The Howling (1981)

  This is a pretty decent horror film.  Apparently, it spawned 7 sequels and a werewolf craze in the early 80s.    The special effects (always the key for horror films) stand up pretty well, even now.  Rick Baker (who won an Oscar for The Wolfman this year) started work on it but ended up handing it off to Rob Bottin.  Now, I've been in the business long enough to know* that werewolf transformations are some of the hardest special effects to do convincingly.  They're so difficult, even with CGI, that more modern movies have resorted to just doing a shimmer effect, then showing a wolf.  I point to Blood and Chocolate (which isn't a bad little werewolf film for teens) and the Twilight series**.  

The other way to do it right is to not show the monster too early.  Here you don't see the actual transformation until two-thirds of the way through the running time.  This builds up a sense of suspense and keeps your budget manageable. In fact, if I hadn't read the Netflix sleeve (which has a fairly worthless synopsis, btw) I might not have know this was about werewolves at all for the first 45 minutes.

Karen is a TV anchor who has been contacted by a mysterious serial killer.  She and her team are trying to get some undercover footage of the guy but their equipment kind of sucks and she ends up locked in a porno booth with the serial killer before the cops show up and kill him.  Understandably traumatized, Karen talks to the station's resident shrink who sends her to a retreat up the coast for some R&R.  It's called The Colony. 

Karen and her husband Bill pack up and move into a cabin.  Immediately, they start noticing weird things...like that everyone there is some kind of lunatic.  Pun firmly intended.  There's the nymphomaniac bitch, Marsha, her creepy-ass brother in a sheep's fur vest (you get it?  /nudge nudge), the old borderline-demented guy who keeps trying to walk into the bonfire, and a host of other crazies.  Furry hilarity ensues.

Ooh, I just thought of an awesome movie idea:  werewolf loose in a furry convention.  Solid gold right there.

What separates this movie from other B-grade schlock is its rewatchability.  There are so many little in-jokes and puns and references to other werewolf movies that there's probably some kind of associated drinking game.  Hmm, a Google search seems to indicate otherwise so there's an untapped market for all you alcoholic movie buffs out there.


*read a lot of articles in Entertainment Weekly
** from what I can tell from the trailers