And they get into some misadventures. I don’t know. Like they find, she’s hearing werewolves all the time and having these weird dreams and they go out at night, like, and find like some deer or something that have been slaughtered and the townspeople are like, Whoa, that’s weird.
Slim Pickens, the, the sheriff.
Todd: Right. Ha ha ha! Yeah, I want it! Just a good old boy. I mean, basically Slim Pickens. Yeah. He always just plays this character.
Craig: I don’t know him. He
Todd: was a cowboy, so he always plays cowboys. Well, I mean, he’s most famous for Doctor Strangelove. He’s the guy riding the, the bomb at the end of the movie.
Craig: Oh, that’s, okay.
Todd: But, do you remember Blazing Saddles? You saw Blazing Saddles, right? Yeah. Taggart! It’s been a really long time. Who? Oh, yeah, he’s Taggart in Blazing Saddles. One of the cowboys, yeah.
Craig: But, yeah, I mean, just another one of many, many familiar faces from, you know, older Hollywood, older horror. Ah, God, so many references and that just makes it so much fun.
Mmm. But the men are kind of hanging out with the husband, whatever his name is, Bill, and teaching him how to hunt and stuff. Yeah. And then, Marsha the slut, like, so, so Bill, Bill shoots a rabbit, and then another weirdo guy who just, he’s like crazy eyed all the time. Just like he just looks crazy in the face.
He’s like a wolf himself. Yeah, and he’s always wearing pelts and just creeping around Oh my god, he’s like my sister Marsha will cook that up for you. He’s like, okay Marsha’s
Todd: cabin in the woods.
Craig: Yeah, and she’s like I’ll cook it later And then she tries to make out with him, but he pushes her away and then he goes out into the woods 30 seconds later is attacked by a werewolf.
I read that we don’t, like, we don’t know who this werewolf is. And I read that consensus is that it was her. I assumed it was the brother. Oh, I assumed that the brother was like lurking out there, but whatever. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. He’s been attacked. He goes to the doctor, they patch him up or whatever, then, he and his wife, Dee Wallace, or mistress or whoever she is, are laying in bed and she’s like, Hey, uh, you wanna like, uh, hey, and he’s like, no, I don’t feel like it, I had to get a big injection, cause he did, he had to get a big injection, and she’s like, We never want the same things at the same time.
Like, all of a sudden, had there been any tension with them before? If there had, I didn’t notice it.
Todd: No, I mean, it was obviously new.
Craig: They seemed like a perfectly happy couple.
Todd: Yeah, so there’s new tension, right? Like, he’s acting weird. And also, like, there was a big deal in the beginning where he said he was vegetarian, he stays away from meat.
When he was first offered meat and he came to the colony. Right. And then now there’s a scene where he’s sitting out there and he’s eating some ribs and some character apologizes. Sorry I gave you ribs. He’s like, Oh, no, actually, these are quite good.
Craig: Yeah, I couldn’t remember. That’s that’s after this because he gets attacked by this werewolf.
Todd: Right.
Craig: And so now, now he’s eat, like, just like all the other people in town, he’s got like a big slab of meat on the bone, just gnawing at it. Yeah. Oh, I love it. God. So silly. Like, Oh, what’s happening. But then all of a sudden there’s this tension and he rejects her, but then she has another nightmare. She’s having nightmares all the time and they’re weird and trippy.
And she wakes up and he’s gone. And she’s like, And then we see him out in the forest where he meets Marsha the slut and they just stand there looking at each other and then they just, like, I don’t even remember if they say anything. Like, I think they, they just drop their clothes and they’re totally naked.
It’s
Todd: a very long Sexy scene, actually. She drops her clothes very slowly and disrobes, and she’s got a pretty amazing body. And then he gets naked, and then they start going at it, and then they start half wolfing out in their faces, and they’re biting, and then they lay down on the ground, and they’re tossing and turning, and then, like, we get this wide shot.
And and suddenly they’re like cartoon characters. That’s unfortunate because almost all the other stuff in this movie, the effects are great, but apparently they ran out of money to get this wide shot and Joe Dante resorted to an obviously animated silhouette of them having sex as the camera pans up to the moon and they howl.
Craig: I liked it. It was fun.
Todd: It was part of the cheese. It was,
Craig: it was very 80s. Like People did that stuff in the 80s. Do what you gotta do. You mean animated,
Todd: or
Craig: what? Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, that’s what I’m saying. What was that movie that we watched, The Woman in White? Yeah. Where there was a big, I don’t know, we’ve seen several 80s movies where there are like animated sequences.
Of course. And this is really brief, it’s like a, maybe a three, five second Shot as it pans up like to the moon and yes, it was an obvious departure from the style of the rest of the movie, but it didn’t bother me. I was like, that’s fine, whatever
Todd: it was, but the, the sex scene before it was pretty hot. I D.
Wallace said, uh, said that Joe Dante had approached her kind of cautiously and said, you know, crew and everybody, they really, really like you. And everybody’s wondering, like, are you going to be present while your fiance is, is filming this scene? And she said, Hell no, I’m not going to be there and he was like Whew, that’s great.
And she said she just went into town and got bombed that night while
Craig: they filmed that. They seemed very naked.
Todd: They were.
Craig: I almost felt like I caught a little glimpse of balls for a second.
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Craig: again, the effects, the werewolf change effects are fantastic. I mean, they’re, they’re practical. They’re pre I mean, it’s, it’s obvious makeup and prosthetics, but. When I say that it’s animated, I don’t mean like animated, like drawn, I mean that it moves, like there’s a lot of motion to it.
Yeah. And obviously there are a lot of cuts, there have to be a lot of cuts because you have to, you know, cut to different phases or whatever, but I can’t describe how great it is.
Todd: There’s scenes where their mouth is open and they’re kind of looking up and their fangs are literally growing. Yeah, out of their mouths.
I mean, how they accomplished that, like
Craig: the jaw protruding and like, you can even see it stretching the prosthetics. Like the front jaw will be moving in the nose and mouthpiece will be stretching from the movement of it. It looks great. Just watch it. If you haven’t seen it, just watch it. I wonder again.
I can’t believe I haven’t seen it because I know, I know that it was always. On the video store shelves right now, it’s really not all that easy to get a hold of on streaming. You pointed me to the internet archives where I was able to stream it for free. But the only other place that I was able to find it was you can buy it on Amazon for like 7.
Yeah, but I have a feeling that that’s why I haven’t watched it. In my adulthood, because it’s not everywhere, it’s, it’s just not everywhere.
Todd: And that’s weird, as, as notorious as the film is within this And all of
Craig: the sequels are! I don’t know what’s you can find the sequels anywhere for free, all of them.
Todd: Yeah, it must be a rights issue that’s probably tied up in something, you know?
Craig: Okay. This just occurred to me. I wanted to talk. One of the parts that was really jarring to me was the next morning D. Wallace wakes up and her husband is getting dressed and she sees he’s got big scratches on his back, which one couldn’t have been made by a human being, right?
Because they’re enormous. But to the, she’s like, what happened to this? Why do you have those scratches? And he’s like, Oh, I must’ve got them in the attack. And she’s like, well, they weren’t there yesterday. And they, you know, Exchange, like maybe one or two more lines before he just backhands her like backhands and I was like, what, what is happening?
Like there, there had been no indication that this guy was a bad guy. And, and I, I said that they had exchanged like a couple of back and forth lines. Like, first of all, he totally tries to gaslight her. Like you’re crazy. Like you’re being crazy. And she’s like, no, I’m not crazy. And then he backhands her hard and she goes down on the bed.
And she is like, I’m getting out of here. I’m going to have Terry take me home. Terry has come at this point. God, I don’t know. And, and he says something like, you just don’t understand. I don’t even understand what’s going on here. Yeah, was he? Well, it only just occurred to me now Was he always a violent person or is he a violent person now because he’s a werewolf?
Todd: Oh now he’s the alpha wolf putting his bitch in her place. I think that’s what it is. I mean, I think this is Everything now is, that’s happening is, is showing his change, you know, so. Okay. You know, it was a shock to her. It’s certainly a shock to us, because exactly like you said, he really comes across as this sweet, nice guy, who could possibly be rough if he needed to be, and now there’s suddenly this side coming out of him, right?
Yeah. Actually really good casting I thought. He seems happy go lucky before this. Very happy go lucky. He’s got kind of a sweet charming face, but then when he is now a bit menacing, he comes across as menacing. It’s, it worked for me. That’s exactly what I thought was going on. Terry is going out and doing her research and she just happens to stumble into that cabin, right?
Because I don’t think there was anything else leading her there.
Craig: Well, she, God, I don’t know. She does investigating of her own. And, and she eventually ends up on that cliff.
Todd: Right.
Craig: And she recognizes it from the killer Eddie or whatever his name, she recognizes it from his drawing. His sketch. Then, she goes, I don’t, yeah, you’re right, she just ends up at this cabin.
Is it Slutty Marsha’s cabin? It’s
Todd: slutty Marsha’s cabin. I think Marsha and Eddie have been shacking up.
Craig: They’re brother and sister. Oh, that’s right. That’s right. Well, they are living in the same house. I only found that out after watching the movie and reading about
Clip: it.
Craig: Oh, I guess they make it kind of clear that slutty Marsha and the crazy guy in the pelts with the wild eyes, they are clearly brother and sister, but Eddie, the killer.
Todd: Okay, I didn’t, I don’t, I didn’t know if that was ever explicitly stated or implied in any way, shape, or form. I just figured they all lived in the same house for whatever reason.
Craig: I think they all have the same last name, but it doesn’t matter, who cares? Right, so, so she shows up there and, uh, I read, as she was going up there, there’s like bones hanging on strings and stuff, and I’m like, this is so Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
There, there is some connection, like, did the guy who did Texas Chainsaw Massacre do this too? Because I know that there are some props from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in this movie. Oh,
Todd: interesting.
Craig: But, you know, she goes in there and she finds a room that is like, Virtually identical to the room that she found with Chris, the, the killer’s room.
It’s like the same room. The same sketches, the same like newspaper clippings. It’s like exactly the same. And then a werewolf starts breaking through the door. She’s pretty badass. Yeah, she holds her own like she dives out a window and gets into like a little hidey hole. The, the werewolf is trying to attack her, but she has an ax and she chops the werewolf’s arm off.
Did we ever find out which werewolf that was? Did we ever see somebody? Who was it?
Todd: It was the weird guy. The, the other brother, I guess. Yeah. Cause at one point When they’re all assembled later, he shows his stump and he’s like, look what you did to me.
Craig: Okay, I assumed it was him, but I didn’t remember if he ever popped up again, but she gets away.
Then she runs to Dr. Meddler’s office and she calls Chris and she’s like, Oh my God, you need to come here right away. I won’t believe they’re werewolves. Yeah, they’re werewolves. And she says, and I think the doctor’s in on it. And he’s like, Does the doctor have a file cabinet is just like, yeah, he’s like, look at the files.
Who cares? Okay, so, so she says she starts looking at the files, but apparently unbeknownst to her, a 12 foot tall werewolf has been hiding behind the file cabinet
because it jumps out. And kills her. Like, bites out her jugular. It’s pretty gross. While Chris is listening on the other end of the phone.
Todd: Poor guy. Oh boy. So he packs up and grabs his silver bullets and starts
Craig: comes to the colony. He makes a quick trip to the bookstore. Grabs those silver bullets. And gets on the road in his Mazda.
Todd: I got the impression that the colony must be this like distant place, but they can, they can get there awfully quickly. So, uh, maybe it’s not so far away from town after all. But, um, Karen, for some reason, I guess because she’s planning on leaving and she needs to swing by the doctor’s office, right? For something.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah. This all happens really fast.
Todd: It really intensifies quickly. She comes into the office and, and Eddie’s still there, but now he’s, He’s, he’s not in wolf form anymore. He’s in kind of almost there. She
Craig: finds her friend’s body and seems slightly upset about it.
Todd: And not like, Oh my God, I need to get the hell out of here.
Craig: Like she finds her best friends. Mutilated body and she’s like, Oh,
she’s kind of like looks at it wistfully, like, darn, I really needed a ride. Dang
Todd: it. I was really hoping this wouldn’t happen. And then very calmly turns around and starts to dial on the phone. And that’s when she gets attacked. I mean, if I were, I would have immediately run out of there not knowing where this guy is because he is in there.
Craig: Pops up from like under a sheet. Like he was pretending to be a body or something? I don’t know, whatever. It’s
Todd: almost like it was her body and then she turned around to go to the phone and he put, he knocked her body off the table and secretly positioned himself under a sheet. But, this is where we get his full on transformation right in front of her and it’s impressive.
Now, the thing I’ve got to say about it is, On its own it’s very impressive this scene goes on for like five minutes this transformation it’s long we see every stage and the bladders are popping out on his face you know you see the movement it’s actually really cool and good it’s that classic monster movie situation where she just stands there in the corner screaming while he just stands in front of her and goes through all this stuff
Craig: no she’s not screaming she’s looking at him like she’s fascinated And hot like She her reactions to everything are so weird like
Todd: it is
Craig: she could attempt to run away or She doesn’t she just stands there and she’s not really I mean, there’s there’s some fear In her face, but it’s not just fear.
There’s also fascination and like wonder and yeah, like she’s kind of into it. Just like she was kind of into it the first time. Maybe she, because apparently he was kind of partially transformed. He kind of in that porno room. That’s what she saw, but she, she can’t remember it. So now she’s saying it again
Todd: to be fair is he like somewhat are the werewolves kind of somewhat hypnotic you know in the way that vampires are kind of hypnotic in the way that the march of the slut was
Craig: well at this movie.
First of all these as it turns out these werewolves are werewolves but they don’t follow the normal rules silver bullets work apparently but they are just shape shifters who can change whenever they want at will
Todd: yeah. It doesn’t have to be a film.
Craig: No, I think in this movie. It’s it’s like vampires like they kind of have like thrall.
It’s all very sexual. Yes. It’s much like that little red riding hood Movie that we watch. Yeah.
Todd: Yeah company of wolves With Angela Lansbury y
Craig: Yeah. I like the wolf part is kinda like the, the sexual animal inside and, and I think that there is something that appeals to even well to to d Wallace and to her husband.
Her husband rejected it until he was bitten. I think that she’s drawn to this animal sexuality even though this guy, the Eddie guy is so gross. Like he’s super ugly. They, they make him super ugly anyway, but he, he fully transforms and, and she’s, you know, enthralled, but then I guess when he lunges at her, she has a handy jar of acid that she throws in his face
Todd: right behind her.
Yeah. That she kind of grabbed. Yeah. This is, uh, we saw that in Seat of Chucky now, too, by the way, throwing acid on self. Well, I was gonna say two other things about this, like what you were saying about the sexuality, that is what this movie is sort of credited with doing, is making werewolves sexy. And that has carried through to modern day, I mean, obviously there’s Twilight and all that, you know, where the vampires and werewolves are both very sexy.
I don’t know if you know this, but with my voice acting, one of my very regular gigs is reading dramatic audiobooks. Recording them for these niche genre places. There are whole platforms online and it is very, very popular genre right now of what we all affectionately call werewolf porn.
Craig: I knew you were going to say that.
Todd: Yeah, essentially it’s just basically the sort of seductive males, 50 shades of gray type deals, or like twilight type deals, but. It exists in this universe called the Omniverse that has been created through fanfiction online basically over the last decade or so by some prominent authors, some of whom, many of whom are self published on Amazon and are making millions right now.
Obviously these platforms are making millions. They’re doing Tick tock dramas now that my friends here in China are acting in and I’ve been, I will probably get cast in one or two of these eventually. These very sordid soap opera type, one and a half minute long, 52 episode type deals. The hot new thing, you heard it here first, Craig, much of the themes of this is werewolves.
And it’s these werewolf packs and there’s an alpha wolf and he’s trying to get his omega, and they have to protect her,
2022-11-02
