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Between the oldest urge and the latest fad, lycanthropes in California, a whole resort of them. Joe Dante opens with a sensory tour de force, out of TV static and into lurid neon as the anchorwoman (Dee Wallace) keeps her investigative rendezvous on Skid Row, her subject is the local ripper (Robert Picardo) whose scraggly Mansonite mane is backlit by the flickering porno projector. (Furry sketches adorn his den, "he could've designed the Marquis de Sade coloring book.") Dr. Feelgood (Patrick Macnee) has a recommendation for her trauma, a coastal retreat for the study of repression and the primal subconscious and other New Age buzzwords—John Carradine bays straight into the camera to lead the welcoming barbecue. Meek vegetarians morph into hirsute carnivores, the dark-haired temptress (Elisabeth Brooks) thoroughly savors the heroine's husband (Christopher Stone), mauled cattle and lupine cacophonies. "Nothing like a quiet week in the country." Resnais' La Vie est un Roman surely takes note of the satirical psychobabble of John Sayles' screenplay, for Dante it's a question of "what's meant to be wild" in genre filmmaking, a most erudite bit of horror criticism. Silver bullets at The Other Side bookstore (Dick Miller runs it, Forrest J. Ackerman is a customer), Waggner's The Wolf Man and Ub Iwerks' Big Bad Wolf are jolly parts of "our culture of violence." Little Red Riding Hood as a snooping journalist (Belinda Balaski), searching through file cabinets as if in a '70s conspiracy thriller until a monstrous paw enters the frame. (The expanding chests and sprouting snouts of Rob Bottin's bestial transformations deserve their own spotlight, Slim Pickens' fanged smile under a cowboy hat is just a bonus.) The remarkable coda runs the gamut from Network to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (with Kevin McCarthy himself witnessing the spectacle) to The Legend of Lylah Clare, rare meat in the image-wolfing new decade. With Dennis Dugan, Margie Impert, Noble Willingham, Don McLeod, and Kenneth Tobey.
--- Fernando F. Croce |