Why does Teen Wolf get a ‘retrospective’ and not one of the many other great films I adore? Well, ‘why not’ I reply? I must have seen this film (realistically) at least 400 times, I kid you not. The 80’s was a magical time for movie making, ideas were a plenty, some great, some really, really bad. The ascent of home viewing with VHS and Betamax allowed the ‘entertainment craving’ public the ability to watch many of these movies at a relatively low price. I had two local video stores in the 80s and 90s, Video City II and Bobby’s. Well, Bobby’s wasn’t actually a video shop, it was a local fruit and veg store that rented videos upstairs. Now, video City II was very strict about film ratings and renting to underage customers, whereas the guy in Bobby’s didn’t care, he’d rent you anything. As an 8 year old in 1991 I once walked out with A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (Criminally underrated by the way).
Anyway, on to Teen Wolf. It was in Bobby’s that I first laid eyes on Michael J. Fox holding open is red and yellow high school jacket (even though in the film his high school jacket is blue and yellow) revealing the red Teen Wolf logo on a white tee shirt. I was 6 years old at this point and knew J. Fox from Back to the Future. If memory serves me right, I was there with my older brother Tony and a friend or two. They rented Commando which was an 18 certificate by the way!! I went home and watched Teen Wolf straight away. Hooked.
I’d continue to rent TW from Bobby’s throughout my child until one day it was on T.V and I was able to record it!!! Hallelujah. By the time I was about 8 or 9 years old I developed a love for basketball, Jordan was at the height of his powers and W.H Smith had started building up a decent collection of basketball videos. So when it came to playing basketball in school (very, very rarely) or in the backyard (every day) I was either, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird or Scott Howard, J. Fox’s character in Teen Wolf.
So then, the actual film itself. It’s a film that could only be made in the 80s, a decade where anything was possible on the silver screen, Terminator, Ghostbusters and Howard the Duck! Little bit of history about the movie, it was actually filmed before Back to the Future but it’s release was held up to see how well BTTF was received. If it was a hit, then ‘bang’ Atlantic had the next hit film with Michael J. Fox ready to go. BTTF was released in the States on 3rd July 1985 to rave reviews and big box office numbers, $381million worldwide. Seven weeks later Teen Wolf was released and went straight to number 2 behind BTTF. The studio plan had worked. Teen Wolf brought in $33million worldwide on a budget of $1.2million. However, the film wasn’t received well by the critics at the time and decades later the website ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ doesn’t change that narrative. Thirty-two critics on that site have rated the film at 25 out of 100. Vincent Canby of the New York Times in 1985 called it “Aggressively boring” and added “The film is overacted by everybody except Mr Fox, who is seen to far better advantage in Back to the Future.” My response to the haters, fuck you!!
The film opens with a shot of bright light hanging from a school gymnasium, this is meant to represent a full moon. Scott is standing on the free-throw line of his High School’s basketball court, sweat dripping from his brow, his yellow jersey bearing the name ‘Beavers’ and the number 42 and hangs loosely from his small frame. He misses. Words of encouragement from the bleachers and the coach asking if he can forfeit the game to beat the 5 o’clock traffic can then be heard. Life sucks for young Mr Howard at the point we are introduced to him, he’s not satisfied with his basketball abilities, his job in his father’s hardware store or the fact the girl he likes is going out with somebody else. My favourite scene in the entire film comes shortly after the opening basketball scene and here we get fully introduced to Coach Bobby Finstock, played by the fantastic Jay Tarses. He didn’t do much in the way of acting before or after Teen Wolf, but he did star along Fox in 2 episodes of Family Ties in 1982 and 1983. He also has writing credits for Muppets Take Manhattan and Short Circuit. In this scene we see Scott telling Coach Finstock that he’s thinking about quitting the team, to which we get a fantastic monologue from Coach Finstock. In a round-about but hysterical way he sort of puts Scott in his place by shooting down his problems as meaningless teenage woes compared to his struggles with the IRS. Sorry, forgot to mention, the movie is set in Nebraska although filmed in California. Scott’s house is also the same house used in BTTF for the George McFly ‘peeping tom’ scene.
As well as Bobby Finstock, the remaining characters are:
Boof (Susan Ursitti) plays Scott’s childhood friend and somewhat ‘moral compass’ in parts
Harold Howard (James Hampton) as Scott’s Dad
Pamela Wells (Lorie Griffin) plays Scott’s ‘crush’. Lorie was probably a lot of people’s first crush.
Mr Rusty Thorne (James MacKrell) is the semi-villain shall we say as he has a previous ‘beef’ with Harold. He had already appeared in one werewolf film, 1981’s The Howling. He played a reporter called Lew Landers, a role he reprised in Gremlins.
Mick (Mark Arnold) is the actual villain, Scott’s basketball nemesis and boyfriend of Pamela. He’s about 25 but still goes to high school. Not the same one as Scott.
Chubby (Mark Holton) is a great side character and basketball team-mate. Adds some decent parts to the film.
Quick mention to a character named Brad. He’s on the basketball team but isn’t impressed with Scott the wolf. He is played by Doug Savant who had a decent career having starred in Desperate Housewives as Tom Scavo for 175 episodes.
I have left one person out from above on purpose as I feel he needs his own section. That person is Stiles played by the amazing Jerry Levine. Stiles is Scott’s best friend and owner of some awesome tee shirts. The majority of comedic hits in the film come from Stiles whilst he tries to turn ‘The Teen Wolf’ into a local hero and make a few dollars along the way. He’s the party king, the life of all teenage shindigs and master of van surfing. Scott loves and trusts him so much that he’s the first person he announces his ‘wolf’ side to. Stiles simply replies by saying ‘look at you, you’re beautiful’. Yes he is Stiles, yes he is.
Scott is first brought to the attention of his wolf persona during the opening scene, he tussles with Mick for the ball and an intense growl can be heard, Mick backs off. He then finds a very long hair growing on his chest when he gets out of the showers following the game. The next time he’s made aware is later the same day when he hears a kid blowing a dog whistle in his dad’s hardware store. It took me years to figure out that during this scene, Harold is actually talking about Scott’s reaction to the whistle and not about the basketball score when he say’s ‘Don’t take it personally, it’s all part of growing up.’ As we later find out Harold is also a wolf so would have heard the dog whistle as well. The basketball score was 71-12 to the Dragons by the way. Before Scott’s full transformation we see the wolf slowly creeping out: when he’s driving the van with Stiles surfing on top (pointy ears), at the liquor store when asking for a keg of beer (red eyes) and at the party when he and Boof are locked in a closet as part of one of Stiles’ party games (claws). The actual transformation scene is so well done for the time, taking great inspiration from American Werewolf in London. It’s here that we find out about Scott’s family secret and Howard’s hope that it would ‘skip a generation’.
Before I go on, I need to go back to the scene were Scott tells Stiles that he’s a wolf. The scene opens with Stiles looking for his brother’s ‘stash’. Now, my best mate had thought for years (as a kid) that Stiles was looking for his brother’s ‘tash’, that’s right, a fake moustache!!! Whenever I watch the film I always have a little giggle about it. The friend I’m talking about is the only other person I know that loves this film as much me. We still, to this day randomly text each other with TW quotes and gifs. We know this film word for word.
Jump forward a week and we see Scott playing another basketball game against the Cadets. During the game Scott has a free-throw and uses the wolf to calm his nerves. He scores. Shortly after, there’s a pile up for the ball with Scott at the bottom. Enter the wolf!!! Scott walks backwards slowly to the edge of the court, bouncing the ball in between in his legs with ease. He lets out a scream and runs full force to the opposition’s net and lays down a massive slam dunk before picking up the ball, spinning it on his finger and passing it back to the referee. Obviously the basketball playing, slam dunking wolf is not played by Michael J.Fox (close ups aside) but by Jeff Glosser a student at Loyola Marymount University. I mean Michael J. Fox is only 5’4”!!
As the film plays out we see Scott struggle to come to grips with his new found fame and basketball ability. He finally starts dating Pamela, much to the disgust of Mick who claims he killed Scott’s mum when he found her snooping around the chickens in his back yard. His cousin Lewis is not completely enamoured either. The other person not impressed with Scott is Rusty Thorne. At some point in the past, Howard has a run in with Rusty about Howard being a wolf. This leads him to automatically dislike Scott way before he becomes he presents himself as one. This is evidenced in the scene when Scott leaves the school dance after being intimidated by Mick and lashing out as the wolf.
This leads Scott to rethink who or what he is. So much so he turns up for the basketball final late and not as the wolf. The crowd are not happy. However, he’s learned to control the wolf and use the positive affects to enhance himself without getting lost in the charade. He persuades the team to continue playing. What follows is prime 80s cheese and I love it! Full on ‘underdog comes good’ story with a superb bit of 80s pop rock for effect (more on that in a moment). Following the conclusion of the basketball game we get a wide shot of the crowd. Just above Howard’s head in the bleachers there is a guy standing with his ‘manhood’ out, you see it briefly before he starts tucking himself back in and doing his zip.
Is Teen Wolf a masterpiece? Absolutely not. Was it meant to be? Hell no. What it is, is a teenage coming of age, high school romp where the main character can change into a wolf for Christ’s sake. It’s a blast and it makes you feel good. Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman pitched the idea in 10 minutes and we’re given 3 weeks to write a script. Following Teen Wolf the next film they worked on was Commando. Yes, the film that my brother and his friends rented at the same time I first rented Teen Wolf, spooky. Loeb would go on to be a source of satisfaction for me away from movies. Later in his career he became a writer for DC Comics. He penned some notable Batman titles (Hush and The Long Halloween) before switching over and writing for Marvel. In 2010 he was appointed Vice President for Marvel Studios newly formed arm, Marvel Television.
Before I wrap this up I need to talk about the soundtrack. It’s beautifully awful but yet simply stunning at the same time. The score was composed by Miles Goodman. He does a really good job of building the suspense, building and dripping the music when required. He went on to write the scores for Little Shop of Horrors, What About Bob?, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Sister Act 2. The main songs used throughout the film are: Flesh on Fire by James House, Big Bad Wolf by the Wolf Sisters (during the school dance where Scott leads them all in doing the wolf dance), Win in the End by Mark Safan and finished off with Shooting for the Moon by Amy Holland. As I mentioned earlier, the final game is played out to a pop/rock (un)classic, Win in the End. It has a great drive and fantastic lyrics, it just fits the scene perfectly. For years and I mean years, I tried to track down a copy of the soundtrack. A couple came up on EBay in the early 00s but they were well out of price range. I’d have to wait until 2019 to finally own a copy. I managed to win a bid on EBay for a CD at a decent price. Granted, it’s only a German reissue, but it does have a number of songs from Teen Wolf Too. Terrible sequel with Jason Bateman, decent tunes. The soundtrack can now be found on YouTube if you want to broaden your musical horizons.
So there we have it, my rambling thoughts about Teen Wolf. This text (and maybe the film) may not mean much to anybody else but to me it was a great bit of therapy to just write about something that helped shape a huge part of who I am back in my childhood years. My Hollywood hero has always been Michael J. Fox and it pains me to see him suffer with Parkinson’s disease. I hope he keeps on fighting the good fight and helps find a cure or suitable treatment for it. It’s funny, he absolutely hates Teen Wolf!!!
Thanks for reading, Ben
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