Wolfen (1981)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: Eight years before Jason Voorhees washed up on our shores, New York had a new problem.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• I love these long shots of NYC from the old days.

• That’s Lt. Castillo from Miami Vice up there using that Australian noise making wind thing Crocodile Dundee used in his second movie.

• On top of the Brooklyn Bridge to boot!

• Ahh, uptown Manhattan in the early 80’s. It always looked like Escape From New York back then.

• Nice title card on top of the dust from a demolished building.

• Thermal POV? The Predator’s here?

• My “What’s This About” wasn’t that great, so I’ll just let Batman tell ya about it:
  
  
  
  

• Well Lucasfilm’s lawyers should have been all over Executive Surveillance Systems, their logo looks exactly like a Mandalorian helmet.

• Yes, in the 80’s all rich white people did coke.

• This woman playing with the wind chimes is very ASMR. I feel calmer now, thank you.

• Either this actress, or the one who foley’d her should be fucked in the mouth with a rock. She keeps shouting “Kreeyahs” instead of “Chris” – and when the rich guy scares her she says, “You scared me darleeeng.”

• Unlike Pipitt, this dog ran away when shit was about to get real.

• The Wolfen POV camera trick is really sweet. Predator must have been influenced by it.

• The limo driver got Skywalker’d, or is it Jaime Lannisrter’d now, when he drew his gun on the Wolfen.

• The rich couple get their throats ripped out, and when the woman falls her pearls go everywhere like Martha Wayne’s.
  

• I remember when running into Wolfen in Battery Park was the least of your worries there.

• Daddy Warbucks looks odd with long hair.

• Geez, one dead magnate, his dead wife, and his dead bodyguard, and you get the Commissioner and the Mayor at the crime scene.

• Gregory Hines is in this. Rock on.

• A pentagram with a goat head in it does not mean Voodoo lieutenant, this is the 80’s – it means SATAN!
  

• The fucking coroners picked up the wife and her head fell off, and it was all off-screen! I would have given my own money to have that scene produced in lens.

• Slapping dead bodies whilst chastising them is just another way for coroners and medical examiners to pass the time ‘twixt stiffs.

• You ever see an autopsy room this occupied? The Wolfen do indeed seem serious.

• Detective Wilson is a hardened cop – you can tell by the way he eats cookies while watching the autopsies.

• Only in the 80’s does the nudity count even if you’re a corpse on the autopsy table.

• I am now finished saying autopsy.

• This Van DerVeer really must have been a big deal – look at this task force room, it rivals the Hall of Justice.

• Not even the description of genital mutilation could put Detective Wilson off his hot dog with onions and mustard. This guy is from the streets.

• These guys look a little too WarGames-y to be a security company.

• It’s a good thing the Wolfen don’t care about the neighborhood they live in.

• Another homeless guy taken by the Wolfen. They kill indiscriminately like Lestat and Louis.

• You would think the Wolfen would just feast on this construction crew.

• The workers find a maggoty severed head and it has got to be one of the worst gore fx shots ever.

• If Michael Myers’ POV shots could run this fast, Haddonfield would be soulless by now.

• The forensic scientist is the guy who was principal Strickland in Back To The Future. Christ, he never did have any hair.

• I don’t think urban renewal would even be able to make a dent in this part of the Bronx.

• The Wolfen sound like crying babies to Detective Neff but to Wilson, they’re howls. The man bleeds NYC.

• I hear Tom Waits “Jitterbug Boy” in the background of this bar.
  

• The Wolfen are all over the 5 boroughs now.

• The ever popular shrieking cat jump scare shows up.

• Tom Noonan = always welcome. Especially as a zoologist with a heavy NY accent.

• Tom really knows his stuff, he reveals what sounds like every future plot point to the movie.

• I hope Albert Finney got some stunt pay, that’s really him going up the Manhattan Bridge.
  Actors had balls back then.

• So far almost all of the gore is in the morgue for pete’s sake.

• Speaking of, the actor playing “corpse with throat wound” obviously couldn’t hold his breath and they kept that take in the film anyways.

• This is not so much Wolfen as it is a naked Edward James Elmos running around a beach howling at the moon. Could have went the rest of my life without seeing Castillo’s cock, but here we are.

• We didn’t need to see that film on wolf hunting. Let’s get back to killing humans.

• So Noonan called in a phony fire to make the sirens go by Central Park and make the Wolfen howl. That was metal as fuck, but we could have used some more clues as to how he figured it all out.

• Well none of that matters now, the Wolfen have killed Tom Noonan and the Death Star has cleared the planet.

• This is the absolute oddest goddamn lead-in to a sex scene.

• Wolfen peeping tom vision in full effect here. At least the Predator would have given them some privacy.

• Was that fat guy on Noonan’s Moped allegory for his death?

• What’s with the terrorist fixation the Mandalorian helmet company has?

• The picture captions keep screwing up my formatting, so this picture of NYC below should read, “Ah, the good ‘ole days.”
  
  

• Are Finney and Hines going to play Dealey Plaza with those sniper rifles?

• Opening a beer in front of a parabolic microphone = always funny.

• Aw shit, Gregory Hines has had it.

• It’s like this wolf movie keeps getting interrupted by this shitty short film about a security company that is way too high tech for its own good, versus a terrorist organization that no one has ever heard of.

• The bar is called “The Wig-Wam” a little on the nose donchya think?

• The Wolfen are revealed to be demi-gods who are killing those that won’t be missed in order for them to survive. Like Dexter?

• Edward James Olmos gets rid of all doubt when he starts squawking like a pigeon and the whole bar chimes in to join him. I hope they all shit on Detective Wilson’s car next.

• I don’t know why we need this Enter-The-Dragon mirror shot of Wilson’s face.

• This is all about hunting ground. A turf war if you will between urban developers and Indian wolf gods.

• Wilson, Neff, and Captain Warren are surrounded by the Wolfen right there on Wall Street. Wolf. Wall Street. It’s a joke son, ya missed it.

• All these guys are NY cops and not one of them likes to discharge their weapon?

• Wilson said not to shoot, OK I stand corrected.

• Capt. Warren also gets Luke/Jaime’d when he draw his gun – but he gets away to his car only to be decapitated. Nice gruesome scene here by the way with the Captain’s head mouthing words.

• Why are there so many scenes in the fucking Van Der Veer penthouse? Why do the cops keep hanging out there?

• Wilson destroys the development model showing that he washes his hands of the whole business, and is on the Wolfen’s side. They howl an agreement and disappear right before the cops show up.

• Wilson blames everything on that terrorist group that has been driven down our throats the whole movie. They finally get some substance here at the denouement.

• We end with the Wolfen running through the streets invisible to humans and Elmos and his gang watching and howling from the top of the Manhattan bridge. Hakuna Matata.

Final Thoughts:  Released during the “Summer of the Wolf” in 1981, Wolfen premiered four months after The Howling and one month before An American Werewolf in London. A good but very oddly paced and edited movie. Then again I was baked for what I’m guessing won’t be the last time this Schlocktober.

Score: 7 Future Star Of Miami Vice Dicks That Weren’t Don Johnson’s (out of 10)

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