{"id":4365,"date":"2024-10-05T21:41:32","date_gmt":"2024-10-05T21:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4365"},"modified":"2024-10-13T23:39:30","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T03:39:30","slug":"teen-wolf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/05\/teen-wolf\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen Wolf"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Teen Wolf<\/strong> (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Atlantic\/Comedy-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, innuendo, teen partying, drinking and drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Rod Daniel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Miles Goodman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Tim Suhrstedt\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 23, 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Michael J. Fox, James Hampton, Susan Ursitti, Jerry Levine, Matt Adler, Lorie Griffin, James MacKrell, Mark Arnold, Jay Tarses, Mark Holton, Scott Paulin, Elizabeth Gorcey, Melanie Manos, Doug Savant, Charles Zucker.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $33M (US)\/$80M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0I remember liking Teen Wolf<\/strong> more than I did when I rewatched it this past weekend. Of course, I was still in my teens the last time I watched it. Now it\u2019s mediocre at best. An 80s update of I Was a Teenage Werewolf, it stars Michael J. Fox as the titular lycanthrope. At the time, the actor was riding high on the success of both a popular sitcom (Family Ties) and the summer\u2019s number one movie (Back to the Future). It was originally supposed to come out in the spring, but the studio, correctly predicting that Back to the Future would be a huge hit, moved it to late August to capitalize on Fox\u2019s increased popularity. $33 million may not seem like much now, but back then it was a nice chunk of change for a dumb PG teen comedy like Teen Wolf<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Fox plays Scott Howard, a 17YO high school student who\u2019s average in almost every way. He works in his father\u2019s hardware store. He\u2019s a member of his school\u2019s losing basketball team. He has a crush on the hottest girl in school Pamela (Griffin, Cheerleader Camp), a stuck-up you-know-what who won\u2019t say two words to him. While he\u2019s crushing on her, he doesn\u2019t notice his best friend since childhood, a sweet girl named Boof (Ursitti, Zapped!), has a thing for him. He spends most of his time goofing around with his best friends Stiles (Levine, Iron Eagle) and Lewis (Adler, North Shore).<\/p>\n

\u00a0One day, all of a sudden, Scott starts undergoing certain changes. He finds long hairs on his chest. His voice deepens to a growl. His fingernails turn into claws. His eyes glow red when angered. Then he grows hair all over. It\u2019s not puberty, but lycanthropy which Dad (Hampton, Hangar 18) explains runs in the family but sometimes \u201cskips a generation\u201d. It obviously hasn\u2019t with Scott. Afraid of what others will think at first, his attitude changes when he transforms during a game and leads his team to their first win in three years. With his newfound b-ball skills, he becomes instantly popular among his classmates as \u201cWolf Fever\u201d sweeps the school. Naturally, he lets it go to his head.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Rod Daniel (Like Father, Like Son), Teen Wolf<\/strong> follows the same plot trajectory as every teen comedy dealing with an average kid\u2019s brush with popularity. All of it is absolutely predictable right down the lessons about humility and being true to yourself. Never once does it stray from formula. Take the romantic conflict. We know it\u2019s not going to go down how Scott wants it too with Pamela. She doesn\u2019t pay attention to him until he\u2019s the wolf. Even then, she\u2019s still mean and selfish. Their one date is actually a ploy to make her psycho boyfriend Mick (Arnold, Santa Barbara) jealous. On the other hand, Boof sends out every signal imaginable and Scott doesn\u2019t get it until it\u2019s almost too late. Between the two, even a blind person can see who Scott should be with. Don\u2019t even get me started on the big game at the end. You know how these things normally go, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Predictability is NOT the main problem with Teen Wolf<\/strong>. No, that would be its failure to have fun with its central premise. What makes An American Werewolf in London work so well is how it goofs on clich\u00e9s of the werewolf genre- e.g. silver bullets, full moons, surviving an attack, etc. In Teen Wolf<\/strong>, such things are mentioned only briefly in one scene and never expounded on. Instead, they\u2019re cast aside in favor of the things we expect from teen comedies without elements of horror.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are a few bright spots scattered throughout the movie\u2019s 91 minutes. It has a better than average cast of actors too old to pass as high school students. Except for Fox, he was eternally young back then. He looked like a teen until he was close to 30. In any event, he\u2019s a good leading guy. Hampton has some nice moments as a father who really does understand. He too is a werewolf, one with a history with the vice principal (MacKrell, The Howling) who\u2019s been giving Scott a hard time for personal reasons. Ursitti, who left acting in \u201997, is endearing as a nice girl next door type. Levine, doing his best Judd Nelson impression, has his moments as Stiles, always with a scheme up his sleeve. I wish they had done more with Adler\u2019s character; we never really get to know the guy. He seems nice.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll also faintly praise Teen Wolf<\/strong> for the transformation scene. It\u2019s reminiscent of Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man. Other than that, there\u2019s nothing exceptional about Teen Wolf<\/strong>. I neither like nor hate it. It\u2019s watchable, but hardly memorable. It won\u2019t have you howling with laughter or in pain. It\u2019s just there and only barely.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teen Wolf (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Atlantic\/Comedy-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, innuendo, teen partying, drinking and drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Rod Daniel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Miles Goodman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Tim Suhrstedt\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 23, 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Michael J. Fox, James Hampton, Susan Ursitti, Jerry Levine, Matt Adler, Lorie Griffin, James MacKrell, Mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Teen-Wolf-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5335,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4365\/revisions\/5335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}