Terror Transmission

Moon of the Wolf – 1972 – USA – Chilling 20 Movie Collectors Set from Mill Creek Entertainment

The 1970s were the halcyon days of the television movie and especially the television horror movie. Grand delights such as “Crowhaven Farm”, “Duel”, “The Night Stalker,” and “Something Evil” all predated this enjoyable little nugget and the decade still had excellent telefilms such as “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”, “Gargoyles,” and “Salem’s Lot” amongst a plethora of others to come. I will defer to the wonderfully complete chronicle “Television Fright Films of the 1970s” by David Deal for an all-inclusive and indispensable index of these movies.

In the mid ’60s the telefilm was birthed by NBC, and subsequently ABC, because the major film studios were reluctant to allow their newer theatrical releases to be aired on television. The studio’s fear was that if people could watch their films from the luxury of their own homes they would desist in spending big bucks at their local theaters and simply wait for the home-viewing opportunity. Their fears have proven well-founded in the 40+ years hence with VHS and DVD sales raking in big bucks while film attendance is at an all-time low. In fact, it wasn’t until the birth of the home video market in the late ’70s that the telefilm stopped being such a powerful entertainment entity. The major studios combated this home-viewing trend with gargantuan-budgeted special-effects driven explosion-athons that the small screen could never recreate adequately, but the television networks that were working on minuscule budgets could not compete with this nor with the poverty-budgeted exploitation movies playing the dwindling drive-in circuit, or going direct-to-video, because of the FCC regulations restricting television content. Nudity, blood and guts were the order of the day and character-driven horror stories in-restraint just couldn’t match up. And so the telefilm, for all intents and purposes, died an unheralded death. It is tellingly ironic that these wonderful telefilms can now only be remembered by way of the very thing (home video) that croaked them in the first place.

The body of a young girl is found mutilated in the swampland outside a small town in Louisiana and local sheriff Aaron Whitaker (David Janssen of “The Fugitive”) is on the trail of the killer, thought by the yokels to be a pack of wild dogs. The victim’s hick brother Larry (Geoffrey Lewis) suspects the local blue-bloods or their ilk and vows his revenge, and the sheriff follows some leads of his own including Doctor Druten (John Beradino) and the high-born Andrew Rodanthe (Bradford Dillman). A small-town class drama ensues and it is not until the halfway point in the film that they realize the supernatural may be involved after our titular beastie rips an iron jail cell asunder and racks up two more victims. The film (surprisingly, given its milieu) ratchets up some decent suspense thereafter as the sheriff and townies hunt down the werewolf through the moonlit bayou.

I am a real sucker for werewolf flicks. From Larry Talbot to Waldemar Daninsky and on I really eat ‘em up, and this flick, while falling far short of the best of them, certainly has its merits. The location shots were done in the Louisiana bayou and add an authentically eerie atmosphere to the stories progression, and the cast is full of great character actors including Geoffrey Lewis (“Salem’s Lot”, “Night of the Comet”) who has one of the great death scenes in telefilm history when he climbs the walls and mewls like a frightened cat as the werewolf approaches him. The P.O.V. shots from the prowling werewolf’s perspective (wolf-cam?) are quite effective and predate the better known film “Wolfen” (1981) by almost a decade, and the werewolf mythology they create is entertaining enough, even when it is relegated to a medically-treated hereditary disease. Bradford Dillman (“Chosen Survivors”, Bill Castle’s “Bug”) is eminently watchable as usual, but his educated and noble manner immediately belies his possible innocence as soon as he appears on camera. The real drawbacks to this film are the languid pace with an overemphasis on the small-town gossip and an unremarkable looking werewolf. The P.O.V. shots build suspense rather well and the big-bad-wolf is ferocious enough, but he winds up looking like a psycho with a glandular problem and a cute puppy nose. Overall it is well-worth a looksie for werewolf aficionados, but I prefer my wolfmen the way I like my ladies – wild, hairy, and frothing at the mouth!

Jason’s Grade: C