The Howling (1981)

Joe Dante's The Howling arrives from 1981 carrying a werewolf, a news desk, and a colony of well-dressed Californians who turn hairy when the moon cooperates. Karen White, a Los Angeles anchor, survives an encounter with a serial killer and is packed off to a rural retreat by her therapist. The film's interest in television is genuine. Its interest in everything else is minimal. What we have here is a creature feature with a smirk, and the smirk is aimed squarely at the medium that made its characters briefly famous.

There is a woman at the center of the story, and she holds a professional job, which in 1981 counted as a statement of sorts. The film does not build on that. Its camera lingers where the era's cameras lingered, and the sexuality on display serves the transformation set pieces instead of the character. Dee Wallace does the work of a leading lady who deserves a better screenplay, and she receives one only in the final minutes, when Karen walks onto a live broadcast and proves her story to a global audience that assumes it is a special effect. That is a sharp ending. It is also the only moment the film says anything about the audience it was made for.

The satire of sensational television runs underneath the gore, never on top of it, and the screenplay by John Sayles keeps the commentary folded into the plot where it belongs. The cast is a parade of familiar white character actors. The film has no interest in race, class, sexuality, or the environment, and it offers no lessons on any of them. It wants to frighten us and then amuse us. It succeeds at both, modestly, and asks nothing more of us than the price of a ticket.

It remains a tidy piece of monster craftsmanship, and its restraint in the sermonizing department is its quietest virtue. The werewolves do the talking. They are, on the whole, more coherent than the humans.

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