You’re probably going to assume that this will be a werewolf tale. It certainly has some affinities with the werewolf genre. Just as he took a very unconventional approach to the vampire genre in his 1981 novel The Hunger Strieber took an equally unconventional approach to the werewolf genre in The Wolfen. Not everybody likes Strieber’s fiction but I’m a big fan.
And the movie Wolfen is a long way from being a routine werewolf story. Some major plot changes were made but the clever central idea is retained.
A billionaire industrialist and his wife are murdered in Manhattan. Not so much murdered as butchered. They were under constant surveillance by an ultra high tech security and surveillance company but it didn’t help them.
Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) is a police detective who has been slowly putting himself back together after a crack-up. He has a reputation for being a bit odd but for getting results.
The favoured theory is that this double murder was an act of terrorism. Dewey finds himself with a partner, counter-terrorism expert Detective Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora). Dewey doesn’t really buy the terrorism theory but he’s happy enough to work with Rebecca. She’s a good cop and she’s easy to get on with.
There are a couple of slightly puzzling things about the murders. And then a body, badly butchered, is found in the South Bronx. There is one very surprising common element. Two hairs. The hairs are not human.
From the title of the movie the viewer will guess that wolves of some kind are involved, but are they werewolves or actual wolves? Could it be a psycho with a wolf obsession? Or an elaborate attempt to mislead the police? But until a very late stage Dewey and Rebecca have no idea what they’re dealing with.
Although it takes a long time for Dewey to get on the right track this is not a slow-moving film. Right from the start there are graphic murders, and gore. But they’re filmed in such a way as to ensure that we don’t see what is really happening. Which is as it should be. This movie relies to a huge degree on an atmosphere of spookiness and weirdness. The fact that we don’t know what’s going on makes it all much more unsettling.
There are so many things that I love about this movie. And so many things that I intensely dislike. I love the urban devastation - this is like a city being consumed by a wasting disease. I love the slow reveal of the truth. I love the optical effects which really do make us feel that we’re seeing many of these sequences through the eyes of someone or some thing definitely not human. These sequences really are spooky and menacing. I love the central premise.
Unfortunately director/co-writer Michael Wadleigh added some additional elements to the story and these additions are not just tedious, they seriously undermine the central premise. The political subplots is not too much of a problem. It adds an interesting red herring for the cops to deal with and it’s not intrusive. The hippie-dippie mystical stuff is however a major problem. The movie would have been a whole lot better with all that stuff cut.
There’s also a particular point about the nature of the killers which is stressed in the book but somewhat overlooked in the movie, and this does lessen the impact a little.
These things are annoying but happily they don’t quite succeed in sinking the movie. There are still the cool visuals and the weird menacing atmosphere and some great suspense and some genuinely very good ideas.
Albert Finney is pretty good. He wisely doesn’t try to make Dewey too eccentric or too odd. It’s an effective restrained performance. Diane Venora is a reasonably likeable female lead.
Wolfen has some major flaws but it’s sufficiently interesting and unusual to still be very much worth seeing. It remains one of the most intriguing horror movies of the 80s. In spite of those flaws, highly recommended.
The Warner Archive Blu-Ray is barebones but looks great.
I’ve also reviewed the Whitley Strieber novel, The Wolfen.
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