Wolfen
|
Our Price: $38.98 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $10.47 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Wolfen
Movie Review: Beasts or Shapeshifters?....
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Movie Review: were it all started
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Movie Review: Very good take on the werewolf story, albeit one that goes abit too long
Summary: 4 Stars
1981 was a great year for werewolf movies. There was the excellent An American Werewold in London by John Landis and Joe Dante's equally creepy The Howling. To finish off the trifecta of werewolf films for the year there's Michael Wadleigh's Wolfen. Wadleigh's film was a very good werewolf tale that added abit of Native American folklore to the typical lycanthrope story, but it's slightly overlong running time keeps it from being as great as Landis' and Dante' contributions.
Wolfen takes place in the city of New York and its growing urban jungle of decaying and condemned buildings in the city's ghettoes. One has to remember that the late 70's and through on the mid-80's the inner-cities of most of the major metropolitan ctieis in the US have turned into rundown ghettoes rife with drug problems, high-crime rates and unemployment. It is in this setting that Wolfen takes place in. The film used the screenplay co-written by horror veteran novelist Whitley Strieber and Strieber's quirky style heavily influences this werewolf story. Strieber's screenplay mixes together a police procedural, political intrigue, business corruption, race and class relations, Native American lycanthrope folklore and horror. Wolfen tries to combine all these different elements together as well as possible and it mostly succeeds, but there's times when the film gets dragged down abit trying to accomplish this.
The cast is made up of mostly new actors (well young and new at that time) with a few veteran actors holding things together. Albert Finney gets the choice role of NYPD Detective Dewey Wilson who begins investigating a series of brutal murders of three individuals whose race, class and personal status brings no discernable clues that ties them together. Joining him in his investigation --- which Wilson gradually suspects has some sort of supernatural angle to it --- were the very young Diane Venora and Gregory Hines. Edward James Olmos plays a Native American whose knowledge of ties to who or what was involved in the killings might be closer than everyone thinks. The performances from all involved were pretty good though Hines comic relief performance was abit too blackface in its tone and execution. 1981 Hollywood was still not ready to discount such racial stereotypes and it gives Wolfen a certain sense of creepiness and insensitivity. Maybe the screenplay was written just that way to highlight one of the film's themes of racial and class inequality. If it was then Strieber sure did an excellent job of hammering home the point.
The film has very creepy moments whenever the story switches over to be told through the viewpoint of the wolfen. The skewed perspective the camera takes on to signify that we were seeing things through the eyes of the wolfen was disorienting and creepily well-done. Wolfen never really has pure horror moments in the film though in the hands of a director like Carpenter, Hooper, Craven or Cunningham. Wadleigh does a good enough job, but it seemed like he was treating the horror aspect of the story with less attention than it was its due.
Wolfen marks the weakest of the werewolf trilogy of 1981, but thats not to say that it was a bad film. The finished product was a well-done film and its attempt to be very ambitious in its storytelling has to be commended. The fact that the filmmakers and all involved were able to keep all the different themes and genres together without having the film spiral into utter confusion makes it a worthwhile werewolf film.
Movie Review: Maybe Not What You Think, Only Better
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been watching the widescreen version of Wolfen on Laserdisc for about the last ten years. The DVD version is an absolute winner! Wolfen is a bit on the dark side, so the blacks of the DVD version are a significant improvement over VHS and Laserdisc versions. All around, the image and sound are really nice and 'crisp'. Visually, Wolfen is great to watch, and set at a perfect time of the year for a 'New York' look and feel that fit the story perfectly. This isn't really a special effects movie, but it was apparently one of the first extensive applications of the 'Steadicam', here giving us the visual 'point of view' from something we don't even see until well into the movie. Like going to a Halloween party and looking through a mask but not knowing what you're wearing until later in the party. It's also given an 'infra-red' look, and, net-net, it doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to figure out we're not viewing things through the eyes of one of the Good Guys. Or are we?
James Horner's score is a perfect and haunting sound fit for the visuals and the story. (Interestingly, some of the recurring themes can be heard in another of his scores - Aliens, where they're again a perfect fit - don't argue with success).
Set in and reflecting the time and place it was filmed, Wolfen has some (then current) social and political twists used as plot devices. Given that, they're mostly necessary to the story, though occasionally over the top a bit and almost distracting, as is some of the background acting. During some of these side-trips, things slow down a little.
However, Albert Finney, Gregory Hines and Edward James Olmos make up for the slow spots and are the real gems in this. A joy to watch, they make their roles and characters credible and believable. Great anytime they're onscreen together or separately, watch them closely as each has as much going on with his expression as the dialogue - sometimes much more.
The stage is set with the double homicide of a very prominent New York couple couple in the wee morning hours in Battery Park, seemingly without a clear motive. Finney, as a homicide detective, and Hines, as one the Medical Examiner's staff, pursue leads which, shall we say, take increasingly unconventional directions. Meanwhile, the subplots provide for the alternative and conventional explanantions of the day - the rest of New York's Finest (and they really are) go after radicals, assisted by Executive Surveillance Systems, who "have resources" the police don't have - in other words, the requisite hokey computers and interesting capabilities movies gave them in those days. Olmos plays a Native American who works the high steel of The City, and who is an integral part of the plot.
Overall, this is a really good movie that combines a different and suspenseful story with main characters and actors who are really very good and believable. It's visually engaging, and the score fits it perfectly.
Wolfen is probably more in the 'horror' genre than anything else, but it won't be what you expect, especially if you look at the front of the cover jacket. Do yourself a favor - if you don't already know more about Wolfen than what you've read here, don't read anything else - just buy the movie and watch it. The surprises are important.
Movie Review: Pretty good, not what you might be expecting.
Summary: 4 Stars
For an early 80's horror film this is not bad, not bad at all. sure the special effects are a bit pathetic and the dialogue is a tad cliché, but the film does induce a level of fear and paranoia found in any good horror film. Released in 1981 in the middle of the early 80s horror boom, Wolfen was released in the same year as the other two big werewolf pictures An American Werewolf In London and The Howling, and was regarded as the weakest film in the werewolf genre but that isn't really accurate or fair. For a start it's not about werewolves, the wolfen of the title are something else entirely and while John Landis and Joe Dante both took a more light hearted approach, Wolfen is an ambitious and more serious film. Wolfen was also directed by Michael Wadleigh who made the acclaimed concert documentary Woodstock, it seems to be about monsters as nature's payback for man's environmental irresponsibility so it has a strong environmental message. It also touches on the mistreatment of American Indians.
Wolfen opens in a derelict section of the South Bronx where a billionaire head of a big corporation is taking part in a ground-breaking ceremony for an urban renewal project. The billionaire grins for the cameras and the press, and all the while some other eyes with cool heat-vision effects are watching him too. That night the billionaire, his coke-sniffing wife and their bodyguard stop around a Park when they're slaughtered by an unseen attacker. The next morning the police chief calls in retired detective Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) to investigate. Suspecting terrorism, Dewey first teams up with terrorism expert Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora); but the case soon takes a different turn when coroner's assistant Whittington (Gregory Hines) figures out that the wounds don't look like they were caused by anything human.
A fascinating and atmospheric tale, effectively set in the dark alleys of New York, its only major flaw is it's length. It's only in the last half hour that we discover the true nature and purpose of the wolfen and this being a 114 minute film, the build-up feels dragged out. Also the film-makers serious intentions don't always work with the obligatory monster attacks, but there were some nice gore scenes including a few decapitations. It also helps that the director is not saddled with the silly-looking rubber monsters of other similar film. Wadleigh's wolves are mostly real animals, well trained and effectively directed. Although Wolfen's not very well-known, having been a box office flop in the summer of 1981, it appears to have influenced other films. The shots from the wolves' perspectives have a very similar look to the alien's viewpoint in 1987's Predator, using bright primal colours and heightened sounds to suggest the creatures more advanced senses. And James Horner's music sounds similar his famous score for Aliens which he wrote five years later especially in the suspense sequences. This was definitely an interesting and very good film worth seeing if you enjoy thoughtful horror movies and don't mind a bit of gore. There are no extras to speak of but the widescreen picture is impressive. Sadly the package is let down a little by a weak, slightly out of sync soundtrack.