As this year marks the 45th anniversary of Joe Dante’s The Howling and John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London (among others), I was invited to appear on the Horror 101 with Dr. AC podcast to discuss both of them. (When the episode goes live next week, I will be sure to double back and link it here.) Doing my due diligence, I gave The Howling a re-watch with the commentary by Dante and actors Dee Wallace Stone, Christopher Stone, and Robert Picardo, which was recorded in 1995 for the New Line Home Video laserdisc. (Coincidentally, all three had just appeared in Dante’s Runaway Daughters, made for Showtime the year before and something of a Howling reunion since it also featured Belinda Balaski, Roger Corman, and Dick Miller.)
I didn’t own the laserdisc, but the commentary was ported over to the DVD, which was how I first heard it. I have since upgraded to Scream Factory’s Blu-ray and, most recently, the 4K UHD using the 2021 4K restoration by StudioCanal. With each new edition, the film looks sharper, and a far sight better than my initial exposure to it, renting the pan-and-scan VHS tape from Blockbuster in the early ’90s. I go into this a little on the podcast, but that was less than ideal for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the tape was missing the first five minutes or so.
As I recall, the action started abruptly with the shot of Karen White being led out of the porno store by her husband Bill, shell-shocked from having witnessed two things her mind is having trouble processing: serial killer Eddie Quist’s transformation and his subsequent shooting by a trigger-happy patrolman. The meat of the movie was present and accounted for, though, and it left a deep impression on me. The same went for American Werewolf when I rented it the same summer, to the point where I’ve watched both at least a dozen times over the past three decades. Neither of them has come close to getting old for me.
This especially true of The Howling, which is packed to the gills with all kinds of details, movie references, and in-jokes. (No fewer than ten characters are named after the directors of earlier werewolf movies.) It’s a film I’ve written about here, I ran the series for The AV Club, and I included it in an article about “The Year of the (Were-)Wolf” for Crooked Marquee. There is simply no shortage of ways to frame a discussion about it and its importance to the depictions of werewolves on film.
As for its litter mate, people (like me) who bemoan the fact that they’ve never seen An American Werewolf in London on the big screen should be made aware that it will be screened at Regal Cinemas nationwide on Wednesday, May 13, as one of Fangoria‘s “Staff Picks.” I know I’ll be taking advantage of that.