Speaker 1: This is Brian Moore. You listen to the Shirly you
Can't Be Serious podcast Party on de and Party on Jason.
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. That's right, that's right.
Just don't call me a meat loaf. Okay, all right, everybody,
we are back with part two of The Howling versus
American Werewolf in London forty years old. This year's good
part of our Halloween October spectacular. Can't wait to jump
back into this.
Speaker 2: These two movies are spectacular. I love both of these movies.
American Werewolf in London versus The Howling.
Speaker 1: Here we go. 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, We come in on that right, 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 investigation
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, Is
that right? Yes? Okay, yeah, I didn't realize that. Ye
who's like eating Yeah, eatings never bothered me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is like 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 knows the serial killer, right, and where's she going?
I'm not sure did she turned this which way? 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 were wolf 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. Yes, right, his voice changes, 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.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: 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 all werewolves, right, that is
the true big reveal at the end. Even the kindly
old sheriff Slim Pickens 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 wolf man. 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 escaped,
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 2: She turns into a kN e 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 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Her friend Terry gets attacked by werewolf. 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.
Speaker 1: Glove a little bit. Right. We find out later.
Speaker 2: Who actually attacked her because he's missing his hand. Right later,
they all get trapped in a barn so that you
can either kill him by silver bullets.
Speaker 1: Or 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.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, crap, crap, silver bullets. 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 were Wolf in London, right
comes out six months later. Okay, okay, So storyline for
American were Wolf in London. 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,
right on the back of a sheep truck and they
get warnings the roads, avoid the moors to where them are.
Speaker 2: Those are the worst instructions with Dillian with the Werewolf
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.
Speaker 2: He calls it a pentangle, thank you pentangle. 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.
Speaker 1: Molly cru fans. 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.
Speaker 1: No food for you here, So it's to be murted.
Then then is terrible? Yeah, terrible.
Speaker 2: So then just walking on the moors and the wolf
chases him down and kills Jack Yep and bites David Yep.
Before the other one's guilt became so overwhelming they showed
up with guns, right and shot and.
Speaker 1: Killed the beast, 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 die, it's they they
know this guy. It's the 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 2: 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 to go
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 and 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,
it's 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. You're a werewolf. 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?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Am I just running through the woods naked and biting
the head off of Yes. 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 football. And that it's stomped
on it like it was an aunt. Okay, 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 ramp. 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 1: He was a wolf, right, He's something. Memory is fine.
So once he's once he's managed to get naked from
the zoo back over to the nurse's house. Got American
men 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 without 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't
bring himself to kill himself. 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 bob bob
dang and dang dang, dang, big bloom and yep.
Speaker 2: And that was one of Roderivert's big problems with this
movie is it abruptly ends, and man, it abruptly ends.
But I think it's really cool.
Speaker 1: 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 lapse 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 it's like Galaxy in and Galliga.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the first one, you're like, Wow, this
is great, until you get Gallagh and you're like whoa.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: 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. That's the
problem give for me, right, it's the eyes, Yeah, and
the bubbling flashes. It's weird. It's unsettling, right, it looks freaky. 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 3: 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 1: It's more like a bear, right.
Speaker 3: 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. They're all bypeds.
Speaker 2: I love the bear.
Speaker 1: You 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 puffet wolf's the head in the frame those scenes
that they got approval to do that full wolf standing up.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, I didn't know that. That's cool.
Speaker 1: 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 Baker talks about how
he's so inventive that he's like, you know, what if
we just put hair, poke it through the skin and
pull it through. So we pull it backwards. If we
reverse it, it'll look like there is growing.
Speaker 1: Brilliant.
Speaker 2: Looks great. And so they did a scene where David
KNATONI 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, and he stares
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. That's good.
Speaker 2: 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 this 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, and I've been running
and I go early in the morning to run, so
it's still dark outside, 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, and my face was really
good for that particular run. You're like, what is that?
Speaker 2: How did the Baskervill'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 do 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,
I ever 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.
Speaker 1: Of day or night, 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 incompact sated on the escalator. I'd be crawling my
butt up the stairs as fast as I could. And
then you're 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 time
from a long ways away, right. 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 for Tuna, who is like Jaba the HUDs
translator in the Return of the Jedi. For you Star
Wars fans out there, that to me.
Speaker 1: Is awesome, weak minded four Joba sleepy. You will let
me now, I will let you now, same guy. 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, Okay.
Speaker 1: 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 from London.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 1: They've created it for the Helling No what the Elephant Man.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Which had a young actor in it play the doctor,
mister Anthony Alkins.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the guy who played the Elephant Man was
John Hurt. He was almost hand ab Elector.
Speaker 1: And he was also the guy from Alien an Alien, Yeah,
that guy.
Speaker 3: 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 sounds great.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, just a couple of tidbits from The Howling. Okay.
Speaker 2: One of the scenes at the beginning of the movie,
Dee Wallace is in the porn shop. She was very
uncomfortable as an actress in that porn shop.
Speaker 1: Midwestern girl.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's it's not a set, it's an actual porn shop.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They used to rule.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I saw online. There's some question about which
wolf built, right, like who bit Bill?
Speaker 1: Huh?
Speaker 2: At the end of the movie, she gets bid by Bill,
her husband, right, so he bites her?
Speaker 1: But who bit built?
Speaker 2: Initially and the consensus is it's Marshall.
Speaker 1: That's good, that makes sense, right, and that's that she
new to be out there right.
Speaker 2: Right, And I don't think there's a right answer. 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 ins, 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's 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 were wolves. I'm like, okay, well,
who's the author? It was Thomas Nice. That is a
pretty deep How about this one?
Speaker 2: Ye, Dennis Diugan is watching a Looney Tunes episode in
the movie Yep, 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. That's right.
Speaker 2: 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 were wolves 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 masker.
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. Yep.
Speaker 2: Texas Chainsaw Masker based on serial killer ed Geen. The
characters of Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill were based on
Flashback to Our Last Time Psycho Side of the Lamps yep.
Speaker 1: And Roger Corman is the guy waiting outside of the
phone booth for her to get done with a phone
call to the very beginning of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, let's split back over to an American
world in London. I got a few mind blowing tidbits
for you over there.
Speaker 1: I'm ready. Well, that's a marvelous note for a moment
dance with the starve up. All right?
Speaker 2: So do you know the name of the porno that
was shown in the theater when he transforms?
Speaker 1: Of course you do. It's called see you Next Wednesday, See.
Speaker 2: 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 and the makeup is done
by Rick Baker. So Kids American World in London gave
us thriller. Michael Jackson was a big fan of this
movie absolutely, 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 cool okay, the music and an America worl from London.
Every song that you hear has the word moon in
the title in some way.
Speaker 1: Yeap. He had picked almost all of these songs back
in the early seventies when he had first written the 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 Creden's Clearwater Revivals, Bad Moon Rising,
and then Sam Cook sings blue Moon when he goes
to that change scene. 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 Douop version of Blue Moon
plays over the ending credits.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. He also went really strong after Cat
Stevens moon Shadow, I'm.
Speaker 1: Being followed by the moon Shadow Shadow.
Speaker 2: Shadow, and Kat Stevens, who had converted to Islam, said no,
you know, I don't like the subject matter of this movie. 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. Ye, Ghostbusters,
Animal House, all of those movies, right, 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. Cool.
Speaker 2: Here's something that I found. I had to dig deep
for this. David in the beginning scene when he's on
the moors with Jack, he's wearing a red puffy jacket.
That red jacket was selected for him because John Landis
wanted that to resemble red riding Hood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. Thank you a great one, Thanks you,
thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay, you ready for this tidbit?
Speaker 1: Uh? Okay.
Speaker 2: So in the movie, David is trying to get arrested
Solo throw him in jail so he'll protect people.
Speaker 1: From him wolfing 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. The guy's like, go away,
go away. He's like, what do I have to do
to get arrested?
Speaker 1: Around here?
Speaker 2: Queen Elizabeth is man, Prince Charles is a right, and
he's running around going crazy. So he makes a derogatory
comment about Prince Charles well during the closing credits, say
you see it. So during the closing credits, it says
liking Throat Films Limited wishes to extend its heartfelt congratulations
to Lady Diana and His Royal Highness, the Prince of
Wales on the occasion of their marriage July twenty ninth,
nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: How about that solid licenthrope licenthrop licenthrope comes That word
comes up in both movies. What is a licen throw?
It is a were wolf? There you go, nice. 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, okay, and they don't
speak Italian. Right, 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 that's good.
Speaker 2: Okay, Before we get the 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. There's
no wolf. Nope, there's no cheesy wolf monster nothing. Those
just scared beware of the moon, right right.
Speaker 1: It's creepy.
Speaker 2: 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. It's had to catch your
eye at the video store.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Howling has a female figure hidden by like some
sort of screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the movie screen. And it's like the
movie screen, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And her fingers are tearing through. She's got broken fingernails.
Speaker 1: She's screaming. What is super effective? Right? Yeah? What is it?
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. Yeap. 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 were 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. That is impressive.
I see what you're saying there. 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 noisily, tries to
stack them together again, and the doctor is like, tell
him I died? What Tell him I'm dead? Comedy goal.
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 that keeps shushing,
What are you suggesting the entire village can talk to
the story?
Speaker 1: No, precisely. Okay, I think we've combed these movies thoroughly. Yes,
there's a lot of wolf are in my comb Okay,
I think it's time to say final judgment. Okay, let's
go find you go first.
Speaker 2: Okay, first of all, I love creature features. Okay, I'm
not so much a slasher movie, but 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 did turn
into a wolf, you know, instead of an ewok.
Speaker 1: Right, okay, so set that aside. Okay.
Speaker 2: American Worlf in London is a super high paced, very slick.
Speaker 1: Fun monster movie. 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 thing.
Speaker 1: Right, Well they mentioned it, what they mentioned silver bullets
when they're talking 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 people, right, that's a
ridiculous sireny Right.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Go shoot it?
Speaker 2: 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 Worlf in London. Sure, there's no extra,
it's all killer, no filler. I am slamming the football down.
American World in London is the best of these two movies.
Speaker 1: Ok. I understand, I understand be objectively talking about the
two stories that we have. Yes, if you look at
just the 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.
Speaker 3: It's it.
Speaker 1: That's the whole story. Good. 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 we're 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 deck 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. Yeah, 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 3: Awesome.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Okay, Dean.
Speaker 2: This week on our Shirly Showcase, my good friend Dave Dolphin,
who is on YouTube's a really gifted video producers. 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. I took him to lunch. 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.
Speaker 3: See them and experience it in that way.
Speaker 4: 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 VHS tape and we
can watch that.
Speaker 3: I remember this album cover.
Speaker 4: 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 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.
Speaker 3: Thriller was just creating magic.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 3: Bad was about.
Speaker 4: 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 it.
Speaker 3: Just being the band performing the song live.
Speaker 4: How can this be like a fully produced movie with
a story and 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 the 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.
Speaker 3: You know, I have.
Speaker 4: 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 for Billy Jean or Thriller, like they know
these songs, they sing along, They weren't even around when
it first came out, and they have these emotional ties
to the 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.
Speaker 3: Wrong as usual.
Speaker 1: 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 his 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? Yeah, Dave too.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you very much man.
Speaker 1: 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 you.
Speaker 2: Awesome all right, Shirley fans, that's where we come down
on American World in London versus the Howling
Speaker 1: Mo