The Howling (film)

src: i.ytimg.com

The Howling is a 1981 American horror film directed by Joe Dante, and starring Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, and Robert Picardo. Based on a novel of the same name by Gary Brandner, the film follows a new television journalist sent to a remote mountain resort after a fatal incident with a serial killer, unaware that the population is a werewolf.

The film was released on April 10, 1981 and became a moderate success, the best-selling $ 17.9 million at the box office. It received generally positive reviews, with praise for special effects makeup by Rob Bottin. The film won the Saturn 1980 Award for Best Horror Movie while still in development, and is one of three wolf-themed horror films released in 1981, along with and Wolfen . Over the years, The Howling has gathered followers. His financial success helped Dante's career, and prompted Warner Bros. to hire Dante (as director) and Michael Finnell (as producer) for the Gremlins. A franchise consisting of seven sequels emerged from the success of the film.

Video The Howling (film)

Plot

Karen White is a Los Angeles television newsreader who is being followed by a serial killer named Eddie Quist. In cooperation with the police, he took part in a scheme to arrest Eddie by agreeing to meet him in a dirty porn theater. Eddie forces Karen to watch a video of a young woman being raped, and when Karen turns around to see Eddie she shouts. The police came in and shot Eddie, and although Karen was safe, she suffered from amnesia. Her therapist, Dr. George Waggner, decided to send him and her husband, Bill Neill, to "Colony", a remote rural resort where he sent patients for treatment.

The colony was full of strange characters, and one, a sensual nymphomaniac named Marsha Quist, tried to seduce Bill. When he rejected his unsophisticated sexual offer, he was assaulted and scratched in the arm by a werewolf-like creature as he returned to his cabin. After Bill's attack, Karen called his friend Terri Fisher to the Colony, and Terri linked the resort with Eddie Quist through the sketch he left behind. Karen also began to suspect that Bill was hiding a much more threatening secret than marital infidelity. That night, Bill meets Marsha at a bonfire in the woods. During sex under the moonlight, they undergo a frightening transformation into a werewolf.

While investigating the next morning, Terri is attacked by a werewolf in the cabin, though she runs away after cutting off the monster's hand with an ax. He walks into Wagner's office and places a phone call to his girlfriend, Chris Halloran, who has been told about the true nature of the Colony. While on the phone with Chris, Terri looks for a file in Eddie Quist. When he finally found Eddie in the filing cabinet, he was attacked by Eddie in the form of a werewolf, and was killed when he was bitten in a jugular vein. Chris hears this on the other end and leaves for the Colony armed with silver bullets.

Karen is confronted by Eddie Quist who gets up once more, and Eddie transforms herself into a werewolf in front of her. In response, Karen splashed Eddie in the face with a corrosive acid and escaped. Later, when Chris arrives at the Colony, he is confronted by a terrible Eddie, who is shot dead by Chris with a silver bullet as he tries to change. However, it turns out that everyone in the Colony is a werewolf and can change as you wish, without needing a full moon. Karen and Chris survived their attack and burned the Colonies to the ground.

Karen decides to warn the world of the existence of a werewolf, and surprises her employer by launching her warning during live television news. Then, to prove his story, he himself turned into a werewolf, after being bitten in the Colony by Bill. He was shot by Chris in front of a live audience, and the world was left wondering whether the transformation and shooting really happened or whether it was a special effects work. Marsha, who escaped from the Colony himself, sat at a bar with a man while watching a news broadcast, and ordered a rare burger after Karen's death was cut for a commercial break.

Maps The Howling (film)

Cast

src: i.ytimg.com

Production

Although the film has been well-known for its semi-humor scenario, it was adapted from a more straightforward novel by Gary Brandner first published in 1977. After a draft by Jack Conrad (original director who left the following difficulties with the studio) and Terence H. Winkless proved unsatisfactory, director Joe Dante hired John Sayles to rewrite the script. Both have collaborated earlier on Dante's 1978 movie Piranha . Sayles rewrote the script with a self-conscious, identical satirical tone that she gave Piranha , and her finished design has only a vague resemblance to Brandner's book. However, Winkless still receives co-author's credit along with Sayles for his work on the screenplay.

The cast features a number of recognizable character actors such as Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, Kenneth Tobey, and Slim Pickens, who mostly appear in the genre movie itself. In addition, the movie is full of joke references (see 'Tribut' below). Roger Corman made a cameo appearance as a man standing outside a telephone booth, just like John Sayles, who appeared as a morgue officer and James Murtaugh as one of the Colonies. Forrest J. Ackerman appeared in a short cameo in an occult bookstore, holding a copy of his magazine Famous Filmland Monster.

The Howling is also famous for its special effects, which were very sophisticated at the time. The transformation scene was created by Rob Bottin, who also worked with Dante on Piranha . Rick Baker is the original effects artist for the film, but abandoned his production to work on the John Landis Werewolf America movie in London, handing his effect to work for Bottin. The most famous Bottin effect is the Eddie Quist screen transformation, which involves an airbag under the face latex application to give the illusion of transformation. Variety states that Biggest Weakness ' is that the impact of this initial transformation never peaks during the movie's climax. The Howling also features stop-motion animation by David W. Allen, and dolls intended to give werewolves a more non-human look. Despite most of the special effects at the time, the silhouettes of Bill and Marsha having sex as werewolves were obviously animated cartoons. Dante connects this with budgetary reasons.

Due to their work on The Howling, Dante and producer Michael Finnell accepted the opportunity to film Gremlins (1984) for Steven Spielberg. The film's reference to The Howling with a smiling face on the refrigerator door. Eddie Quist left the yellow smiley face sticker as his calling card in several places across The Howling . Also Jim Krell's character as a news reporter Lew Landers appeared on both The Howling and Gremlins, suggesting the two films share the same universe.

src: www.smdouglas.com

Reception

The critical response to The Howling is generally positive. In 1981, the 2-out-of-4 star rating Roger Ebert described The Howling as "the most ridiculous movie seen in some time", but Ebert also said that his special effects are good and his film may be "worth your money, IF you get it two for one ". Gene Siskel liked the movie and gave him three and a half stars out of four. In his book Movie Guide , Leonard Maltin writes that The Howling is a "cool horror movie," and jotted down a funny reference to the classic wolf movie. Variety praised the film's humor and its traditional approach to horror. Kim Newman, in his 1988 Nightmare Movie, titled The Rapid Chiller The Rapidly Chiller that easily revives the wild-fog-roaming genre ", and calls Picardo's transformation sequence" the most impressive movie werewolf monster ".

The film won the Saturn 1980 Award for Best Horror Movie (although the fact was not released until 1981). The movie is also # 81 in Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments .

src: wickedhorror.thunderroadinc.netdna-cdn.com

Home media

The Howling debuted on The Movie Channel on January 5, 1982 at 10 am CST time.

Yelling! Factory re-releases The Howling on DVD and Blu-ray on June 18, 2013 through their Scream Factory branch. The film was previously released to DVD by MGM (owner of video and TV distribution rights for The Howling due to distribution agreement with StudioCanal, owner of AVCO Embassy library) on August 26, 2003. as a special edition DVD Special Edition Region 1.

src: storytellermatt.com

Sequel

There are seven sequels for The Howling . In May 2015, a newly formed production company announced that it had purchased the rights to the original film and was working on the ninth movie, a remake of the original film.

src: i.ytimg.com

References

src: www.methodsunsound.com

External links

• The Howling in IMDb
• The Howling at AllMovie
• The Howling at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Howling in Box Office Mojo
• The Howling - Movie Trailer on YouTube

Source of the article : Wikipedia