Wolfen

By the very nature of the medium, the written word delivers a more personal, detailed and satisfying version of the same story adapted into a film. Which is just a fancy way of restating the common expression, “The book is almost always better than the movie.” You can find a few agreed upon exceptions (The Godfather, Jaws, 2001), but you’ll rarely ever hear Wolfen (1981) brought up in the same conversation. Why? Because adapting a tattered horror paperback into a Hollywood thriller isn’t the sort of accomplishment that attracts much attention. I’m here to argue otherwise.

Director Michael Wadleigh’s adaptation of Whitley Strieber’s 1978 novel isn’t just a little better; it’s a massive structural improvement on every level. Sharing the central idea of an ancient race of super-intelligent wolves struggling to survive in modern New York City, the film proceeds to use little else from the story besides a few character names. Instead, Wadleigh widens the scope to take on global terrorism, urban expansion and man’s general disconnect from the natural world, represented in the film by a tribe of Lenape Indians who work on the city’s “high steel” and worship these wolf deities as the original “Native Americans.”

Albert Finney plays Dewey Wilson, one of that rare breed of sloppy NYC detectives who get away with sleeping late and showering infrequently because they’re so damn good at their jobs. He’s paired with a female Fed (Diane Venora) to investigate the murder of a high-powered Wall Street investor, Christopher Van der Veer, and his wife, ripped to shreds in a supposed animal attack in Battery Park. Several terrorist groups take credit, but Dewey and the eccentric chief coroner (Gregory Hines) sense there’s something more suspicious at work…perhaps even supernatural.

Using the newly-minted Steadicam technology, the film uses striking heat-vision POV shots from the Wolfen themselves as they stalk their prey in the slums, a hunting ground that was targeted for a massive construction project by the now deceased Van der Veer. Wisely keeping the creatures themselves off-screen for the majority of the running time (insert shots of actual wolves were added later to by the studio to add some scares and gore), Wadleigh manages to earn them sympathy as an endangered species…despite the fact that their body count is on the rise.

Hines adds some desperately needed humor to the film and memorable character actor Tom Noonan (Manhunter) pops up as a quirky zoologist who becomes a victim of his own curiosity. From Finney on down, all the performers in Wolfen take the material seriously, even young Edward James Olmos who’s forced to howl at the moon naked in a display of tribal traditions. The scares, when they come, are subtle, much like a Val Lewton film. And Wadleigh makes incredible use of actual NYC locations that look like something out of a third world war zone. Wolfen has a depth and texture that Strieber’s novel doesn’t even hint at.

Which isn’t to say it’s a perfect film. As a Hollywood thriller, it follows an invisible flow chart of that includes jump scares and some questionable choices designed to put characters in danger (Wadleigh was actually removed from the picture during the editing process). And the terrorism angle, designed as a red herring to put the Wolfen’s existence into question, is completely canceled out by the film’s marketing…which suggests a werewolf movie along the lines of Joe Dante’s The Howling or John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. Wolfen couldn’t be more different than those films. It’s not necessarily better, but it’s an exciting, unpredictable, political-minded, monster-on-the-loose mystery…and how many of those can you count on one hand?

Warner Brothers’ original DVD looked great but had a sync sound issues that was annoying at best…and practically unwatchable once you knew it was there. Surprising everyone with a new hi-def Blu-ray release from the Warner Archive, the film is still bereft of the long rumored Wadleigh commentary (which was listed on the original DVD but not included), yet looks so beautiful in 1080p all sins are forgiven.