Is It Drool Yet?
Remember Larry Talbot? When the moon was full, you could count on him to change from being a gentle, lovably nurd into a bloodthirsty, howling wolf. And I don�t mean some oldtime blues singer.
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Is It Drool Yet?
DRIVE IN SATURDAY
by Edouard Dauphin
Remember Larry Talbot? When the moon was full, you could count on him to change from being a gentle, lovably nurd into a bloodthirsty, howling wolf. And I don�t mean some oldtime blues singer.
Larry, of course, was The Wolf man in those great Universal horror films of the 1930�s, the ones that still turn up regularly on Creature Features and Chiller Theatre. As played by Lon Chaney, Jr., he had to keep a straight face when other actors spoke lines like: �The ways you walked were thorny, through no fault of your own." Plus The Dauph�s favorite: �Go now and heaven help you.�
And who can forget the immortal: �Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night/May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the moon is full and bright.� Now that�s poetry!
Alas, The Howling, a modern day werewolf saga, is short on poetry and long on the kind of dumb humor that has characters reading Allen Ginsberg�s Howl and making gleeful references to Wolf�s Chili and Wolf man Jack, it�s amazing they left out the J. Geils Band and Look Homeward, Angel.
Instead of Wales where Larry Talbot did his hairy prowling, the flick is set in Northern California at an esttype commune that makes Jonestown, Guyana look like a model of social progress. Run by Patrick MacNee, a behavorial scientist who believes we must never deny the wild animal in us, it�s peopled by the likes of John Carradine who, as real life father of David, knows a bit about wild animals himself.
Into this Big Sur quack farm comes Dee Wallace, a bleached blonde TV anchorwoman in a state of semi-shock. She�s just had a close call at the hands of a homicidal maniac in an X-rated peep show sleaze parlor. That�ll teach her to do a remote from Dauphin Country.
She brings hubby Christopher Stone to the lupine retreat, but he wastes no time hooking up with foxy Elisabeth Brooks, a vacant-stared leather freak who is one of the colony�s more extreme cases. As they grope one another in the moonlight, Chris and Elisabeth grow knifelike fangs and sprout hair in the unlikeliest places.
And you thought it was playing with yourself that grew hair on your palms!
Pretty soon the entire commune is howling. �Screw all this channel your energy crap,� remarks one patient, getting down on all fours and bellowing at the moon. Even then Dee doesn�t know what�s happening—she thinks she�s stumbled on a Ted Nugent lookalike competition.
Skip The Howling and remember Larry Talbot.
☆ ☆
There�s a lot to be said for drooling. Letting saliva flow from one�s mouth can be a joyful experience. It�s even interesting, occasionally, to watch someone else drool. Which brings us to The Funhouse, a new horror flick whose chief attraction is a hideously deformed monster who drools enough to decorate a Christmas tree for a family that couldn�t afford tinsel.
This slavering misfit lives in the funhouse of a traveling carnival that rolls into a North Florida town. Four of the local teenagers, high,on Everglades homegrown, visit the carny and decide to spend the night in that funhouse. There they witness a premature ejaculation, the displaying of an infantmutation and the choking to death of Sylvia Miles. (Well, that�s one way to end her partygoing.)
About this time, the kids are wishing they�d gone to the dog races at Bonita Springs or stayed home and sucked on some Boy Howdy! instead. Just then, the doors of the funhouse clang shut and they are trapped inside. Not only that'—-the monster and his equally crazed father (yep, he�s got a dad—this is a family picture) know they�re in there. Only in Florida, right? It�s enough to give Disney World a bad name.
The kids have about as much chance as Mick Jones in a Play Like Segovia contest. One is hanged, then axed in the head. A second is assaulted then ripped to shreds. A third is gunned down. Meanwhile, the monster�s pop gets impaled. Which leaves Elizabeth Berridge, wimpiest of the teenagers, against The Drooling Wonder, in a battle unmatched in Florida since Anita Bryant took on the entire Village People two falls out of three.
Blood and drivel—it isn�t just for breakfast anymore.
