Day three, and we're still hangin' in the 1980s. One of the more bizarre major-studio releases of the decade, Wolfen (1981) stars Albert Finney and Gregory Hines as a New York City detective/pathologist pair investigating a series of murders that appear to have been perpetrated by some kind of animal. Not to give too much away, it turns out that a mysterious race of ancient, super-intelligent wolves who live in the abandoned wastelands of the South Bronx are killing businessmen who are planning an urban reclamation project in the wolves' neighborhood. Yeah. Oh and a bunch of Native American construction workers (including Edward James Olmos) who hang out atop skyscrapers and might be shapeshifters are also involved somehow.
The trailer doesn't do the film's knotty plot and literate screenplay justice (and according to Roger Ebert's original review, this is intentional). But it does allow you to see the cool in-camera digital effect they used to indicate the wolves' POV. I've heard conflicting stories about this, but my understanding is that this was among the first films ever to use computer-generated visual effects. In addition, the film was largely shot among actual abandoned neighborhoods in the South Bronx, and the borough's level of sheer devastation has to be seen to be believed. In fact, the creepiest thing about Wolfen is its depiction of the eerily abandoned nocturnal New York of the early 1980s. Here's a representative clip (in German)...
1981 was a banner year for wolf movies, with The Howling and An American Werewolf in London rounding out what has proved to be a classic threesome, but Wolfen remains the least-known of the bunch. That's a shame, and I strongly urge you to redress this oversight as soon as you can. Tune in tomorrow, as the wolf genre storms into the twenty-first century.
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