Wolfen

Starring:Ralph Bell, Dehl Berti, Max M. Brown, Sarah Felder, Albert Finney, Peter Michael Goetz, Sam Gray, Gregory Hines, Chris Manor, John McCurry, Tom Noonan, Dick O'Neill, Edward James Olmos, Anne Marie Pohtamo, Donald Symington, James Tolkan, Reginald VelJohnson, Diane Venora, Jeffery Ware
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Wolfen is definitely the oddest and most socially conscious of the three big werewolf movies released in 1981 (the others were The Howling and An American Werewolf in London). Rumpled detective Albert Finney is investigating some brutal NYC murders, which leads him to discover that the collapsing buildings of the South Bronx are home to a pack of very vindictive wolflike creatures. American Indian mythology and environmental issues are more to the point here than silver-bullet lycanthropy. As a police procedural, the movie's a bust, its rhythms wrong and Finney's tortured Brooklyn accent unconvincing. But as a horror-mood piece, it can get under your skin. Some trippy photography, plus a bunch of interesting actors at the beginnings of their film careers (Diane Venora, Gregory Hines, and a lean and hungry Edward James Olmos), outweigh the druggy pace and period hairstyles. Director Michael Wadleigh (Woodstock) never made another feature. --Robert Horton
Description
A real estate tycoon, his coke-binging wife and a slum wino have something grisly in common: they're the latest victims in a series of random murders. A veteran NYPD detective soon suspects the killings may be supernatural and deliberate: ages-old beings of cunning intelligence and incredible power, defending their turf from the encroachments of humankind.

DVD Features:
Filmographies:Cast/director film highlights
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Theatrical Trailer

Average customer rating:

Why Hollywood?
Beasts or Shapeshifters?....
were it all started
Wolves in the park
A Good Film That Could Have Been Great If It Had Not Got Sidetracked With Agendas

Wolfen
Starring: Ralph Bell , Dehl Berti , Max M. Brown , Sarah Felder , and Albert Finney
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000067FP6
Release Date: 2002-08-13

Amazon.com

Wolfen is definitely the oddest and most socially conscious of the three big werewolf movies released in 1981 (the others were The Howling and An American Werewolf in London). Rumpled detective Albert Finney is investigating some brutal NYC murders, which leads him to discover that the collapsing buildings of the South Bronx are home to a pack of very vindictive wolflike creatures. American Indian mythology and environmental issues are more to the point here than silver-bullet lycanthropy. As a police procedural, the movie's a bust, its rhythms wrong and Finney's tortured Brooklyn accent unconvincing. But as a horror-mood piece, it can get under your skin. Some trippy photography, plus a bunch of interesting actors at the beginnings of their film careers (Diane Venora, Gregory Hines, and a lean and hungry Edward James Olmos), outweigh the druggy pace and period hairstyles. Director Michael Wadleigh (Woodstock) never made another feature. --Robert Horton

Description

A real estate tycoon, his coke-binging wife and a slum wino have something grisly in common: they're the latest victims in a series of random murders. A veteran NYPD detective soon suspects the killings may be supernatural and deliberate: ages-old beings of cunning intelligence and incredible power, defending their turf from the encroachments of humankind.

DVD Features:
Filmographies:Cast/director film highlights
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Theatrical Trailer

Customer Reviews:

Why Hollywood?.......2007-05-13

Why are so many movies falling under the category of "it had potential"? If you figure it out, drop me a line.

Anyway, let's begin this review by examining the title. Wolfen is a combination of the noun "wolf" + the suffix "-en." The "-en" part means "to increase the quality of." So, what we have here is an "increase" of a "wolf" or to put it another way, more wolf than a regular wolf. This comparison will become obvious to you when you see the second half of the film.

The next thing I want to discuss is Albert Finney. What was the casting director thinking? Finney has a repertoire of two facial expressions when it comes to conveying emotions in this movie. And that hair! It looked like he had the latest in weaving for that time. Ah . . . what's the use.

There is an upside to this film, however. After seeing this movie again, I'm truly convinced that the director for the Predator, John McTiernan, must've been influenced by the wolf effects in this movie. I say this because whenever the camera switches from "human view" to the "wolf view," the heat detecting sound and color scheme looks almost the same as the one used by the Predator itself. It could be a coincidence but . . .

In the end, it had potential. The premise is original though and that's the only reason it got two stars from me. And, if you're looking for a scary werewolf creature, you're going to be sadly disappointed. But on a more positive note, the movie has a strong message concerning man and his environment which I completely agree with. So people, you've been warned.

Beasts or Shapeshifters?...........2007-04-28

One of the most interesting shapeshifters movies I've ever seen. Were they real beasts or shapeshifters/werewolves?. Amazing horror and suspense mix. Very good story and very good performance. One of the best in its genre.

were it all started.......2007-01-09

I am a big wolf fan,this movie really impressed me when it came out,and all these years later it still stands out,thanx and happy trails.

Wolves in the park.......2006-12-09

Scary maybe, who no's when it comes to wolves, I liked it.

A Good Film That Could Have Been Great If It Had Not Got Sidetracked With Agendas.......2006-11-18

The Wolfen is produced, shot, and acted well, and it's based on an excellent, intense novel - so why is it only good but not great? Don't get me wrong, it is worth seeing, if you're a fan of mystery/creepy films, wolves, or Albert Finney, who does a great job as usual. The film starts out well with a creepy slaying of the ultra rich Van Der Veer couple and their bodyguard in a park in Manhattan. They are killed in seconds, and for no immediately apparent reason, as they were not robbed. Most of the killing is seen through a creepy killer's POV, as it were. So in comes grizzled, world-weary detective Wilson (Finney) to try to solve a crime where there's no clear murder weapon, method, or motive. He is later joined by Rebecca Neff, a psychologist who focuses in terrorism, to see if some environmental activists were responsible, since they really hated Mr. Van Der Veer. But they begin to realize there is some inhuman, unknown, ferocious group of creatures living right in the big city. Meanwhile the story pace is interrupted every once in a while to focus on a group of Native American buds, led by Edward James Olmos, who may have some involvement with what's going on.

If it seems like the Native American stuff with Olmos fits oddly with the pace and plot of the movie in the first half (like Olmos running completely naked on the beach at night and howling at the moon - I didn't need to see that), that's because none of it was in the book. The book's plot is much more straightforward than the film version, and usually with book-to-film translations, it's the opposite. But instead of streamlining the story like most movie versions would do, this one mainly alters the focus of the story and the director Michael Wadleigh throws in a lot of ecological messages and native American mumbo jumbo mythology (not their real mythology) which appear at odd moments and sidetrack the main story.

"The Howling" was another werewolf movie the same year that took a book idea and made a film version that uses the basic story as a vehicle for other issues. In The Howling film, modern psychology takes a beating, and so does the whole werewolf movie genre in general (although that part is more of a tribute). But The Howling film mostly works better than Wolfen, because it has a better pace and better effects. However, both films have endings that didn't work to me. And both films' endings are completely contrary to their respective novels. This comes from trying to tell the same story as a book but giving the characters different motivations and giving a different context to what's happening. This works for a while, but in almost all films that try to do this, no matter how accurate they may be early on, the movie story will eventually stray from the book until you reach an ending that's very different. Why? Well, in any story that's well-plotted, things happen for a certain reason, and characters do things because of certain motivations and causes and effects. If you change those motivations, reasons, and causes, but yet try to tell the same story, eventually it will diverge from the original story, because the characters wouldn't DO all the same things if the situation around them was different. This was my main complaint with the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula. Here, the way Albert Finney gets the Wolfen to stop their rampage at the very end is almost laughably contrary to the novel. If he'd tried the same stunt in the novel, they'd have ripped him to shreds.

But here the creatures are more like regular wolves and less like the "wolfen" as described in the book. In the movie, there's no mention of their opposable thumb-like claws, which allow them to open doors, windows, climb balconies, etc. Or the fact that they're much larger and somewhat different shaped than regular wolves, including more advanced faces. But then I guess that would have been hard to do at the time with the effects as they had. I also felt they showed the wolfen way too much at the end, taking away a lot of their mystique. Although another theory I've heard is that the wolf creatures were less scary in the film version on PURPOSE, so that the viewer would feel more sympathetic to them at the end. After all, there is that end shot of several of the Wolfen running happily in the snow. In the book, the author does spend a lot of time inside the minds of the Wolfen, explaining the whole story from their point of view as well, so there are some moments of sympathy, but most of the perspective given there serves to show what the Wolfen are like, what they're capable of, and just how intelligent and dangerous they are as adversaries.

The movie starts out scary, but ultimately ends up being preachy, trying to leave the viewer with a conviction that man is responsible for the behavior of (fictional) creatures like this. The book, on the other hand, is more about two humans realizing what it's like to be hunted like an animal. It is actually more the book's theme of this that seems to have inspired some of the ideas in "Predator." That movie clearly got its "infrared Predator-vision" shot ideas from similar shots in this film.

Abert Finney as Wilson I liked, and Diane Venora was all right as Becky Neff, although her character here is slightly different than who she was in the novel. The coroner, Gregory Hines, is a nice addition to the film. Edward James Olmos and his Native American buds are okay, but in the end they're mostly there to preach. The character in the film I disliked the most, especially when compared to the book, was Dr. Ferguson, who comes across here as kind of a naïve bum of a doctor. Way too sensitive, too; in one scene his eyes are tearing up while he watches video footage of wolves being chased down by helicopters in the snow. He served a real purpose in the novel, becoming one of the major characters, although even there he was too much of an idealist. But here he just is along for the ride, and not very long at that.

Overall, I'd say Wolfen is enjoyable, and at times scary, but it's not what it easily could have been with all the talent and potential. But it certainly is a unique film that has a place in "werewolf" film history.

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