TV anchor Karen White (Dee Wallace, the mom from E.T.) agrees to help the LAPD capture a serial lunatic named Eddie Quist, who has been corresponding with the celebrity newslady. Meeting in an adult bookstore’s porno booth, there’s something extra weird about Eddie, but before Karen can figure out what, the cops shoot him full of lead.

The experience proves too stressful for Karen to return to work, so a pop psychologist named Dr. Waggner (Patrick Macnee) recommends she and her boyfriend visit The Colony, a wellness resort he runs on the central California coast. The Colony is chock full o’ nuts, like a man-eating hippie named Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks) and a miserable old timer (John Carradine) who wants to kill himself.

Strange howling and mutilated cattle become part of Karen’s rehabilitation as well. Our heroine’s stud boyfriend is attacked by a creature and later turns into a werewolf. Karen summons her resourceful assistant Terry (Belinda Balaski), who’s working on a story about the disappearance of Eddie Quist’s body from the morgue. Their mysteries intersect at The Colony.

Avco Embassy Pictures – the independent studio behind The Fog and Escape From New York – optioned the 1977 novel by Gary Brander. Drafts by Terrence Winkless and original director Jack Conrad proved unsatisfactory, so Joe Dante was brought in to direct. He overhauled the project with John Sayles, who had helped Dante take a low budget Jaws knock-off called Piranha and adapt it into a subversive good time at the drive-in.

Rick Baker was hired to provide the special makeup effects, but when director John Landis found out, he lured Baker away by rushing ahead with his own werewolf movie, An American Werewolf In London. Baker’s assistant Rob Bottin took over and this became the first of three lycanthrope related films to hit the screen between March and August of 1981.

Along with Wolfen, it’s hard for me to say which is my favorite. I dig all three. All are classics and all have major flaws. Under the direction of Dante – who never read a script he wasn’t poking around for satire or subtext in – The Howling is the most pop culture savvy of the bunch and had the most potential, but isn’t nearly as great as I remembered it.

Before the self-conscious horror cycle of the ’90s, Sayles and Dante filled their film to the brim with little tributes to previous werewolf films. Another part of the movie’s enjoyment comes from appearances by John Carradine, Kevin McCarthy, Kenneth Tobey and Slim Pickens. Dick Miller, whom Dante would cast in each of his films, plays an occult bookstore owner in this one. Sayles is also a hoot playing a droll medical examiner.

Oddly, the old pros and day players make a bigger impact than Dee Wallace or Dennis Dugan, who plays Balaski’s nerdy boyfriend and reluctant hero. Bottin’s makeup effects are the real star of the movie and the leading actors come off as cardboard in comparison. Belinda Balaski at least makes for a spunky gal pal, and the finale, which features a wolf-out on the 11 o’clock news, is hilarious and sends the movie out with a bang.

Rob Bottin’s highly imaginative effects, using air bladders under latex facial applications, were technically astounding for their time and the first such transformation ever done on camera. Unlike the wolf-out in the Landis picture, Dante obscures his monster in shadow and went for a more surreal, spooky approach. The bipedal werewolves resemble giant Looney Toons and are pretty cool creatures.

The filmmakers also score by giving elbows to TV news and utopian movements. But Dante’s larger-than-life style severely limits the horror from being anything but kinda spooky at its most intense. Too much of the film lacks fizz, particularly Dee Wallace’s flat character. Whoever remakes this will start by attempting to write a strong female lead with greater emotional range than simple catatonia or hysteria.

Robert Picardo – who would also become a member of Dante’s repertory company and later play the Emergency Medical Hologram on Star Trek: Voyager - is terrific as Eddie Quist. Highly recommended for B-movie or werewolf enthusiasts, this might be hit-miss-hit for most everyone else.