It has been nearly 40 years since I last watched Joe Dante’s werewolf feature The Howling. My last viewing was either videotape or a pay channel during the early 80s only a few years after the film’s release in 1981. Based upon the novel of the same name Gary Brandner the movie along with An American Werewolf in London, released the same year, presented a radically new approach to werewolves in cinema that The Howling, despite a slew of sequels, failed to make the same level of cultural impact.

The film, departing heavily from the novel, centers on journalist and local news anchor Karen White who survives a traumatizing encounter with serial killer and as part of her therapy, along with her husband Bill, secludes herself at a rural facility known as ‘The Colony,’ administered by notable psychiatrist. While living at The Colony Karen discovers that not of her co-residents are exactly what they appear to be and there may be a connection to the serial killer.

There is a reason why The Howling is not as well known as its sister werewolf film An American Werewolf in London, and that is far fewer interesting things happen in it. This film takes a great deal of time establishing its characters and its environment while providing precious little dramatic tension or conflict. With a brief running time of just 91 minutes, it has little room for leisurely establishment. The cast is good and well positioned, the cinematography has a glow to it that enhances the unnatural world of the colony and the transformations by Rob Bottin are groundbreaking, but the complete package fails to get over the top and aside from an ending sequence that is stellar the film is largely forgettable.

The Howling is not a bad film nor is it a great one but rather exists in that uncomfortable middle ground of being basically serviceable. While it has logic and character motivational problems that are left wholly unresolved or explained its novel approach to the cinematic werewolf makes it worth at least one viewing.

The Howling is currently streaming on Shudder.

Sunday night I watched The Howling first the first time in decades, long post about that film to come, and it got me thinking about the changing nature of werewolf transformations in cinematic history. My thoughts are guided by the films I have actually seen and should not be construed as an exhaustive study.

1935’s Werewolf of London preceded that other Universal werewolf film by six years. It shares almost none of the mythology that the next film planted solidly into popular thought and in many ways plays more like a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde. The transformation from man to hybrid wolf and man takes place during subtle cuts. The character passes behind foreground objects such as pillars and emerges partially transformed going through successive stages until fully changed in a werewolf in tails and top hat.

1941 changed werewolves forever with Siodmak’s script for The Wolf Man. This is the film that introduced silver as a werewolf’s bane and many other lasting tropes. Talbot’s transformation, unlike Werewolf of London, happens on-screen by way of lap-dissolves where in succeeding shots, dissolved into each other to create the illusion of a single take, hair and appliances are added to the actor until the change is complete. The process was time consuming and difficult for the actor and never fully convincing but remained the method of onscreen werewolf transformations for the next 40 years.

1981 witnessed the release of two werewolf films, The Howling, with transformation effect by Rob Bottin, and An American Werewolf in London whose transformations were designed and created by Rick Baker, both men would go on to produce some of the most legendary make-up effects in the last sixty years.

Both men utilized bladders, puppets, and vanguard make-up techniques and appliances to create on-stage, in-camera, transformations that had never been seen before. Audiences watched as body parts swelled, extended, pushed out from human to wolf proportions, in elaborate and minute detail. However, it was Baker’s An American Werewolf in London that changed the paradigm not only for film but for literary werewolves.

While both transformations achieve similar on-screen effects, Baker’s imbued the changes with bone cracking agony for the tragic character afflicted by this curse. David’s first and most elaborate transformation in the film is a grueling, painful, and terrifying ordeal because nothing about it appears even remotely tolerable. He suffers, and the audience along with him, through every moment of the change.

And just like that the agony of transformation became canon. To this day I read werewolf stories where the author takes the time to describe the breaking and reforming of bones and he painful shift from human to wolf. Authors I am sure that have never seen An American Werewolf in London follow the template that Rick baker laid out 40 years earlier.