The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Wolfen (1981), directed by Michael Wadleigh

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Moanin' at Midnight", by Howlin' Wolf

       Horror, for all its love of doggedly following tradition, is an evolutionary process like all of human storytelling. At one point in time vampires weren’t that much different than zombies today, rising from their graves to prey upon the living (unless you dropped some rice on the floor I guess), and it wasn’t until Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” that the concept of vampires as dark and mysterious sex symbols entered the public consciousness. The aforementioned zombies were people put under the influence of powerful drugs, until George A. Romero ghoulish cannibals came to be known as zombies, and it wasn’t until years after that the concept of them consuming brains specifically came into play. It is because of this malleability that these concepts have managed to persist for so long, to be continuously reimagined and reinvented, even if that means being put on a children’s cereal box or shoved into a teen romance series. Pop culture immortality, which is about the only kind of immortality you can hope for these days.

Preamble done, we get to a description of the film: 1981’s Wolfen, based on the 1978 novel by Whitley Strieber, directed by Michael Wadleigh and put out by the famous Orion Pictures, home of Robocop. Albert Finney plays crusty police detective Dewey Wilson, who is called in by his chief to investigate the brutal murder of real estate tycoon Chris Van de Veer, his wife and their bodyguard. It’s a very gruesome sight, bodies mutilated, heads decapitated, even some organs missing, and Van de Veer had a lot of people that would’ve lined up to do it. There’s not much in the way of evidence either, no witnesses, no traces of metal in the body despite the severity of the wounds, nothing except a couple of hairs found in the victim’s bodies. Hair that happen to belong to a unknown species of wolf. Things only get weirder from there, as Detective Dewey steps into a world he never knew existed, yet was under his nose the whole time. Co-starring Diane Venora as Rebecca, a criminologist working a security firm known as ESS, and Edward James Olmos as Eddie Holt, a former militant for the Native American Movement and who occasionally likes to strip naked and lick puddle water. Yes, that’s an actual scene in the film.

       On paper, Wolfen is probably one of my favorite concepts for a film I’ve heard in awhile. A procedural mystery story where the detective, investigates a seemingly normal case, only to discover that they’ve stumbled onto an actual monster? That sounds cool as hell! It’s also ostensibly a werewolf story, one rooted in First Nations legends rather the transferrable curse popularized in Universal’s The Wolf-Man, and something that I don’t consider a spoiler since the word wolf is right in the damn title, which is another treat as there’s not actually that many big-name werewolf movies out there. In fact two of the biggest werewolf movies in the game, The Howling and the John Landis classic An American Werewolf in London, both came out in the 80s, so this was apparently the decade for wolf-based horror movies.

       So what you’re expecting in your mind is something like The Long Goodbye but with monsters, but that’s not Wolfen ends up being. Albert Finney as Dewey Wilson is less of a hardboiled Sam Spade type and more of a dumpy Lou Grant by way of the Mary Tyler Moore Show type, with reams of backstory and character motivations that’s barely touched upon across this almost two hour film. Rebecca, who you’d think would end up playing the Scully to Dewey’s Mulder, ends up doing more or less nothing except being subjected to a sex scene with Albert Finney that comes out of fucking nowhere and is never brought up again. Of course you’ve got Edward James Olmos in there, but he doesn’t really have a lot of room to work with. It’s a two hour film and I feel like I barely know any of the characters, aside from Whittington the medical examiner, and that’s not a good sign for a film.

       Also, while I’m not a member of any First Nations tribe and so cannot and do not speak on their behalf, I found the use of them in this film kind of...wonky, to say the least. At first it seemed like the film was going to subvert the ‘mystical Indian’ trope, which I supported, but then they are, kinda, and they start dropping lines that honestly have the ring of social Darwinism to them, where poor people being murdered is A-okay to them? I dunno, it’s just one of the factors in making this film’s climax a ridiculous clusterfuck, where nothing is really resolved and it just raises more questions than it does answers. I won’t spoil anything too specific, but the fact that I’m supposed to believe a fucking wolf has been killing people in the South Bronx since I assume the South Bronx was even a thing, and apparently no one has ever seen this fucking thing in all that time? Is it supposed to be the damn Predator? I mean they gave it the heat vision POV shots about six years before Arnold came into the picture, another move that kills the mystery of whether the murderer is a monster or not out of the gate by the way, might as well give it cloaking technology too while they’re at it.

It is a good concept though, as I said, and even if it doesn’t live up to its potential, it’s a B horror movie from the 80s, so you’re bound to have at least a little bit of fun. Maybe put it on a double feature with Cujo this Halloween, make a night out of it.