Werewolf (David Hemmings, 1987)

"There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe in flying saucers, and those who don't."

The video age of the 1980s and early '90s was a great time to grow up as a fan of horror, fantasy, and science fiction movies.  The ongoing sagas of the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Howling and Hellraiser series were a constant stream of fear and thrills for one thing, and now and then another thing would pop up unexpectedly (and I don't just mean my private parts whilst on public transport, though I did have to carry my rucksack in front of me a lot in my early hormonal teens).  Way back in the hazy mists of the late Nineteen Haties, I embarked upon my usual crusade to the video shop (how arcane!) and espied a cover entitled merely Werewolf.  As one of my favourite films as a child was John Landis' An American Werewolf in London (my parents had a strange attitude towards what constituted appropriate viewing for a five year old), and i'd seen Joe Dante's The Howling as well as stuff like the Stephen King adaptation Silver Bullet, another lycanthropic legend seemed logical.  Also, the fact that the font in which the title was emblazoned on the cover was quite like the recently-released (we're talking 1990, here, I was only ten or eleven) Patrick Swayze vehicle Ghost made me think that perhaps this was part of a franchise - maybe there would be a movie next year called Vampire with similarly elongated lettering upon it's frontage.

I had no idea that I was watching anything other than a movie, rather than the pilot episode of a TV series - helmed by David Hemmings, former star of Antonioni's Blow Up (1966) and Argento's Profundo Rosso / Deep Red (1975), turned director of many a television piece from Follyfoot (1973) to Quantum Leap (1989-1993) - but it worked in of itself, much like the pilot movie of the Bill Bixby The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982), and it would appear on first glance the subsequent series would share many similarities.

Created and written by the rather appropriately-named Frank Lupo (ex of The A-Team),  our story begins in the very Eighties locale of the Fantasia nightclub wherein the big haired and rolled-up sleeves clientele are boogieing the night away to 'Silent Running' by Mike and the Mechanics when an even scarier presence is wending its way between them.  From a subjective tracking camera P.O.V. shot we see the killer as he eyes up his prospective victims, as it flashes between normal vision and a sort of werewolf-vision; less the thick red filter of Legend of the Werewolf's werewolf-cam and closer to a hazy heat-seeking Predator.  As the unseen lycanthrope scopes out the bar, we are treated to our first sighting of his hand - the palm cross-crossed with scar tissue in the form of a five-pointed star, a pentagram which quickly begins to bleed (don't pick at your scabs, kids).  Outside in the car park at midnight (that should be the title of something), a yuppie couple wend their loved-up way to their overpriced rollerskate of a vehicle to head back home for some doubtless coke-fuelled lovin' when our wolfman, now transformed and in the mood for some carnivorous lunar activities, decided to make three a crowd and tears both them and their car asunder.

The next morning, we flash to the lifestyles of the rich and idle as we are introduced to our protagonist Eric Cord (U.S. soap opera veteran John J. York a.k.a. Mac Scorpio), who since being orphaned at a young age has been living with the well to do Nichols family and spends most of his free time lounging in their swimming pool and pursuing the lovely Kelly (Michelle Johnson, who would soon after star in Anthony Hickox' 1988 Waxwork, and go on to co-star in Dr Giggles and Death Becomes Her), sister of his best friend and also sort of semi-adopted sister.  Incest for the wincest!  Not eager to inform Mr Nichols that he's knocking boots with his precious daughter, Eric ducks out of staying for dinner to head off to the flat he now shares with Kelly's brother Ted (keep it in the family, yeah?) and heads there in his roll-top convertible as evening falls listening to Timbuk 3's '(The Future's So Bright) I Gotta Wear Shades'.  Because it is the 1980s.  Arriving to find all the lights off in the apartment and Ted (a brilliantly nervous and twitchy performance from Raphael Sbarge) sitting in the darkness loading a revolver, Eric is understandably a bit worried and perplexed.  Begging his friend to tie his to a chair and keep him from leaving before midnight, Ted explains that the gun contains silver bullets and that not only is he a werewolf and responsible for the recent spate of killings in town, but that he wants Eric to kill him - something that he insists to his incredulous pal that he will be willing to do once he sees what he becomes.

As time ticks past, the restrained Ted tells his tale: that when working a summer job on a trawler for a Captain Janos Skorzeny (a nice reference there for the genre conversant - that being the name of the vampire villain of the 1972 Kolchak pilot movie The Night Stalker) he was attacked by a strange animal when heading homeward at night through the docks: 

"I'm seeing these eyes - these yellow... demon eyes."

After recovering from the creature's assault, Ted has slowly come to understand what he now is and - having failed to trace the wolf that bit him, the originator of the lycanthropic bloodline - has resorted to ending it all.  Eric obviously doesn't believe a word of this, but round midnight (Miles Davis title drop!) something comes over brother Theodore and a startling metamorphosis occurs.  Splitting out of his clothing Hulk-style and easily shredding the ties that bind him, Ted his now a huge bear-sized bipedal wolf that attacks his roommate and Eric, after sustaining a gnawing lovebite on the shoulder, gives in to  the dying wish for suicide by friend (as opposed to cop) and uses the silver bullets.  When the commotion brings the neighbours from the adjoining apartments inquiring, the sight of a bloodstained Eric holding a gun and his naked deceased flatmate sprawled on the floor are obviously grounds for suspicion and the injured party finds himself under arrest for murder.  

After suffering some American Werewolf-style hallucinatory nightmares in his hospital bed, Cord is convinced that he is now the bearer of the curse.  Even though his slaying of her brother has obviously damaged the already awkward relationship with Kelly and her father, she comes to Eric - who has managed to secure bail thanks to an aggravatingly quippy bondsman played by Ethan Phillips (Star Trek's very own Jar-Jar Binks Neelix) - with an audio cassette Ted mailed to her before his death confessing his story to her and his plan to get Eric to kill him.  I wonder what's on the other side of the tape?  Probably 'Somewhere In My Heart' by Aztec Camera or Prefab Sprout's 'King of Rock 'n' Roll'.  Anyway, this is enough for Kelly to decide to try and help Eric and they leave town to track down Captain Skorzeny (looming 6'5'' Western star Chuck Connors) whom they have determined to be the O.G. progenitor werewolf.  However, this entails skipping bail and missing a court date and so bounty hunter Alamo Joe Rogan (Lance LeGault), rather non-politically correctly referred to as "the Indian" despite only being part Native American, is dispatched on their trail. 

When the pair manage to locate the creepy one-eyed Skorzeny, the realisation that it is going to be the night of transformation (the changes in this mythos not being predicated on the cycle of the full moon, but more random) causes Eric and Kelly to head to the nearest Big Six Motel where she ties him up in the bathtub (kinky stuff again) only for the predatory Skorzeny to swoop in and snatch her before the powerless Eric's eyes - whisking her away to his nearby forest cabin-cum-lunchplace, decorated with the skulls and remains of his previous victims.  Alamo Joe appears just as night falls and failing to listen to his helpless and hog-tied bounty's protestations about a kidnapped girl throws Cord into his van to take back to town where a cell's waiting for him.  However, the change overcomes Eric and as the beast within emerges he breaks his bonds and tears his way out of the hunter's truck to head off to rescue his mate and take on the evil alpha male.  Arriving just as Skorzeny too transforms before the traumatised valley princess - a truly creepy transition involving tearing away his own skin a la Neil Jordan's Company of Wolves - the pair of canis lupus sapiens duke it out in a duel of tooth and claw which ends only when an upturned lantern sets the cabin ablaze.

Waking in the morning amidst the wrecking, Eric determines that both Kelly is safe (if shellshocked by her recent ordeals) and that Skorzeny has got away - paving the way for a future in which he hunts his own One-Armed Man in the form of a one-eyes werewolf whilst a fugitive from the law himself, with a relentless lawman (his very own Sam Gerard) on his tail.  Setting up a sadly short-lived (a further 28 half-hour episodes followed this full length pilot) Fugitive-cum-Incredible Hulk TV series, this is a decent little werewolf film in its own right.  Passing by breezily at under 90 minutes its good recommended fun for any connoisseur of those things that walk (whether on two legs or four) when the wolfbane blooms and the moon is full and bright.  Or, you know, whenever you get a pentagonal scar on your hand that starts bleeding.  That works too.