The Howling (1981)

Earlier this week, I saw An American Werewolf in London in its entirety for the first time in my life. Now I just saw another werewolf movie from 1981 from beginning to end in my first viewing: The Howling. With direction from Joe Dante and a script co-written by John Sayles, this flick was almost as awesome as the John Landis' England-based comedy-horror pic. Dee Wallace, who would later be better known as the mother in E.T., is fine as the television reporter who is recovering from an unpleasant encounter with a serial killer as she and her husband (Christopher Stone) take in a retreat in the woods with a community waiting there for them. Many effective werewolf transformation scenes abound although some may take so long that you want to laugh after a while. Still, good support from Robert Picardo, Dennis Dugan, Kevin McCarthy, Slim Pickens, Patrick Macnee, John Carradine, and in cameos, Roger Corman, Sayles, Forrest J. Ackerman, and frequent Dante regular Dick Miller as Walter Paisley, a name he first used in Corman's A Bucket of Blood. Great use of scares throughout up to the ironic finale. So give The Howling a try with maybe An American Werewolf in London as its second feature...P.S. Like AWIL, there's references to The Wolf Man with clips shown on a television screen and a picture of Lon Chaney, Jr. in a cabin somewhere.