Ever since cinema’s origins, werewolves have been a massive part of the greater horror canon, but they’ve never had a better year at the movies than 1981. For a few decades, these giant dog-like beasts had taken a back seat in the mind of the movie-going public, but in ’81, audiences were treated with two bangers and an attempt at greatness with An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, and Wolfen. It’s odd that there was such a huge craze going on so long after the original werewolf run back in the ’40s, but maybe this huge drought is what led to two major classics coming out of the early ’80s. These three have plenty in common, but they do enough to stand out in their own ways to justify all being released in the same year.
Why Was There a Werewolf Movie Boom in the ’80s?
That is until the ’80s! For whatever reason, this decade saw a massive boom in werewolf movies, and not just in 1981. There was the throwback chiller The Company of Wolves in 1984, Stephen King’s Silver Bullet and the comedy Teen Wolf in ’85, the all-star ghoul fest The Monster Squad in ’87, Teen Wolf Too in ’87… and My Mom’s a Werewolf in ’89? Okay, the werewolf movies of this decade weren’t all great, but a ton of them were, with two of the three released in ’81 being the best that came out of this entire era.
The Howling is a Mean Monster Movie
The first of these three 1981 werewolf movies to hit theaters was The Howling, released on March 13, 1981, and directed by the mastermind behind Gremlins, Joe Dante. Before Dante’s film, hardly anyone had seen such a modern take on this monster. The film follows Karen White (Dee Wallace), an amnesiac news anchor who is sent to a remote resort to take time and heal mentally, but during her stay, she and some of her fellow visitors begin to be stalked by werewolves.
Wolfen Is the Tamest of the Three 1981 Werewolf Movies
The second werewolf film released in 1981 would be Wolfen, released on July 24th of that year and directed by Michael Wadleigh. It follows a New York City cop named Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) who does his best to find the killer behind a series of brutal murders. Hmmm… I wonder what could be behind this. This movie does its best to differentiate itself by adding in a crime element and taking elements of police procedurals, but ultimately, we’re all only here to see one thing – werewolves!
Why Is ‘An American Werewolf in London’ the Greatest Werewolf Movie Ever?
The biggest werewolf movie of 1981 is obvious. That’s right, it’s An American Werewolf in London. John Landis’ horror-comedy hybrid is the most haunting, eeriest, darkly comic movie in the entire werewolf subgenre. In short, it absolutely rocks. The film follows two American backpackers traveling across England who are attacked by a werewolf, leading one of them to become a werewolf himself.
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