"You can't tame what's meant to be wild, doc. It just ain't natural."
THE HOWLING is my favorite werewolf movie of all time. And while I know it's a classic, it's one that a lot of people seeing it for the first time today tend to not gel with or even outright hate. I get that, because most werewolf films have a fairly standard structure that this one totally avoids.
In THE HOWLING, a reporter tracking a serial killer blacks out over the circumstances of witnessing the killer's death and to help her heal from her trauma, is sent to a secluded colony that turns out to actually be a cult of werewolves. This is not the story of someone turning into a werewolf and struggling with their condition, it's not about that inner turmoil. The main character's husband has the "he got bit" story arc, but he adapts immediately, there's not a lot of struggle on his part.
Instead, this movie is much more about the boom of self-help gurus around that era, the cult mentality, and the suppression of "animal instincts." That, peppered with some seasoning of the media's relationship to violence and those intertwined themes of repressing/indulging one's violent nature. It's also, in a way, ROSEMARY'S BABY with werewolves. Nobody is on Karen's side, everyone is lying to her, nobody has her best interest at heart. This is also fascinating for being one of the most iconic werewolf movies ever despite being one that breaks all the rules (as well as establishing some). No full moons, the werewolves can transform whenever they want, and instead of looking like a very hairy man, this really cemented the upright, snarling, wolf-headed humanoid monster in pop culture. These traditions are subverted in a very tongue-in-cheek way similar to what SCREAM would do over a decade later. The practical FX are astonishing & sometimes nightmarish and Marsha Quist is one of the greatest femme fatales to ever grace the genre.