One for the Dogs: Werewolf of Washington

After The Brain That Wouldn't Die last night, you'd think I would have learned my lesson...but, noooooo. I go and throw in a second mutt wasting a good 90 minutes during Halloween season. This piece of "satire schlock" poking fun at politics "behind the white house curtain" uses werewolvery in a way that could work if the material was funny instead of just, well, weird. Weird can be good in certain instances, but this film is just rather pointless. And the dialogue just doesn't tickle the funny bone. I think it is because the performances are so dry or perhaps those in the cast maybe play the material so dull. Bored is something I cop to. This just didn't entertain me much at all besides Dean Stockwell's greywolf going after a female eyewitness who saw his fleeing a supermarket after attacking an important magazine superstar in the political scene quite critical of the current presidency. The eyewitness was in a phone booth trying to keep Stockwell from getting in. I guess you might consider Stockwell's cumbersome transformations, happening at the most inopportune times to be funny or ironic. Like during a war room council session or in the middle of a conversation with the President or his daughter (he has a thing with the POTUS' daughter, yep). The werewolf could come at any time...just when that will be often makes Stockwell's life miserable.

Dean Stockwell. This guy has some weirdo roles in his character grab-bag. Put this film alongside "Sandra Dee goes Naughty" The Dunwich Horror and you have yourself quite the Stockwell double bill. These early 70s films have Stockwell coming out of his immersion in the hippie movement.

In this film, though, Stockwell is a blank page. I can understand why, though. This isn't exactly the kind of film you hope to wind up in after successful stints in films like Long Days Journey Into Night and television success. Still, Stockwell as a press secretary who also happens to be a werewolf does seem fun in print, but this film doesn't have the budget or filmmaking credo to make it work. Random shit like a dwarf scientist working for the POTUS, with some guy in body paint and make up in a cage, with some type of Frankenstein Monster with large booted feet sticking out a machine or a Hungarian lady Stockwell seems invested in relationship-wise while oversees as a reporter is shown at the beginning of the film but is never seen or referred to again just kind of come and go without explanation. There's the POTUS bowling with Stockwell, having to help his press secretary pry his swollen fingers (that's what happens when your lycanthropy starts acting up) from a bowling ball. You have the POTUS doing battle with the greywolf himself when Stockwell's lycanthropy starts up on Air Force One without help from his protective staff. You have a chained Stockwell getting a nice kiss from the daughter of the POTUS (nope, his ravings of being dangerous do nothing to sway her!). Just lots of this. Stockwell tries to tell anyone that'll listen, but deaf ears are continual.

You get similarities to The Wolf Man (a man bitten by a werewolf becomes a werewolf himself; he's bitten by a gypsy in Hungary; his transformations and make up are similar) and Full Moon High (which came about a decade later; Alan Arkin in that film gets bitten while overseas in Europe). I do think the intention was to entertain...it just has a strange way of going for laughs. A definite curio for werewolf fans and those who just like early Stockwell perhaps will embrace it somewhat.

I watched this as part as Elvira's Movie Macabre. Seeing Elvira *always* cures what ails me...including the films she's host of. Her gag being chained to a chair certainly had to summon some mighty naughty fantasies.