You know, I'd always naturally assumed this was a TV-movie. I'd never seen it before last night, mind you, but the plot, cast, PG rating and time period just screamed "made for television" to me. Even after seeing it, albeit in a truncated, "American Movie Classics" form, I'm still kind of wondering to myslef, "Are
you SURE this isn't a TV movie?" Partially it's because the plot of the film is summed up in the title to such a tee that there's almost no reason to follow the film with more than half an ear open. A young boy (Scott Sealey, who doesn't have any other credits outside an episode of "Emergency!"... watch the film and find out why!) and his father (B-movie vet Kerwin Matthews) are attacked by a hairy beast in the middle of the forest. Dad kills him, but attacks keep happening. The boy is convinced there's a werewolf running around, but nobody believes him because he's been a bit of a compulsive liar ever since his parents got a divorce. The kid figures out that his father's been bitten and has turned into a fuzzy killer, and it's up to him to convince his mother, the local sheriff, his psychiatrist (George Gaynes!) or possibly even a group of religious hippies that they're all in terrible danger. So it's basically THE WINDOW or CLOAK AND DAGGER (the Henry Thomas one), but with a werewolf. Nothing particularly of interest there, and just enough plot to fill a tiny blurb in TV Guide. There's no gore, mediocre make-up that seems to be at least as old as I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF's, unexceptional TV-movie level acting and a lead character that's more annoying than compelling. And yet, it's got it's 70's, TV-movie-esque charms. It's almost goofy enough to be fun, especially the scenes with the hippies, who seem terribly out of place in an otherwise standard tale of rural horror. The best moment comes when the sheriff confronts them for, well, being hippies, I guess, prompting the great rant, "You call us freaks? Well, we're not freak freaks! We're freaked out! Freaked out on God, man!" That moment almost made the film worth watching. And none of the film is really awful, just silly, and moments are silly enough to be entertaining. If you're desperate for a 70's TV-movie-but-not-a-TV-movie fix, you could do worse. (Like 1979's WOLFMAN. Ugh.) Unfortunately, the film's not available on DVD or VHS, so the only place you can see it is on AMC, where it's riddled with commercials and station logos, anxiously letting you know that STAR TREK IV will be showing in only 17 hours. So it's really not worth bothering.
July 3, 2004
