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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - April 10th

"THE HOWLING" released in 1981

After a bizarre and near fatal encounter with a serial killer, a television newswoman is sent to a remote mountain resort whose residents may not be what they seem, in Joe Dante's cult classic werewolf movie, The Howling!

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Karen White (Dee Wallace) is a Los Angeles television news anchor, and is currently the only in communication with a vicious serial killer named Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). Karen later agrees to meet Eddie at a sleazy porno theater, acting as bait so the police can catch him; over the strong objection of Karen's husband Bill (Christopher Stone) and friends Chris and Terri (Dennis Dugan and Belinda Balaski). Events at the meet go awry, and the police end up shooting Eddie, with karen left suffering from amnesia. Haunted by vivid nightmares of that night, Karen is persuaded by her friend, and her therapist, Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee) to spend a few days at The Colony; a secluded resort in the countryside where he sends patients for treatment. Karen and Bill soon discover The Colony is filled with strange characters, and one, a sultry nymphomaniac named Marsha Quist (Elisabeth Brooks), tries to seduce Bill. When he resists her unsubtle sexual overtures, he is attacked and scratched on the arm by a wolf-like creature while returning to his cabin. After Bill's attack, Karen asks Terri to visit her at the Colony, where Terri connects the resort to Eddie Quist through a sketch Eddie left behind in his apartment. Finally realizing the true nature of the Colony, Terri vainly tries to call Chris, but is attacked and killed by a revived Eddie in his true werewolf form. Arming himself with silver bullets, Chris races to the Colony to rescue Karen before she shares the same fate as Terri's at the fangs and claws of the brutal werewolf pack!

TRIVIA:   Robert Picardo improvised the line "I want to give you a piece of my mind" before pulling out a bullet from his head.

Top and Above:   Karen (Dee Wallace) and Chris (Dennis Dugan) desperately search for a way to escape The Colony, run by the sultry, yet vicious, pack-leader Marsha Quist (Elisabeth Brooks) and the sinister Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee).

 Based on the novel by Gary Brandner, The Howling was to originally have been directed by Jack Conrad with Terence H. Winkless writing the screenplay, but troubles with the studio forced them both to leave the project. The film eventually fell into the lap of director Joe Dante, who brought aboard John Sayles, with whom he had previously worked for Piranha (1978), to write the screenplay. Sayles rewrote the script with the same self-aware, satirical tone that he gave Piranha, and his finished draft bears only a vague resemblance to Brandner's book (however, Winkless still received a co-writer's credit along with Sayles for his work on the screenplay). Many in-joke references in The Howling include numerous references to wolves: The Big Bad Wolf from Ub Iwerks' Little Boy Blue (1936) is seen on TV; Sheriff Newfield is seen eating Wolf Brand chili and a similar can is seen on the counter in Eddie's cabin; a copy of the Allen Ginsberg book Howl appears; a mention of disc jockey Wolfman Jack; a bottle of Wolfen-brand medicine on the counter from which Karen picks up the acid; and in Karen and Bill's cabin there is a picture of a wolf who killed a sheep within the flock. Even the characters in the film are named after horror film directors who directed other films that featured werewolves, including George Waggner - inspiring the character name of the main villan Dr. George Waggner - who directed The Wolf Man (1941).

Dee Wallace was later cast as the lead Karen White, with Dennis Dugan, Christopher Stone, and Belinda Balaski appearing as Karen's husband and friends, Bill Neil, Chris Halloran, and Terri Fisher. The cast also featured a number of recognizable character actors such as Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, Kenneth Tobey and Slim Pickens, many of whom appeared in genre films themselves, in supporting roles of TV producer Fred Francis, and The Colony denizens Erle Kenton and Sam Newfield, respectively. Canadian actress Elisabeth Brooks was cast as werewolf siren Marsha Quist, with Robert Picardo as evil serial killer Eddie Quist. Legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman makes a cameo appearance as a man standing outside a phone booth, as does screenwriter John Sayles, appearing as a morgue attendant and James Murtaugh as one of the members of the Colony.

TRIVIA:   This film and Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) are both based on the same novel by Gary Brandner. Interestingly, Howling IV actually represents the more faithful adaptation of the book than the original film does.

 Top and Above:   Director Joe Dante on set and location.

Filmed in 28 days (plus numerous days of reshoots), The Howling was most notable for its special effects, which were state-of-the-art at the time. Rick Baker was originally doing the special effects for the film, but he left to do An American Werewolf in London (1981), leaving the effects job for this film in the hands of assistant Rob Bottin (interestingly, both The Howling and American Werewolf were released the same year and both received praise for their makeup work). Bottin's most celebrated effect was the on-screen transformation of Eddie Quist, which involved air bladders under latex facial applications to give the illusion of transformation. In fact, the final transformation had to be done all in close-up because the film had exceeded its budget by then, and this had to be shot in an Dante's office because they had no money for sets anymore. There were times during shooting when Robert Picardo was very despondent about the hours he had to spend in makeup, later remarking in an interview that,"One day, after spending six and a half hours in the makeup chair, I was thinking, 'Trained at Yale, two leading roles on Broadway. My first acting role in California, my face gets melted in a low-budget horror movie.' All the crew had to say to that was, 'Bob, next time read the script all the way through first!"' The Howling also features stop-motion animation by David W. Allen, and puppetry intended to give the werewolves an even more non-human look, as highlighted in the scene where we see the silhouette of Bill and Marsha having sex as werewolves.

Released in early 1981, The Howling was box office success, grossing almost $18 million against a relatively small $1.5 million budget. The film also received mostly positive reviews, with  Leonard Maltin writing that The Howling is a "hip, well-made horror film" and noted the humorous references to classic werewolf cinema. Roger Ebert's 2-out-of-4 star review described The Howling as the "silliest film seen in some time", but Ebert also said the special effects were good and the film was perhaps "worth your money, IF you get it two for one", while Ebert's television partner Gene Siskel liked the film and gave it three and a half stars out of four.  Kim Newman, in his 1988 book Nightmare Movies, called The Howling "a brisk chiller that effortlessly revives the prowling-through-misty-forests genre", and called Picardo's transformation sequence "the movies' most impressive werewolf monster".

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   66%

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