The Howling

(1981) ***1/2

News anchor Karen White plays a risky game to try to get an exclusive on a serial killer. The plan backfires when she comes face to face with the killer in the back of a seedy LA porn shop and he is shot to death in front of her. Afterwards she has only patchy memory of the event, flashbacks, and nightmares. She’s unable to function at her job. The in-house shrink, Dr. Waggner, recommends she go to his rest facility in the country, where she and her husband find an odd group of characters indeed. Karen is spooked by the howls she hears at night, but her husband assures her it’s only the wind. Since they are in a movie called “The Howling,” you can bet Karen is right and her husband, not so much.

This was a fun movie, which I’d never seen before. I was expecting a lot more explicit violence and blood, but instead got mostly implied violence, a little blood, one laughable werewolf transformation scene, a couple of good transformation scenes, full frontal female nudity, lots of little sight gags, and some sex. The plot doesn’t make 100% sense to me, and I totally called all the twists (such as they were) but there was enough humor and action to keep me interested throughout.