Trivia / The Howling (1981)

• Completely Different Title:
  • Brazil: Scream of Horror
  • Denmark: Werewolves
  • Germany: The Animal
  • India: Wolf Scream
  • Portugal: The Howl of the Beast
  • Sweden: The Werewolves
• Creator Couple: Married couple Karen and Bill are played by Dee Wallace and Christopher Stone, who were married from 1980 until his death in 1995.
• Dawson Casting: Robert Picardo was 28 when he played the "kid" Eddie, though it is unclear just how old Eddie actually is.
• Dueling Movies: Set against An American Werewolf in London. Hilariously, though it probably wasn't intentional, the two movies' depictions of lycanthropy are entirely different. In The Howling, the change is by choice regardless of the moon or time of day, the resulting werewolf is chiefly a biped, the person still has control over themselves and the only way to kill them is with silver or fire. In An American Werewolf in London, the change is involuntarily invoked by the full moon, the werewolf walks on all fours, the person has no control over themselves and regular weapons can kill them.
• Typecasting: Dee Wallace as yet another horror victim.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The first drafts of the screenplay, co-written by Terence H. Winkless, were more faithful to the book, but it was felt parts of it didn't work so well onscreen. John Sayles was hired to rewrite the script, deviating greatly from the book's story and adding more self-aware humour, though Winkless still received a co-writing credit.
  • Jack Conrad was originally set to direct and contributed to the screenplay, but left due to Creative Differences with the studio and was replaced by Joe Dante.
  • Rick Baker was originally hired to do the special effects and werewolf designs for the film, but left midway through the production to work on An American Werewolf in London, letting his then-protege, Rob Bottin, take charge while staying on as a designer and consultant. Baker let Bottin have complete control when he realised the designs he kept coming up with were too similar to the ones he was making for An American Werewolf in London, which he felt was unfair to both productions.
  • The studio originally wanted the werewolves to be portrayed as large wolves, but Joe Dante refused and pushed for them to be depicted as human-wolf hybrids using special effects, as he felt that just using real wolves wouldn't be scary or fantastical enough, not to mention the challenges of getting the wolves to do what the filmmakers wanted on-set.
  • Rob Bottin went through multiple different designs for the werewolves, including sculpting ten separate heads; he rejected many designs for looking too similar to earlier werewolf depictions on film, as he wanted The Howling's werewolves to be more unique. The final look was actually one of Bottin's earliest designs, which he had initially rejected "but I wound up really liking it".
  • The werewolf puppets and animatronics are mostly shot from the waist up because the legs didn't look convincing or were absent entirely to make the puppets easier to move; Joe Dante wasn't keen on the idea of using actors wearing suits because he felt it would be obvious that's what they were and thus break the immersion. There were lengthy scenes created by Dave Allen using stop-motion models that showed the werewolves fully, but they were largely scrapped after test screenings; although the stop-motion animation was good, the way the werewolves looked and moved in these scenes differed too much from the life-size puppets (to the point some viewers thought the scenes were from a different production). The only stop-motion scene that remains in the finished film is a trio of werewolves standing on the road near the end as Karen and Chris make their escape.
  Joe Dante: At various screenings, after the picture people were coming up to me and asking what picture the neat stop-motion footage came from. There was nothing wrong with those shots; it was just that the werewolves moved differently — like in a Ray Harryhausen film where they cut from a stop-motion creature to a full-size live-action shot. Also, the colours of the werewolves were slightly different from the full-size wolf, which we didn’t have at the time Dave Allen started up.
  • Adult film actress Annette Haven was initially offered the role of Marsha Quist, but turned it down. Haven didn't have an issue with the nudity and sex scenes required for the role, but rather disliked the violent content in the script.

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