The Howling is a 1981 werewolf horror film directed by Joe Dante and scripted by John Sayles, loosely based on the book of the same name by Gary Brandner.
After a bizarre and near-fatal encounter with serial killer Eddie "The Mangler" Quist (Robert Picardo), television anchorwoman Karen White (Dee Wallace) is left traumatized and in dire need of a rest. Her psychiatrist Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee) sends her and her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) to The Colony, a rural retreat where select patients go to relax and participate in group therapy. However, Karen notices that The Colony appears to be populated by a number of odd characters, which together with the remote location and the strange howling she hears at night soon lead Karen to believe that something is very wrong here. When she starts looking into The Colony's affairs, the apparent resurrection of Eddie Quist soon proves to be the least of her problems...
The Howling was followed by seven sequels, none of which have much of a connection to this film (the second film is the only one to directly reference the events of this film and even then, it follows a completely different set of characters). In 2017 it received a direct continuation with The Howling: Revenge of the Werewolf Queen, a comic miniseries by Space Goat Publishing which ignores the other films. It was announced in 2020 that Netflix would be creating a remake, set to be directed by Andrés Muschietti.
The Howling contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: Dick Miller plays Walter Paisley, named after his character from A Bucket of Blood.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: Downplayed; the ending initially plays out quite similarly to the book's with Chris coming to Karen's aid armed with silver bullets and them locking the werewolves in a burning building to escape. However, things do deviate from that point, because unlike the book Karen is bitten by a werewolf, leading to a dramatic scene where she turns into a werewolf on live TV to reveal their existence.
- Adaptational Job Change: In the novel, Karen works as a convention hostess for a hotel and keeps house the rest of the time, with her husband being the main breadwinner. Here, Karen is a prominent news anchor, which is heavily incorporated into the plot.
- Adaptational Villainy: Bill ends up being a fair bit more villainous than his novel counterpart, Roy. While Roy is no saint and treats his wife poorly, even after becoming a werewolf he attempts to fight back against his more malevolent impulses, warning Karyn to run after luring her into a trap and fighting another werewolf to protect her. In contrast, Bill becomes physically abusive towards Karen ignores her pleas to save her from the other werewolves and joins in their attack on her and Chris, including being the one to bite her.
- Adaptation Name Change:
- A slight example with the heroine. In the novel, the heroine is named Karyn Beatty. Here, her name is Karen (with an "e") and her surname is White, with it being noted that she didn't take her husband's surname for career reasons.
- The heroine's husband is named Roy Beatty in the novel, while in the movie he's named Bill Neil.
- The Femme Fatale werewolf who seduces Karen's husband is named Marcia Lura in the novel, while here she's named Marsha Quist. Marsha is a variation of Marcia (both mean "warlike" or "dedicated to Mars" - as in the Roman war god), while her surname being changed to Quist is to highlight her familial connection with Eddie.
- The psycho who attacks the heroine and kicks off the plot is named Max Quist in the book and Eddie Quist here.
- In the book the werewolf-populated town the protagonists unwittingly move to is named Drago, while in the movie it's simply named the Colony; this is partly due to the town's origins being slightly altered, as in the book Drago was a seemingly ordinary settlement, while the Colony was established as a retreat for Dr Waggner's patients or that's Waggner's cover story, at least.
- Adaptation Origin Connection: Eddie Quist, the serial killer who stalks and attacks Karen, is revealed to be a resident of the werewolf town known as the Colony; it's also revealed that Karen's therapist (also a werewolf) intentionally sent her to the Colony, presumably to keep an eye on her in case she regained her memories of the attack. In the book, Max Quist is just some random psycho with no connection to the werewolves and poor Karen is unlucky enough to coincidentally move to a werewolf-populated town following Max's attack on her.
- Affably Evil: Most of the werewolves are actually pretty friendly when they aren't killing people or the like.
- Age Lift:
- In the novel, Roy Beatty is stated to be 29 years old. In the film, his equivalent Bill Neill looks to be much older than 29; Christopher Stone was actually about 40 during filming.
- In the novel, Karen is indicated to be around the same age as Roy (late 20s), though in the movie she's played by Dee Wallace, who was almost 32. It's not so noticeable as the Age Lift Karen's husband received; it also makes sense Karen would be a bit older in the movie, given that here she's an established anchorwoman (so she would likely have gotten a degree in journalism or a similar subject and then worked her way up to her current position, which would realistically take several years once she'd left high school).
- Ambiguous Ending: A lot depends on whether the viewer thinks anyone will believe Karen's report.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: Chris is able to save Karen, but by this point she has become a werewolf as well. She ultimately gives up her life to warn other people about their existence.
- Animal Motifs: As if all the werewolves weren't enough, there's lots of wolf motifs present.
- Anti-Villain: Dr. Waggner wants the Colony to have both their human and animal instincts be harmonious, and even try to live with the rest of civilization. The rest of the Colony ultimately reject this, preferring being taken over by their primitive instincts.
- Autopsy Snack Time: The medical examiner keeps his lunch next to a pan full of body parts.
- Back from the Dead: The cops apparently kill Eddie ten minutes into the film, but since they're not packing department-issue silver bullets (budget cuts...) he comes back.
- Big Damn Heroes: Chris arrives in the nick of time to rescue Karen from the werewolves.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Some of the residents of the Colony appear friendly and welcoming to outsiders, but it's revealed most of them are bloodthirsty werewolves who dislike being kept on a leash so-to-speak.
- Body Horror: The werewolf transformations are courtesy of Rob Bottin, the effects guy from The Thing (1982), and are quite horrifying to look at, with bubbling skin, snapping bones, contorting facial features etc. No wonder Karen got PTSD after witnessing Eddie turning into a werewolf.
- Creator Cameo: Co-producer and screenwriter John Sayles appears as a morgue attendant.
- Creepy Long Fingers: The werewolves have long bony fingers tipped with claws, with Eddie's fingers particularly getting a focus shot during the Transformation Sequence.
- Cute Monster Girl: Most of the werewolves are giant, long-snouted and frightening, but when the heroine Karen turns into one, she's cute, fluffy and much shorter. According to Rob Bottin, Karen's werewolf form looks softer and less threatening to show her resistance to being a monster.
- Deadline News: I wonder if there's a Peabody pending for that final broadcast?
- Death by Adaptation:
- Despite the movie being softer than the book overall, it actually kills off the main heroine Karen, while in the book she survives. Unlike the book, Karen gets bitten by a werewolf as she and Chris are fleeing the town, infecting her with the curse, and she chooses to sacrifice herself to warn the public about werewolves and to avoid potentially becoming a monster like the others.
- Bill is fatally shot in self-defence by Karen and Chris, albeit they didn't know it was him at the time due him being transformed. The fate of Bill's book counterpart Roy is left far more ambiguous, with Karyn persuading Chris not to shoot him after recognising him and Roy subsequently disappearing into the night; the sequel confirms he survived the destruction of the town.
- Deer in the Headlights: When Eddie starts to transform in front of Karen, she's completely frozen in terror; it's justified given that she's suffering PTSD, stemming from Eddie trying to attack her in his wolf form (which she had pushed into her subconscious until now). It's also a good excuse to keep the camera on Eddie so the audience can see the elaborate transformation sequence. Karen is able to snap out of it, grabbing a jar of silver nitrate to chuck on Eddie and making a run for it.
- Don't Go in the Woods: The Colony is situated deep in the woods in a remote area of northern California. It initially seems like a peaceful place for people with mental health struggles to recuperate... but Karen is disturbed by sinister howling from the woods and Bill gets attacked by some kind of animal while walking in the woods. It soon becomes clear the Colony is inhabited by werewolves.
- Downer Ending: Karen manages to escape the werewolf colony and kill many of them before they go on a rampage. However, she's bitten in the process (by her own husband no less, who betrayed her for the werewolves) and she decides she has to expose the existence of werewolves to the world by transforming on live television. She is willingly shot by Chris as a Mercy Kill, and the public believes it's special effects. What makes this a downer rather than a mostly bitter bittersweet? At least one of the colony werewolves survived and continues on her merry way.
- The End... Or Is It?: In the final scene, a man at a bar who watched Karen turn into a werewolf asks his date how she wants her burger. The camera pans to reveal it's Marsha, who says she would like her burger "rare" while staring at the audience.
- Face–Heel Turn: Bill starts out as a loving and supportive husband to Karen, but he finds himself frustrated by Karen's trauma and is increasingly drawn to the seductive Marsha, beginning an affair with her after he's turned into a werewolf. He becomes distant and cold towards Karen, and hits her when she confronts him about the affair. When Karen pleads with Bill to help her, he rejects her and makes it clear he's chosen Marsha and the werewolves. He attempts to kill her and Chris along with the other werewolves and succeeds in biting her.
- Facial Horror: Karen throws silver nitrate over Eddie's face while he's in wolf form. The end result isn't pretty.
- Fan Disservice: Marsha and Bill's sex scene becomes more primal as their animal instincts take over... and then they transform in the middle of it.
- The Hero Dies: Karen is shot after turning into a werewolf on live TV.
- Heroic BSoD: Karen suffers one after narrowly surviving being attacked by Eddie, which incites the entire film. It's strongly implied she has post-traumatic stress disorder; she blocks out her conscious memories of the attack, but still suffers nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety. Her trauma causes her to freeze up on camera and struggle with being intimate with her husband.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Karen has Chris shoot her with a silver bullet as she transforms, so that she won't ever potentially be overtaken by her more beastly instincts and endanger people. She has him do on live TV so as to warn others too.
- The Immodest Orgasm: When Bill and Marsha have sex, ending with actual wolf howls as they transform.
- Intrepid Reporter:
- Karen puts herself in danger as part of a sting to nail Eddie.
- Later, Terri travels to the Colony, breaks into the Quist house to look for clues and and infiltrates their records' room to unravel their secrets. She gets attacked by a werewolf and manages to fight it off though she's not so fortunate a second time.
- Kill It with Fire: Other than silver, fire is the werewolves' Achilles heel. Karen and Chris deal with many of the werewolves by locking them in a barn and torching it.
- Lighter and Softer: At least compared to the novel. While the movie is still a horror story with some grisly moments, it has a more satirical and darkly comedic tone, while the book is much more serious. While Karen suffers PTSD in both versions, the film softens things slightly by having Karen be rescued from her attacker at the last moment (although she's still understandably traumatized), while the book graphically depicts Karyn being sexually assaulted and goes into detail over how the rape impacts her wellbeing (including flashbacks etc).
- Make It Look Like an Accident: How the werewolves decide to deal with Karen when she figures out the truth of the Colony, seeing as she is a famous anchorwoman, and she would be missed.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": When the werewolves realize that Chris actually managed to wrangle up some silver bullets, they stare at him in shock before slowly backing up.
- Mercy Kill: Chris shoots Karen with one last silver bullet after she transforms; she even gives him a pleading, tearful look before he pulls the trigger.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever happened to/with the guy who originally ordered the silver bullets that Chris ends up using.
- One-Winged Angel: The primary transformation scene is so elaborate that it ends up verging on this trope.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: The film popularized the bipedal "man-wolf" style of werewolf. Here the wolves can transform at will, without need to rely on phases of the moon. They also seem to retain their memories and consciousness after transforming, although many of them embrace their more bestial instincts anyway.
- Painful Transformation: Eddie's transformation looks quite painful, including blood pouring from fingernails and bones cracking, although Eddie seems to enjoy it.
- Rape as Drama: In the book Karen is actually raped. In the movie, the police sting saves her at the last minute, but the trope still plays out more or less the same in a symbolic sense (she has difficulties being intimate with husband due to suffering flashbacks to Eddie's attack and so forth).
- Shout-Out: Nearly all the characters are named after werewolf film directors.
- Silver Bullet: One of the only things capable of killing a werewolf; normal bullets are painful but don't have much of an effect in the long-term.
- The Sociopath: Eddie Quist. He's a Serial Killer mixed with a werewolf who thinks that normal people are just food or playthings, and takes sadistic pleasure in torturing and killing people.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Played with regarding Marsha. The final scene confirms that Marsha survived the destruction of the Colony; her book counterpart Marcia is shot through the eye with a silver bullet and drops dead, although the sequel does retcon her death to reveal she actually survived, albeit seriously injured.
- Stalker with a Crush: Eddie has his eye on Karen for a long time, sending her messages and following her around. His sexualised comments towards her makes it clear he's attracted to her and his later reaction to her having "betrayed" his trust makes him sound like a spurned lover.
- Suicide by Cop: After realizing that Chris has silver bullets, Dr. Waggner intentionally goads Chris into shooting him, as he's lost control of the Colony and can't stand his existence anymore.
- Tempting Fate: Eddie Quist once surprises Chris and takes away his rifle, but a bit later, in order to gloat, returns the rifle and invites Chris to shoot him, because as a werewolf he's Immune to Bullets: "Don't you know anything?" What we know and Eddie doesn't, is that the rifle is loaded with silver bullets. Whoops...
- The Titling: The film's title refers to the sinister howling that torments Karen nightly, hinting at the nature of the film's villains.
- Took a Level in Badass: Chris, once he figures out the werewolf deal. He stocks up on silver bullets and goes charging into the Colony without any backup to save Karen.
- Transformation Is a Free Action:
- When Eddie transforms into a werewolf to kill Karen, frozen in place as he shifts, she makes no attempt to try to escape the room and instead gapes at his transformation for a good three minutes. Eventually, she notices a vial of silver nitrate nearby and decides to use that against him, but still waits until after he's done transforming to do so. This is justified given that Karen is suffering from PTSD from the earlier attack, so she's initially too frightened to move.
- Chris pretty much waits there while Karen turns into a werewolf. When the transformation is complete, he shoots her on live television. Justified in that they're doing this to show the world that werewolves exist.
- Transformation Sequence: It can't be a werewolf movie without a good ol' werewolf transformation, now could it? The film has three notable ones: Marsha and Bill are briefly shown transforming as they have sex, the not-so-dead Eddie transforms in front of Karen in a lengthy and elaborate sequence (finally causing Karen to regain her memories) and at the end of the film Karen transforms on-camera to expose the werewolves' existence.
- Transhuman Treachery: After being bitten, Bill's wolf instincts take him over, causing him to go from being a vegetarian to happily eating meat, cheating on his wife with Marsha after previously turning down her advances, and even being the one who bites and turns Karen.
- Urban Fantasy: Played for Horror by showing it from the perspective of Muggles without any romanticism. Many of the features of urban fantasy depictions of werewolves — internal politics within werewolf society, the effort that werewolves put into blending in among humans, people being Killed to Uphold the Masquerade, a Weirdness Censor that prevents society from noticing the monsters in their midst, a sexy female werewolf who tempts one of the male heroes, a set of werewolf "rules" (particularly their ability to transform at will) that in many depictions is used to make them more sympathetic — are all here... but to the protagonists, those changes simply make the werewolves an even more dangerous threat. In short, it makes for a pretty good approximation of what it's like to be a human trapped in the world of Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The werewolves are weak to silver and to fire. Normal bullets don't do much serious long-term damage, but silver bullets can kill them.
- Weirdness Censor: Apathetic Citizens see a werewolf on the evening news and react in bland, skeptical fashion.
