A Pilgrim’s Digression

The Howling

Cheesy werewolf special effects, bad hair, perky, nude, nineteen-eighties breasts…The Howling is a pretty dreadful movie to watch twenty-four years after it was first released. What makes it worse, I feel guilty saying that.

Saturday, I bought a cheap “Special Edition” DVD at the Krogers. it was an impulse buy. The DVD was in the bargain bin. I thought to myself, “I haven’t seen that movie in years!” So I bought it. Tonight, I watched it.

Why do I say I feel guilty about panning this movie? For one thing, the director, Joe Dante, has gone on to do…well, not much of anything according to IMDB. I feel sorry for the guy. This movie is his masterpiece. Dante also put together some documentary materials on the making of the film that are supposed to embiggen his masterwork in the mind of the viewer. For some reason, hearing a director explicate his film always makes it seem better than it actually is. So I feel guilty that, despite the screenwriter’s explanation that the film is in fact a satire on early-eighties group psychotherapy, I just can’t see past the cheese in this movie.

What was it exactly that compelled me to watch this movie more than once when I was a kid? Was it only those breasts? For the era in which it was made, The Howling is probably as good as any of the slasher pics I watched back then, maybe even better. Friday the 13th had a young, horny Kevin Bacon. The Howling had two great character actors, Slim Pickens, of “Dr. Strangelove” fame, as well as Peter MacNee from the old “Avengers” TV program.

The Howling also contains probably the most unintentionally funny line in the history of cinema. During the final sequence, the hero is racing in his car to rescue the heroine. He pulls into a gas station for gas (always a bummer to run out of gas when your girl is about to be eaten by werewolves) and honks his horn at a young guy filling up his tank at the only pump.

The guy turns to him and says, “Take it easy buddy, not all of us got enough money for a Mazda.”

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about this movie. It has one throwaway line that will forever be etched in my mind.