Most people don’t realize how much brighter the full moon used to be. Fortunately, we have so many movies from earlier eras (especially the 1970’s) where we can see how often night looks like full daylight, only with the camera irised down. Sure, there’s cars with their headlights on, but we can just barely see they’re on. Things may be dark-ish in the foreground, but the sky in the background is likely to be solidly blue as if…wait a minute…as if this is really broad daylight and they’re pretending it’s night.
Perhaps the worst attempts at day-for-night I have seen are in 1973’s The Boy Who Cried Werewolf. Since lycanthropes are active at…let’s see here…the light of the full moon, the vast majority of the film takes place at night. Except it is obviously day when these scenes were shot. Except for the odd cut that was genuinely shot at night, which makes the bad day-for-night stuff look even worse in comparison. This, from Universal Pictures, which was doing better day-for-night work in its television fare of the time. One line that made me laugh out loud is: “Hey, little boy. What are you doing out here in the black of night?” This, when it is appears to be high noon.
That incompetence is a shame, because it distracts from what is a surprisingly unique picture. This PG-rated flick is much stranger than I would have expected. It is also more gruesome than something I would have anticipated from a title suggesting this is akin to Disney’s live-action output from the era.
We can tell we’re not watching a Disney film almost immediately, when a werewolf falls off a cliff and takes a street sign through the chest. This is after trying to attack a kid played by Scott Sealey. Kerwin Matthews, playing the boy’s father, gets bitten in a struggle with the creature, becoming a werewolf himself. A psychiatrist played by George Gaynes later tells Matthews a bit about the history of “werewolfism”. None of this high falootin’ talk of “lycanthropy” from this highly educated man.
Despite this appearing to be a kid’s movie, Matthews really carries the movie as the father who is a danger to his son. Not that he appears to be a fundamentally bad person, but I couldn’t help but wonder if becoming a werewolf is a metaphor for something dark lurking in his psyche.
One large strike I found against his character is what an asshole he is to his estranged wife, played by Elaine Devry. Apparently, her need for a career was unacceptable to him. From the perspective of the modern viewer, it may be hard to believe this is not portrayed as him being unreasonable. That is reinforced when she capitulates by the end of the picture, declaring all she really needs is a man. My question to her would be, even this asshole would fit that bill?
And yet Sealey is ostensibly the star of this, which is a strike against it, as he is deeply annoying. Not sure exactly why he grated on my nerves, but his character is whiny almost throughout the picture. Then again, the film is called The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, so I guess that’s what the main character has to do. All the time. In as shrill a manner as possible.
I found it especially confusing Sealey is so desperate to see a hippie encampment up close. These turn out to be literally Jesus freaks, as led by a Bob Homel. This guy looks and acts as if Lebowski had travelled back in time and founded a cult. I’m wondering what’s going through the minds of his followers, and if any of them are curious if that Manson guy is still taking new recruits.
Anything has to be better than taking orders from a guy who is very confused about his religion and its rituals. He appears to think a pentagram is people dancing in a circle. He believes doing so will force out from Matthews the evil he perceives in the man.
By the end of the movie, the police force, those hippies and an angry mob are all hunting for Matthews. The people in the mob have torches and Frankenstein rakes, as any proper mob should have. The hippies want to pray the evil out of the monster, which is a new one on me. And the police appear to be largely useless, as the chief examines a cellar door clearly smashed from the inside, yet concludes it is the work of a mountain lion.
What is odd is how conspicuous Matthews is when he has turned, as only his head and hands change. You would think at least his wife would realize who the monster is but, after he attacks her and their son, she tells the police is was some sort of animal. She’s seen animals that wear green corduroy jackets? And pants?!
Speaking of which, fans of bad clothing staples from the 1970’s will find much to enjoy here. My personal favorite is a young woman wearing a suede fringe top that looks like she is cosplaying as Pocahontas.
That’s probably as good a reason as any for Matthews to kill her and her boyfriend. He rocks their trailer back and forth until it rolls off a cliff. While rocking the trailer, he somehow also shatters a window by smacking it with both hands, which makes me wonder how the trailer is moving. I’ll just assume he is dry humping it, per that famous bumper sticker, “If this trailer’s rocking, it’s probably being dry humped by a werewolf”.
All of this leaves me wondering who the intended audience was for The Boy Who Cried Werewolf. In addition to the deaths I have described so far, Matthews also strangles a TV repairman to death. That seems to me a hair too violent for a kid’s movie. At the same time, it is too tame for most adults. Parts of it, such as the hippies, are so ridiculous that there seem to be moments where the filmmakers realize how preposterous this whole enterprise is. This is a strange animal and that may be the only reason to seek it out.
Dir: Nathan Juran
Starring Scott Sealey, Kerwin Matthews, Elaine Devry
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray