Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
Be Serious podcasts. Jason and I are here at this
beautiful colony spa resort, and there's an old man trying
to throw himself into a fire and a young woman
with a lot of cleavage who's given me the wolf
I if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: Just don't call me a meatloaf.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, everybody, we are back with part two
of The Howling versus American Werewolf in London forty years
old this year part of our Halloween October Spectacular. Can't
wait to jump back into this.
Speaker 2: These two movies are spectacular.
Speaker 3: Love both of these movies.
Speaker 2: American Werewolf in London versus The Howling.
Speaker 3: Here we go.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so let's just talk plot versus plot on
these two movies, all right, Yeah, okay. So with Howling,
just for those of you haven't seen it in a while,
what you get is a woman who is investigating what
appears to be a serial killer, right right, would come
in on that, and he is giving her phone calls
and telling her to meet him at a certain spot
and it ends up being like a little porno video
place where you can go and watch the movies in
the back room or whatever. So she goes in the
back room and he's in there, and he's there to
talk her. And then the police, who are supposed to
be going along, they are showing up pretty late, and
it's he starts to change in the wolf, although you
never see that, and then the police show up and
the young dumb policeman starts shooting through the door, and
it appears that her attacker is killed. Right for the
whole movie, almost you think this could just be a
serial killer, and you've got this investtigation of this serial killer.
But then she's going through this, she's gone through this
traumatic experience. She can't remember what's happened. There's this psychiatrist
who says, you should come to the colony, which is
where I treat all of my special cases. She and
her husband go to the colony. They're weird wolf sightings
that are going on, while meanwhile her friends, the reporters,
are investigating the serial killer and ultimately they discover his
body is missing. Right, there's an actor we forgot to mention,
John Sales. Is the Morgue mortissue?
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I didn't realize that. Who's like eating?
Speaker 1: Yeah, eating has never bothered me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is like.
Speaker 2: The world's worst police work. At the beginning of the helling,
let's let a woman walk in, lose total contact with
her hang out with a guy we.
Speaker 3: Knows the serial killer, right, and where's she going? I'm
not sure did she turned this which?
Speaker 2: Wait, it's like the three stooges, right, are trying to
keep track of where she is.
Speaker 1: And I think they kind of tried to keep the
idea that it was a werewolf a little bit of
a secret, like they wanted that to be kind of
a reveal that, hey, this is this guy wasn't just
a serial killer, he was a werewolf. But they think
they're dropping plenty of hints.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, his voice changes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, As it turns out he's escaped from the wargue,
the dead has risen, and meanwhile her husband gets attacked
by a wolf. And that's when we see the first
change scene is whenever he starts to change while he's
making love with this other woman who's obviously also changing.
We know, okay here there are a couple of were
wolves involved here, right.
Speaker 2: Once he becomes a werewolf. The doctor won't let them
leave because her husband has been bitten. Right, And then
next thing you know, the entire werewolf colony is focused
in on eating care.
Speaker 1: Right. As it turns out the entire colony, who we
thought were patients are all aware werewolves. Right, That is
the true big reveal at the end. Even the kindly
old sheriff Slempickins turns out he's a were wolf too.
That was so unsettling for me to see slim Pickens
with those sharp teeth, right, I mean, he was just
the funny sheriff from Blazing Zaddles to me, I didn't
want him to be a wolfman. Yes, And ultimately her
friends come up to rescue her friends come up, one
is killed, the other ends up saving her by grabbing
some silver bullets and shooting away, and they ultimately escape,
but she's bitten. And the final scene is her doing
a broadcast from the newsroom live and changing into a
werewolf on live TV.
Speaker 3: She turns into an Ee walk on live TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I found out this is Dee Wallace is doing.
By the way, she was like, I don't want to
be an ugly wolf. I want to be a cute one.
Well fail on both of those. I think you were
neither ugly nor cute. You were just ridiculous.
Speaker 2: She looked like Chewbaca's wife. Okay, so a couple of
things you mentioned that I just want to talk about
really quick.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Her friend Terry gets attacked I were a wolf. He
chases her into a cabin. She manages to cut off
his hand and then you have this sort of flopping
hand effect that's unsettling, but it does look like a
kitchen glove a little bit.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We find out later who actually.
Speaker 2: Attacked her because he's missing his hand. Right later, they
all get trapped in a barn so that you could
either kill him by silver bullets or.
Speaker 1: By fire, that's the only two ways.
Speaker 2: And her friend Dennis Dugan shows up. He had purchased
the silver bullets, and they're like, go ahead and shoot
tough guy, and he's like he's dropping them. They're like, oh, crap, crap,
silver bullets.
Speaker 1: Okay. So that's the howling. Yeah, solid storyline, it's really good.
It's gripping. The reveal that all of the patients are
actually where wolf's is a pretty strong reveal. Yes, at
some point, she ends up confronting Eddie Quist again, just
as she happens to come across his file in the
medical office, right right, right, And that's when you have
the big change scene, the most amazing change scene that
anyone up until April of nineteen eighty one had ever seen.
That's where we get to reveal that he's actually a
weir wolf. Even though we've obviously seen some wolf things
going on, this is really the we see it happen.
We know what's going on.
Speaker 2: She gets away by throwing a big splash of acid
on a space that's just sitting right there, conveniently convenient.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about American Werewolf in London, right. It
comes out six months later, Okay, okay, So storyline for
American were Wolf in London, right. You got a couple
of kids who are doing their backpack trip to Europe,
like a lot of American kids do. They're up in Wales,
righting on the back of a sheep truck and they
get warnings stick the roads, avoid the moors to where
them are.
Speaker 2: Those are the worst instructions with Dillion, with the were
wolf of all time.
Speaker 1: Well, and so they end up at a pub where
all of the locals are not happy that they're there
to begin with. The locals eventually relax and start telling jokes,
and then they ask a question about a pentagram upon
the wall record scratch it. He calls it a pentangle,
Thank you pentangle.
Speaker 2: He calls it a pentangle five point star, and then
he quotes the wolf man Lon Cheney, right, yeah, And
I'm looking at it, I'm thinking these people are just
molly Crue fans.
Speaker 1: So once again they're asked to leave, and they're warned,
and there's all of this concern like we can't let
them go, you can't let them go, And I agree,
how are you letting these kids go?
Speaker 2: Not only are they letting them go, they're shunning them.
They're like, get out right, there's no.
Speaker 1: Food for you here, so it's to be murded. Then
then murder is terrible, Yeah, terrible.
Speaker 2: So then they're just walking on the moors and the
wolf chases him down and kills Jack yep and bites David.
For the other one's guilt became so overwhelming they showed
up with guns right and.
Speaker 1: Shot and killed Debest right, which I had to wonder.
I'm like, they got to know this guy, right, shouldn't it.
I mean, he's not when he's a human, he's not
just wandering around naked out there. It's their diue, it's
they they know this guy. It's some drinking buddy, I guess.
I mean it's kind of weird. That's an unanswered question, right, yeah, Okay,
So he ends up at the hospital in London. Wounds
have been dressed, but he's having nightmares.
Speaker 2: He's also falling in love with his nurse. But he's
having these crazy nightmares where the movie makes a big
deal about him being Jewish, and so he keeps getting
attacked by like these dreams where his family is attacked
by Nazi werewolves and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Right, this is and that's one of the that's really
an unsettling scene.
Speaker 3: That scene is amazing.
Speaker 1: Dreams may be the most unsettling part of the whole thing,
other than that Piccadilly Circus car crash scene. But those
are all kind of based on this movie called The
Discreete Charm of the Bourgeoisie. If you want, you check
out people who get lost in a dream within a dream,
because after that, you know whatever the demon nazis. After
that dream, he wakes up, he tells the nurse what
he's just experienced, and she's like, oh, I got just
the thing for it. Opens up the curtain and there's another
demon Nazi, stabbing her in her twitching body. And he
wakes up again because it was a dream within a dream.
Speaker 2: And that part when he wakes up that second time
is really funny. After that dream, his dead friend Jack
comes back and visits him, and he's all torn up
and bloody, and he's got this little dangling piece of
skin on his neck and he's like, guess what, David,
bad news.
Speaker 3: You're a werewolf.
Speaker 2: You need to go ahead and kill yourself because I
can't move on until you die because I died an
unnatural death.
Speaker 1: And so it's important that he's having these dreams because
he's then questioning, is this really happening? Or am I
just having another of these very realistic dreams? Right? Am
I just running through the woods naked and biting the
head off of a deer?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: So ultimately he's released from the hospital. The nurse has
kind of fallen for him, so she takes him home.
But it's been at this point about four weeks. It's
time for the full moon to rise again. Right, And
so she leaves him at home the next day after
an interesting shower scene, and he spends the whole day
board and saying I'm not hungry, until suddenly he's reading
a book tipping my hand here. Yeah, that scene took
the howling scene and stomped on it like it was
a baby.
Speaker 3: You're spiking the football on that.
Speaker 1: It's stomped on it like it was an aunt. Okay,
thank baby's pretty bad thing to say that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I totally agree. I mean that scene in
American World of London, Rick Baker made a huge difference,
and that scene destroys the howling.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so we'll finish the plot and let's just
talk about those two scenes. Okay, Okay. So he goes
on a killing rampage. He kills a young couple who
are going out to meet friends for dinner. He kills
a man on the tubes, he kills three homeless men. Yeah,
and then wakes up in the zoo and the wolf cage. Right,
feels great. Meanwhile, the doctor has been investigating the whole time.
This is almost like a mystery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because when he's in the hospital, he's like the
Scotland yard shows up and says, the maniac that you
fought with must have been very strong. He's like, it
wasn't a man, it was a wolf.
Speaker 1: It was a wolf.
Speaker 2: And the doctor's like interesting, yeah, and he's like, doctor,
I'm not crazy.
Speaker 3: He was a wolf.
Speaker 1: Right, he'said, my memory is fine. So once he's once
he's managed to get naked from the zoo back over
to nurse's house. Got American man still my balloon naked
American men stole. He feels great and he's excited, and
then the cab driver tells them, would you guys not
hear about all the murders, people torn to pieces, And
suddenly he realizes Jack is right, and he tries to
get himself arrested with success. Then he tells Alex that
he loves her and runs away so that he won't
hurt her. He gives his family a I love you
goodbye phone call, but he can bring himself to kill
himself right, goes to the movie theater, sees Jack, sees
his other murder victims, realizes that he's got to do it,
but it's too late. The moon comes up again. He
turns into the wolf again. He starts attacking people again.
There's mass chaos, dogs and cats living together, huge scene,
and all of the police are called out with their guns.
Alex runs down the alley where the wolf is to
try to communicate with him. We have this brief moment
where she says, I love you his eyes softened, then harden,
he lunges. The officers shoot and suddenly it's not a
wolf lying dead but a naked David and she's sobbing hysterically.
And then mob mob dang dang, dang dang and own
big blob and.
Speaker 3: Yep, and that was one of roder River.
Speaker 2: It's big problems with this movie is it abruptly ends,
and man, it abruptly ends. But I think it's really.
Speaker 1: Cool, all right, So first let's talk change scene. Okay,
if you watch the howling first, you're blown away, right, Yeah,
it's amazing. It is not the time laps photos that
you've seen in all of the other Wolfman movies. This
is a guy whose flesh inflates. You see the hair
growing on him, you see his fingers growing, you see
his nails growing. Rob Botten did a fantastic job, yes,
but it's also the first time it's ever been done right,
and so.
Speaker 2: It's like Galaxy in and Galliga. Yeah, you know, the
first one, you're like, Wow, this is great, until you
get Gallagh and you're like whoa.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So first problem. At some point his head stops moving.
The camera moves to give you the impression that the
head is moving, but they didn't have a mechanism to
make the head move, and the change occur as the
snout is growing. The eyes aren't quite right.
Speaker 2: That's the problem given for me.
Speaker 1: Right, it's the eyes, yeah, and the bubbling flashes.
Speaker 2: It's weird, it's unsettling, right.
Speaker 3: It looks freaky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's still an incredible change scene. Yeah, right,
but it's almost as if he's enjoying. I'm glad that,
you know, whatever Rick contributed to this, that might have
come from John Landis's original idea ten years before, he
didn't contribute that this was painful.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The guy goes through it and Dee Wallace just has
to stand there and look at it, right, which is
also weird. But I've seen people frozen in fear before
and maybe that's what's going on.
Speaker 2: One of the main things that you haven't mentioned yet
that I want to point out in the Howling they're
bipedal right, They're on two feet. They're standing there like
a seven foot tall standing werewolf. And in an American
world from London, they're on all fours.
Speaker 3: It's more like a bear, right, I know.
Speaker 2: John Landis and Rick Baker had this back and forth
and what would be better, what would be scarier? And
up to that point, like the wolf Man and all this.
Speaker 1: Stuff, they're all bipeds.
Speaker 3: They're all bypeds. I love the bear.
Speaker 1: I feel like the wolf Hound of Hell, the Hound
of Hell. Yeah, yes, So it's interesting. Then the Howling.
They had made the movie without showing the full body wolf,
like you saw his head and you would see his hands,
and you would see you saw the change, but it
was all pieces. You didn't see that standing up, full
body wolf. But they ran out of money, right, and
so they went and they said, look at this, If
you give us just a few more dollars, we can
do the full fledged wolf. And so the full fledged
wolf is the one you see where Terry is being
attacked and she had to go back, you know, weeks
after they had shot the original and do it and
she's like, my hair's a lot longer now, right, And
they're like, nobody's gonna know, they're gonna know. How are
they gonna know they're gonna know? They didn't know. I
had no idea until she said I was like, oh,
her hair is longer. Holy crap. So it was only
after they had done the puppet wolf's the head in
the frame those scenes that they got approval to do
that full wolf standing up. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know.
Speaker 3: That's cool. Okay.
Speaker 2: So the change scene for American World in London, as
we've talked about before, David is sitting there reading the
book and all of a sudden, it's like boom, it
hits him. He's got a splitting headache, like incredibly painful.
He comes out of nowhere and he's yelling and screaming
in total pain. And that was something that John Landon
has created. You're not going to sit in a chair
and just change. It's gonna hurt. And so he's screaming
and changing. He's watching in fear as his hand stretch
and his body grows hair, which Rick Baker talks about
how he was so inventive that he's like, you know
what if we just put hair, poke it through the
skin and.
Speaker 3: Pull it through. So we pull it backwards.
Speaker 2: If we reverse it, it'll look.
Speaker 4: Like there is growing.
Speaker 1: Brilliant.
Speaker 3: Looks great.
Speaker 2: And so they did a scene where David Natoni is
a cutout through the floor and so you have this
weird body attached with his head and his hands and
his arms. Transformation scene is incredible.
Speaker 1: So that scene where you see him lying on the
floor and he's got kind of the main but it's
still his regular face at this point. Yeah, and he's
stairs right in the camera, right, he looks right in
the camera and his eyes are red, no effect. The
eyes were just red because he had been filming all
day long and was completely exhausted.
Speaker 2: That's good. Well, I don't know if we've even mentioned
this ship. But as he's fighting and growing and turning
into a werewolf and his face is stretching all that stuff,
and you see kind of the side of the beast, right,
but you don't get a full on look at it.
You really don't get a full look at it. You
see him in the tubes and just for a second,
just for a second, and that scene is so scary.
I want to talk about that. But before we get there,
the how the sound that the wolf makes in an
American warm for London. It's among the most scariest things
I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: It's perfect. It is absolutely bright.
Speaker 2: Oh man, in that beginning scene when he's chasing around
the moors and you can't see him but you can
hear him.
Speaker 1: So we're watching these movies, right, Yeah, and I've been running. Yeah,
And I go early in the morning to run, so
it's still dark outside. Yes, and never i' mean done,
you know, one hundred miles and not been worried about
it until we start doing these movies. I swear I'm
running along and all of a sudden I hear in
the bushes in the countryside. I'm like, oh, and my
face was really good for that particular run.
Speaker 3: You're like, what is that?
Speaker 2: How did the Baskerville's Hako's bill?
Speaker 1: So the change scene in the Howling, the head moves
the whole time, like you there's no point in the
change that I can look and I can go, Okay,
Now we are just looking at animatronics. We're not looking
at a human being actor anymore. As his face expands,
I'm like, how do they how they do that? It's
not his He's writhing around as if the pain is
incredibly intense as the mouth is extending. It's incredible. It's incredible.
So then we never see him, like you said, we
never see him as the wolf until we get to
the tube scene later that night. Yes, and it's great
because you've got this very tall, gaunt guy get off
of the tube, get off of the subway, and he's
got this moment where he kind of looks around like, Oh,
I'm the only one here. I'm a man, I'm not
going to be scared of this, you know. So you
get the subtext to going through. And then he hears
that noise, right, and he's like trying to talk. He's like,
this isn't funny. We're calling the authorities, right, And then
he sees it but we don't, right, and he takes
off running. You can tell he's like, and I'm not sure.
I think it's like a fish eye effect. As you
are the wolf, you are in the position of the
wolf running down the tube, chasing this guy down the
hallways as it goes by. It's just so terrifying.
Speaker 2: There's not one single person there at this time of
day or night.
Speaker 1: Right, apparently not. It's weird, and so he ends up
collapsing on the escalator, and you've got a very very
long moment as he's just laying there apparently incapacitated on
the escalator. I'd be crawling my butt up the stairs
as fast as I get And then you're look looking
at it from the top of the escalator, right, and
you just see the wolf just slowly like it's not
a run in an attack, it's a I know, I
got you step step. And that's the moment we see
the wolf as the wolf for the first.
Speaker 2: Time from a long ways away, right.
Speaker 1: And Rick Baker said he knew that that was going
to be a quick cutaway moment. He knew that they
weren't going to show much of the wolf. It's that
jaws mentality of yep, brief clips are more scary, right, right,
And so he said, I didn't want to leave it
up to the editor to pick the right moment, So
I made the face as scary as I could for
that shot, like it was already scary from the get go.
There wasn't any changing going on, you know that with
the animatronics it was scary now, so that he didn't
miss it.
Speaker 2: That actor, the one who gets killed in the tubes, yeah,
played big Fortuna who is like Jaba the Huts translator
in the Return of the Jedi. For you Star Wars fan,
jib there, that to me.
Speaker 1: Is awesome, weak minded four jama sleepy.
Speaker 3: You will let me in now, I will let you now,
same guy.
Speaker 1: And so then we have scenes with the wolf as
the quadruped, like you said. And the way they did
that was Rick Baker thought of playing the game Wheelbarrow
when he was a kid, where you'd hold somebody by
the legs and they'd walk on their hands. Well, he
just created something where effectively that's what was happening. And
then the back legs were kind of attached to the
front legs, so it looked like all four legs were
moving as they would with a running wolf.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you got a puppeteer just making the mouth chump, chump, chump, yep,
and it looked great, looked great.
Speaker 1: Okay, And because of Rick Baker's amazing work on this,
he won the Oscars the first year that they ever
had an oscar for special effects, and Rick Baker won
the first of seven wins and eleven nominations, most of
any person in the world. Nice. Yeah, but they didn't
create the category for American World for London. You know what,
they've created it for the Helling No what the Elephant.
Speaker 2: Man, Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Which had a young actor in it played the doctor,
mister Anthony Alkins. Yes.
Speaker 2: And the guy who played the Elephant Man was John
Hurt and he was almost had an elector.
Speaker 1: And he was also the guy from Alien an Alien.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right.
Speaker 2: I got just a few tidbits on these movies that
I want to talk about, and then we can talk
about release reception, final judgment.
Speaker 3: Sounds great, Okay, Okay, just a couple of.
Speaker 2: Tidbits from The Howling.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: One of the scenes at the beginning of the movie,
Dee Wallace is.
Speaker 3: In the porn shop.
Speaker 2: She was very uncomfortable as an actress in that porn shop.
Speaker 1: Midwestern girl. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's it's not a set, it's an actual porn shop.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They used to rule on Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I saw online.
Speaker 2: There's some question about which wolf bit Bill, right, like
who bit Bill? At the end of the movie she
gets bid by Bill, her husband, right, so he bites her.
But who bit Built initially and the consensus is it's.
Speaker 1: Marsha Oh that's good. Yeah, that makes sense, right, And
that's how she knew to be out there right, right.
Speaker 3: And I don't think there's a right answer.
Speaker 2: I just found it interesting that the fans kind of
argue about.
Speaker 1: That, right, Okay. Joe Dante does a ton of references
in his movies, right, He's always thrown back to old movies,
But in this one he also did a ton of
wolf like throw in, right, he did, Yeah, And so
I think slim pickens might be eating it. And there's
definitely in the cabin is wolf brand chili he is, yep.
And at the scene where she's reaching behind her as
he's changing into the wolf and she's reaching for that acid,
there is medicine right next to it called the Wolf
and Brand Medicine. Okay, And this one I have not
read anywhere else. I found this one on my own.
I'm sure that it's probably out there somebody's you know,
there's just no way you're going to miss this. But
I happen to notice that her husband Bill is reading
a book in bed when she comes to talk to
him and is interested in fooling around, right, And I
looked up the title to the book, and I was like, Okay,
well this isn't about werewolves, and I'm like, okay, well,
who's the author? It was Thomas Wolf Nice. That is
a pretty deep that is.
Speaker 3: How about this one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dennis Dugan is watching a Looney Tunes episode in
the movie Pigs in a Polka yep, where the big
bad wolf was chasing them around. Right, lots of wolf stuff.
Speaker 1: And the funniest line in the movie is in reference
to Wolfmanchack.
Speaker 2: That's right. She's talking about hearing a wolf and he says, honey,
you're raised in La The wildest thing you ever heard
was Wolfmanchack.
Speaker 1: Right. Okay. So Dick Miller is the one who owns
the bookstore where they find out all the info about
what's real about werewolves and what's not right right, And
as I mentioned before, he had been in a lot
of Roger Corman movies. One of the biggest one was
called a Bucket of Blood. His character's name in a
Bucket of Blood Walter Paisley also his character's name in
this one. In the bookstore, there's a mummified grandmother in
an armchair in the attic of the house. It was
the same one that they used in Texas Chainsaw Massacre
because the guy who did all of the set design
for the Howling was the same guy who had done
all the set design for a Texas Chainsaw Masaker. And
if you go back and watch the Howling thinking about
Texas Chainsaw Masker, it's all the same taxidermy bones hanging
all the same kind of stuff. Wow. Yeh.
Speaker 2: Texas Chainsaw Mascer based on serial killer ed Gean. The
characters of Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill were based on
Flashback to Our Last Time Psycho.
Speaker 1: Laps Yep and Roger Corman is the guy waiting outside
of the phone booth for her to get done with
the phone call from very beginning of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, let's slip back over to an American
world in London. I got a few mind blowing tidbits
for you over there.
Speaker 1: I'm ready. That's a marvelous not for a mon dance
with the star up. All right?
Speaker 2: So do you know the name of the porno that
was shown in the theater when he transforms? Of course
you do. It's called see you Next Wednesday, See you
Next Wednesday. Now, if you've listened to our Coming to
America and Trading Places episode you understand that in all
of his movies, somewhere it says see you next Wednesday.
It also shows up in the thriller video Yes, that
is directed by John Landis yep, and the makeup is done.
Speaker 3: By Rick Baker.
Speaker 2: So Kids American World in London gave us thrilling. Michael
Jackson was a big fan movie as and when he
went to John Landis, he says, I want you to
make me a werewolf.
Speaker 1: Side note. Stanley Kubrick also a big fan of this movie.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, cool?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The music in an American World in London, every song
that you hear has the word moon and the title
in some way.
Speaker 1: Yep. He had picked almost all of these songs back
in the early seventies when he had first written a script.
So you've got Bobby Vinton singing blue Moon during the
opening credits, right when they have the love making scene.
That's Van Morrison's Moon Dance that's playing, Yes, just before
he changes You've get Credence, Clearwater Revivals, Bad Moon Rising,
and then Sam cook sings blue Moon when he goes
through that change seat. Originally, John Landis had wanted to
get Elvis's version of that song, but the colonel said,
no way, So all right, Sam Cook it is. And
then maybe one of the funniest endings to any scary
movie is when the Marcel's duop version of Blue Moon
plays over the ending credits.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right.
Speaker 2: He also went really strong after Cat Stevens Moonshadow, the sign.
Speaker 1: Being followed by the moon Shadow Shadow Shadow.
Speaker 2: And Cat Stevens, who had converted to Islam, said no,
you know, I don't like the subject matter of this. Also,
I believe that there are actual werewolves.
Speaker 1: Gulp, mind blown, nice one, thank you, all right. The
score of the movie was actually composed by our old
friend Elmer Bernstein, who we've talked about multiple times Ghostbusters,
Animal House, all of those movies. Ye, Trading places, right, yes, right,
got back into the movies because he was a family
friend of John Landerson's family. There are very few parts
that have his music in it. Usually it's that it's
the popular music that's playing, right, But all of the
dream sequences have his music, and he composed a piece
for the metamorphosis change scene, but John Landers said, no,
We're not gonna do that. Well. Almer Bernstein eventually released
a three minute passage of it and it was called metamorphosis.
Speaker 2: Cool. Here's something that I found. I had to dig
deep for this. David in the beginning scene when he's
on the mors with Jack, he's wearing a red puffy jacket.
That red jacket was select for him because John Landis
wanted that to resemble red riding Hood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 3: Thank you a great one, thanks, thank you. Okay, you
ready for this tidbit?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So in the movie, David is trying to get arrested.
Solo throw him in jail so he'll protect people from
him wolfing.
Speaker 1: Out right right.
Speaker 2: So he goes up to a Bobby and he's like,
you arrest me, you jerk, arrest me. I want you
to arrest me right now.
Speaker 3: The guy's like, go away, go away.
Speaker 2: He's like, what do I have to do to get arrested?
Around here? Queen Elizabeth is man, Prince Charles is a right,
and he's running around going crazy.
Speaker 3: So he makes a derogatory.
Speaker 2: Comment about Prince Charles Well during the closing credits say
did you see it? So during the closing credits, it
says Likingthroped Films Limited wishes to extend its heartfelt congratulations
to Lady Diana Spencer and his Royal Highness to Prince
of Wales on the occasion of their marriage July twenty ninth,
nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3: How about that.
Speaker 1: Solid licenthrope licenthrop licenthrope comes that word comes up in
both movies. What is a licen throw?
Speaker 3: It is they were Wolf. There you go nice?
Speaker 1: Okay, we talked to composers for American more Wolf in London.
It's important to note that Pino Dinaggio was the composer
for this movie, right, Okay, So the way that that
worked out, he had done a bunch of movies, was
a big composer for Brian to Palm, but they had
a low budget on this one, and basically they flew
him in, had him watch the parts where they wanted
music cues, and then he flew back out, composed it
all and sent it back to him. There was no
meeting there, it was. It was a very thrown together
kind of thing, which I think is hugely important for
these two movies. Okay, So they bring him in to
show him the movie and they're trying to talk about
the musical cues, but he's Italian oka and they don't
speak Italian, right, and so they've got a guy who's
there who's going to help him, but he also doesn't
speak Italian. He speaks Spanish. Well, Pino Donaggio also speaks Spanish.
So you have two guys who are both speaking Spanish,
not their native language, to each other, trying to figure
out the film cues and what kind of music you
want for each of these things, right, which is how
you get the music that you get in this particular.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: Okay, Before we get to final judgment, d I want
to talk about one thing that we've kind of not
covered yet.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The movie posters for both of these movies are fantastic,
like some of the best ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in America and WORLF in London, you have the
two boys in the dark looking over their shoulder, looking
at the moon. They're scared. It's dark, it's scary.
Speaker 3: There's no wolf. Nope, there's no cheesy.
Speaker 2: Wolf monster nothing though, just scared, beware of the moon,
right right, it's creepy. Yeah, the howling, you know, it's
one of those things in the old days. The posters
didn't necessarily have anything to do with the movie, huhs
had to catch your eye at the video store. Yeah,
Howling has a female figure hidden by like.
Speaker 1: Some sort of screen. It's like the movie screen.
Speaker 2: And it's like the movie screen, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And her fingers are tearing through.
Speaker 2: She's got broken fingernails. She's screaming.
Speaker 3: What is super effective?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah? What is it?
Speaker 3: I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: That caught my eye every time I passed it in
the movie theater or at the blockbuster. The better of
these two, I'm going with the Hewling.
Speaker 1: The Howling has the better pressure. Yeah. So I was
thinking about American Werewolf in London, and if you took
out the Wolf where you see the wolf for you know,
flash by at the very beginning, and you take out
the change scene, yes, I would be fascinated, Like this
could be just a crazy person, right, this could be
like we're really trying to figure out is he really
crazy or is he really a weir wolf? And obviously
with the title, you know what you're gonna get, sure,
but it's a very compelling movie even without what could
be its greatest scene. And that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: That is impressive. I see what you're saying there.
Speaker 1: And I also have to mention the two investigative detectives.
Oh my gosh, we didn't even talk about that. Comedy
Goal Comedy Gold. When he steps back, knocks the bedpans
over it, noisily, tries to stack them together again, and
the doctor is like, tell him I died? What? Tell
him I'm dead? Comedy Gold.
Speaker 2: The guy who's the clumsy cop and clearly the less
experienced cop, he's the better cop because he knows something's
not right right, and the other guy keeps shushing. What
are you suggesting the entire village can talk to the story. No, precisely.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think we've combed these movies thoroughly. Yes, there's
a lot of wolf hair in my comb. Okay, I
think it's time to say final judgment.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go find you go first.
Speaker 2: Okay, first of all, I love creature feature. Okay, I'm
not so much a slasher movie, but the monster movies
I really love those. Okay, there's a couple of problems
that I have with both of these movies. The howling
you know that you got the worst police work of
all time at the beginning, the idea that this reporter
is going to go meet with a serial killer and
a porn shop. It's just a terrible idea, like, no
freaking way that would ever happen. And then her transformation
on screen is supposed to be super impactful and it's
weird and it's it's supposed to be shocking, and it is,
but it would have been better if she had turned
into a wolf, you know, instead of an ewok right, Okay,
so set that aside.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: American Worlf in London.
Speaker 2: Is a super high paced, very slick, fun monster movie.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: My only problem with it, and it's I think a
big problem. Yeah, there's no mention of silver bullets or fire.
All it is is just the police just shoot this.
Speaker 1: Thing, right, Well they mentioned it, what they mentioned silver
bullets when they talk to him in the porn theater
about killing himself. He's like, don't have to have a
silver bullet, and he's like, come on, David, be real
for a minute while he's talking to two people, right,
that's a ridiculous sireny.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, so for me, this is a supernatural curse
that this man is dealing with. He has a supernatural transformation.
The idea that silver would have some sort of supernatural
effect on it is not too far fetched for me.
If you just have a bearer running around your neighborhood
once a month, would you not just go get your
rifle and go shoot it? Right? So I wish that
they had made a deal about you know, silver bullets. Okay,
so set that aside. Other than that, both of these
movies are both fun, thrilling, exciting. The transformation effects are awesome,
and then settling. I think American Werewolf is more fun.
I find the characters more lovable. I basically fall in
love with Nurse Price every time I watch American Wolf
in London. Sure, there's no extra, it's all killer, no filler.
I am slamming the football down. American Worlf in London
is the best of these two movies.
Speaker 1: Understand, I understand be objectively talking about the two stories
that we have. Yes, if you look at just story
with American Werewolf in London, you have a guy who
gets bitten by a wolf that's a werewolf, who then
turns into a wolf and then gets killed. Yes, and
there's a love interest in that. Sure, And that's the
whole movie. That's the whole story. Look, it's not particularly complex. Okay,
the howling you have what appears to be a serial
killer on the loose who then attacks a woman who
can't remember things, who then has to go to a
colony of patients who in all respects appear to be
there to try to help. She's talking to the psychiatrist
that try to help, and investigation is going on about
this weird serial killer and why nobody knows what's going
on with them. And then suddenly at the end of
the movie, after you've had some reveals about these people
being wolfman, you realize, oh my gosh, the entire colony
that she's been at are all where wolves who are
like forming this army to go out and be a
part of the world. That's a much more compelling story.
That story is awesome, But here's the problem. They had
about a million dollars to make that story. That's right.
They had ten million dollars to make American Wear Wolf
in London, which was not as interesting of a story.
John Sales did a pretty good job with that script. Yeah,
but it wasn't as well told as the simpler story.
It wasn't as funny, it wasn't as well acted, and
you can see the production value that comes through. And
then the final nail in the coffin for The Howling.
Even though in April it was the greatest change scene
you'd ever seen in your life. Come August we had
Rick Baker's change scene that he had been preparing for
for a decade, and it blew the doors off of
The Howling. And so sorry the Howling. You are a
fantastic movie for a million dollar movie, one of the best.
It's amazing that forty years later, forty years later, we're
still talking about this. Ye, that's right, but it can't
compare to what John Landis gave us. And I think,
among the other things that I've already discussed, the key
is it's funnier. And I don't know why the studios
had such an issue, but when you have things as
shocking as what's going on with the murders and the guns,
and the demons and the wolves and all of these things,
you have to juxtapose that with laugh moments, right, it
has to be funny at some points, and John Landis
knew how to be funny. It was great. I have
to agree with you, American We're Wolf in London wins
the day. But you've got to give kudos to the
Howling for doing what it did with such a low budget.
Speaker 2: Awesome. I totally agree.
Speaker 3: Okay, Dean.
Speaker 2: This week on our Surely showcase, my good friend Dave Dolphin,
who is on YouTube, is a really gifted video producer,
is super funny. He comes up with these videos. I
think he's calling it documenting my midlife crisis. When we
started this podcast, we called a couple of people, but
he was my first call.
Speaker 1: I took him to lunch.
Speaker 2: He gave me some advice on how to run a podcast,
so I'm super grateful for him. But he wanted to
weigh in on the Michael Jackson thriller versus Michael Jackson Bad.
That's episode one and two that we did a long
time ago, almost two years ago, and here's what he
had to say.
Speaker 4: Hey, longtime listener, first time caller to the show, thank
you so much for having me on. I love what
you guys are doing, and especially as someone who is
in his late forties in documenting his midlife crisis in
a very public way on YouTube. Part of that whole
process is nostalogia and looking back on previous seasons in
our life. If there's ever an artist in a couple
of albums that just could be the pinnacle of that
idea of thinking back fondly of the eighties. It's got
to be Michael Jackson and the Thriller record and Bad Like.
When Thriller came out, I was eight, and so I
was just starting to experience pop music and understand what
it was and enjoying it and starting to have opinions
on what songs I like versus other songs that I
didn't like, and listening to the radio and knowing the lyrics,
and so as I'm experiencing all of this, I remember
the guy coming to the house to install cable television,
and now there's this thing called MTV that I cannot
only listen to these artists that I'm experiencing, but I
can also see them and experience it in that way.
I remember my buddy from down the street saying, Hey,
do you want to come over? I have the entire
fifteen minute Thriller video recorded on BHS tape and we
can watch that. I remember this album cover. My parents
had a really large record collection, and they would play
music in the house quite a bit, and this was
definitely a staple of that. And so I remember, like
these songs being played in the house and just seeing
the album cover and everything about this record. There's so
many emotional connections in my life life to this record
that even forty years later, are still there there. They'll
be with me until the day I die. Now fast
forward to Bad, and I'm in middle school, and I
remember a lot of these songs as I go through
the track listing and I listened to it all. I
remember it's like, Okay, Dirty Diana, I remember that sweet Criminal, Bad,
the way make me feel. I remember all these songs,
but not in the same way that I did for Thriller.
Thriller was just creating magic. It was. There were so
many things happening in the early eighties in terms of
like where pop music was going and some different influences
that are coming in. You add in this new technology
with drum machines and synthesizers and all of that, plus
Michael Jackson coming off the Jacksons and trying to kind
of be his own person. Thriller was about creating magic,
and then Bad was as the career had just catapulted.
Bad was about maintaining magic, and those are two separate things.
In terms of did Bad maintain the magic. Did it
continue to push his career forward as a creative, as
a performer, as a music icon. I think it did that,
But you think about where he was, like where he
was pushing things forwards. The risks that he was taking
as a creative as a performer had more to do
I think with like music videos, and he was pushing
that forward instead of just being the band performing the
song live. How can this be like a fully produced
movie with a story in all this where my song
is the soundtrack to this movie. He was also really
trying to establish himself as like this sex symbol in
just his place as a music icon in the industry.
And I don't know if that necessarily landed the way
that he wanted to. I mean, you can sing I'm bad,
I'm bad, you know it as many times as you want.
I don't see you as bad. Like you're not the
bad guy, You're the groovy guy. Can you be a
groovy guy? Can you be okay with just being the
groovy guy? Let Billie Eilish be the bad guy. That's
more believable. I don't think it landed, but I do
applaud him for taking those risks. But when it comes
to the album, I think the album was more of
the foundation to maintain that magic so he could push
these other things forward. You know, I have teenagers, and
so they keep me up to speed on like today's
music and a lot of things that's happening in pop
music today with Olivia Rodrigo and The Weekend and Charlie Pooth.
I love where pop music is right now. But if
we're in the car and we're listening to eighties on
eight and a song from Thriller comes on, if they
hear beat It or I want to be starting something,
or Billy Jean or Thriller, like they know these songs,
they sing along beat They weren't even around when it
first came out, and they have these emotional ties to
this record. I don't know if they could name one
song off the Bad record. There's a difference between creating
magic and maintaining magic, and it's no small feat to
maintain the magic after a record like Thriller. But you
just can't ignore the powerhouse that is Thriller. So I
think if this is the battle between Michael Jackson's Thriller
and Michael Jackson's Bad, I think that Thriller wins this one.
Speaker 1: Yes, I feel vindicated. He's all right, You're all wrong
as usual. He's a music guy and he votes Thriller
for the same reasons that I vote Thriller. Although I
will say this, my kids are probably more familiar with
the songs off of Bad than they are off of Thriller,
just because of my bad parenting. But he's still right.
Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting. Yeah, Dave was a radio DJ, so
he knows music. He plays in bands. He's a very
gifted musician. But we're not arguing which album had more
cultural impact. Thriller wins the day on that. I'm just saying,
song for song the better album Bad.
Speaker 1: You call me crazy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dave too.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you.
Speaker 3: Very much man. We really owe you a lot.
Speaker 2: Thanks for all your advice and your help and and
all that, and thanks for weighing in today. Another vote
for Michael Jackson's Thriller album.
Speaker 1: Be sure and go check those episodes out, and if
you haven't hit the subscribe button yet, if you haven't
hit that follow button yet, be sure to do that
so that you get all of our future episodes as well.
Thank you all so much for joining us. We couldn't
do it without.
Speaker 2: You awesome, all right, Shirley Fans. That's where we come
down on American worlf in London versus the Howling.
Speaker 1: A mom