Werewolf (1987)

When I was a kid we lived in a puke-green trailer on a road by the college, which cut into the bypass or went out into the country, I can't remember which, but there was a sort of meridian with weeds and I often walked through it, by the oldest building near the college, before returning home to MTV and the latest R.E.M. video (which was that "buy the sky, sell the sky thing").

Clive Barker and Stephen King (who said, "I have seen the future of horror. Its name is Clive Barker," a not altogether accurate prophecy) were hot, and the new network FOX released a bunch of syndicated shows, none of which, besides the horrible "Married...With Children" managed to survive. I'm not sure what that FOX has to do, maybe, with FOX News, and I don't care at this point. One of their shows, besides maybe "21 Jump Street" had a medium-sized impact on my young cranium. It was a dark, brooding, Eighties horror series about a werewolf. It was called..."Werewolf." (How do you like that for irony, huh? Huh?)

"Werewolf" starred John J. York ("Eric Cord") as a kind of Bruce Banner with fur, wandering around looking for Chuck Conners ("Skorzeny" in the show) an eyepatch-wearing sailor man who bit his friend whom Eric killed when he turned into a werewolf one night of oddly-endearing if hackneyed "tie the wolf man down to a chair" confessions. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Werewolf" was very dour, dark and gloomy, and subdued, and predated the "X-Files" by a few years. It served as the model for that later show, which would go on to become one of the biggest television successes of all time. Not so for the unfortunate "Werewolf," which was axed after a couple of seasons, despite the incredible transformation and werewolf effects provided by the late Rick Baker, in an era before everything was done with really lame computer graphics. The show was surprisingly grim and bloody in fact: Skorzeny actually sticks his fingers in his mouth and rips his face away when HE transforms into a wolf. (I have no clue how they got THAT past the TV censors, but it's an image I'll never forget.)

In the pilot episode, we're introduced to the story through the narration of "Alamo Joe" Rogan (Lance LeGault), a badass bounty hunter with a cowboy hat (what else?) who claims to be from Brooklyn but has a Texas accent which I never could quite figure out, and which almost ruins what comes after.

Eric lives with his friend Ted (Raphael Sbarge) and is a grad student. Ted is a werewolf, surprise, surprise, and goes out trolling clubs, killing couples on the make while listening to bad Eighties music, and then fesses up to Eric; and then, in true Lon Chaney Jr. fashion, has Eric tie him up. He transforms and breaks free anyway, and slices and dices his shocked roommate before Eric shoots him--I presume with a silver bullet.

Eric gets an incompetent lawyer, pawns his hot car (what Tony Montana might refer to as a "cream puff"), and then, out on bail, has his girlfriend, Kelly (Michelle Johnson), Ted's sister, tie HIM up in a storage unit or warehouse run by a fat, sweaty, greasy, and repellent caricature of a human being; and then transforms, and then wakes up naked with Kelly behind the wheel of a jeep, asleep. Or something along those lines.

Kelly assures him he didn't get out all night, and so he knows the murder committed must be by some OTHER werewolf. "There's another one out there!" he tells Kelly. And Eric knows he has to find him, because it is probably Skorzeny, and if he kills Skorzeny, he's free of the werewolf curse himself.

(By the way, Eric's palm begins to bleed a pentagram when he's about to transform. Shades of the original Wolf Man from 1941.)

Having skipped bail (for murder charges, no less), bounty hunter "Alamo" Joe (Lance Le Gault) goes looking for him, while Eric goes around hunting down Skorzeny in some pretty dank, dark waterfront dives. The overarching plot narrative is borrowed from the old "Incredible Hulk" with Bill Bixby: Eric drifts into town, or some situation, confronts "evil" or some wrongdoing, transforms into a werewolf at least once a show, and then wakes up naked and...moves on, still searching for Skorzeny. All the while Alamo Joe is still searching for him.

The first few times you see this, it's kind of cool. Unlike any other show at the time, I couldn't wait for my weekly dose of "Werewolf" to deliver me from boring sitcoms into a world of intriguing darkness and horror. But then...you start feeling as if you're just watching the same thing, the same set-up, over and over, with just a few variations. It could all be the same series of commercials for a handy-dandy werewolf-themed product:

"CALL NOW! Just 19.95 while supplies last! Get your all-in-one slice 'em and dice'em latex-breathable werewolf skin! Guaranteed to bring satisfaction and bloodletting or your money back! Operators are standing by..."

Or something like that. In the first few episodes, we have a young boy whose mother's boyfriend is abusive and dumb. The boy likes werewolf comics or horror comics and is presented as intelligent and endearing. Eric "saves" them both from the boyfriend by...transforming into a werewolf. Likewise, we have a later episode where Eric goes to listen to a professor and author who wrote a massive book on werewolves and how they may be real. Later, this guy tries to detain him and do some hypnosis on him. Eric breaks free by...transforming into a werewolf.

Later still, he encounters a witch (Wiccan by modern, politically correct terminology) living in a cabin, whom he saves from a bunch of dumb bigots by...transforming into a werewolf. Later still, he goes to some lakeside retreat where a creepy old German dude uses arcane Native American rituals to become a werewolf, and there is a series of unexplained murders, and I could have sworn I was watching an old episode of the "X-Files."

Eric saves the day by...well, do I even have to say it at this point? (I will say there's a lot of use of dramatic slow motion during these werewolf parts.)

That was 1987, a great era when you could buy Fangoria and Gorezone and Toxic Shock on supermarket newsstands (and they didn't cost twelve ninety-five), comics cost seventy-five cents, and all of the people who ever gave a damn about me in this horrible world were still alive. I miss that era, and I miss shows like the dark, brooding, yet somehow still naive "Werewolf." I don't often write about television, partly because I'm not sure it still exists in quite the same way as it did when I was growing up, (does all this "streaming" content count?), but, there it is.

I miss the show, the era. When you could still escape into dreams of darkness and horror. And howl at the moon.

Note: As of now, ALL of "Werewolf" can be seen on YouTube.

Werewolf (Pilot)