Rish's Reviews
On the night of the last full moon, a friend and I treated ourselves to a little marathon of films featuring my favourite movie monster, the werewolf. We watched An American Werewolf In London, Curse of the Werewolf, The Howling, and this film, Wolfen, a flick I'd heard a lot about but never seen. As a kid (have you ever noticed how many times in my reviews I say, "As a kid…"? I wonder what my sanitarium supervisors would say if they knew), I had always been afraid it would be highbrow and boring, and had I seen it back then, I would've disliked it, because it is highbrow and boring.
Starring Albert Finney, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines, and James Tolkan, who you know as Mr. Strickland, Wolfen tells the story of a detective (Finney) who, upon investigating the deaths of a wealthy businessman and his wife, discovers that Indian shapechangers are involved, a sort of mystical almost-werewolf race who represent the world that was before the day of industrial civilization and the white man. He finds out that these noble man-wolves are only defending their rapidly shrinking hunting ground and sort of grows to understand their motives.
In a screenplay tyranist and I wrote, we referenced Wolfen, even though we'd never seen it (I think it was due to the stupid name). Now, having seen the film, I doubt we should have used it.
I don't know if there's ever been a movie with this many fake scares in it. I should've known what to expect when they set up a wolf attack at the beginning and when the husband jumps out to startle his wife, they actually had a wolf's snarl on the soundtrack. Sadly, some of the fake scares worked really well including the most hackneyed of them all: the lady's cat jumping down to startle her.
I'm a fan of composer James Horner, but it really bothers me that he dares use the same themes in his movies (for example, some of the music from Aliens shows up in Patriot Games), and it bugged me that the "Wolfen Theme" was also Khan's theme from Star Trek II. Would anyone else notice?
I'm not sure if the word "wolfen" is ever used in the film, and it's definitely never used to describe the creatures, which hang about the abandoned buildings in fall-apart New York and are usually represented by infrared POV shots (like those in Predator). The creatures are quite frightening, when you finally see them. They use real, huge, scary, slavering wolves, and my God, no wonder our ancestors feared them. While I'd prefer a Rick Baker creation or an interesting animatronic monster, this worked shockingly well.
Olmos rants about ancient truths and Indian beliefs and runs about naked (in fact, this may be one of only a couple films on the site with full frontal male nudity in it). Hines actually fares better--he's a likable and funny character, but he dies in an unbelievably stupid way. There's a love scene that comes out of nowhere, usually the sort of thing that adds spice to a film like this, but in this case, only served to make us uncomfortable (who on earth would want to see Albert Finney in a love scene?).
Ahh, the slippery metaphysical nonsense (i.e. the crap about Indians being wolves) . . . did anybody buy this? Why couldn't it just have been werewolves? No, instead they were Indian-wolf-monster-spirit-apparitions protecting the New York territory that had once belonged to them. Snore. The film wasn't all that good (how can you take the greatest monster and make a boring movie about it?), but it was workmanlike and competent, for the most part. Too bad it took a good premise and ruined it by shying away from the Horror angle and tried to make a statement about America instead.

The tyranist's thoughts
I like a good werewolf flick as much as the next guy (although, maybe not as much as Rish who adores them in an unholy way) and 1981 is among the greatest years for horror film. So naturally a werewolf flick of good vintage should be exactly what we're looking for.
Perhaps the most interesting comment I can make is that I was only half way through the film when I realized that the word 'wolfen' was only a couple letters removed from the words 'swollen' and 'slower.' You can read into that what you'd like or you can keep reading this review while I elucidate.
The core idea of Wolfen, as Rish pointed out, has a lot of potential and while I've never read a Whitly Strieber novel (I have a hard time taking him seriously with that name), I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps there is a truly great novel out there waiting for me. On the other hand, what I sat through last night was a long, drawn-out, boring movie. What little plot there is could have easily been done in a 45-minute long X-Files episode. In fact, rewritten for that series, we might have a really good episode on our hands. Unfortunately, they made a feature length movie which doesn't even kind of measure up to the two other werewolf films of that year.
I read the production notes on the DVD, in which they claimed that along with American Werewolf in London and The Howling this made 1981 a groundbreaking year for werewolf flicks because of the spectacular special effects. I just want to assure you all that, no, you are not mistaken, there was less than nothing special about the effects in Wolfen. In fact, I often found the camera tricks more distracting and annoying than anything else. The filmmakers were so in love with them, though, that there is literally a third of the film devoted to them.
Stay away from this one. It can only disappoint.