Horror Queen

Christina Ricci as a werewolf?

PLOT

Ellie works for a late night talk show host, while also trying to raise her geeky teenage brother Jimmy after their parents die. Shannon Elizabeth (no clue if her character has a name) goes to a psychic who sees blood, but she blows the lady off. Later that night, she’s attacked by a wolf and when Ellie and Jimmy attempts to help her, they’re both bitten too. Jimmy realizes right away that they’re now werewolves, but Ellie thinks he’s crazy. Instead she focuses on her boyfriend Jake who seems to be pulling away instead of the fact that she craves blood, has an enhanced sense of smell, their dog won’t come near them and her brother wakes up naked in the woods. She also has to contend with Joanie, the publicist for Scott Baio who just won’t leave her alone.

TRIVIA

The original movie was rated R, but Wes Craven was forced to cut it down to a PG-13 rating.

Actors who were originally cast and dropped out because of script problems and filming delays included Corey Feldman, Mandy More, Omar Epps, Skeet Ulrich and Illeana Douglas.

THOUGHTS

Sue me, but I actually kind of like this movie. I saw it a long time ago when I went on a trip with my then boyfriend and he had to attend a business meeting, leaving me with free HBO and little else. I actually only saw the ending, but then caught it later that night and made my horror movie hating other half sit through the whole thing. He drooled over Ricci the whole time, but I was drooling over Josh Jackson so it all evened out.

The movie actually has a few good scenes such as Ricci sucking Craig Kilbourne’s finger and the look he gives her is excellent. Plus you have Judy Greer who is great as the uptight blonde bitch who once slept with Ellie’s boyfriend and now just wants to get Baio on television. “Do you know who I had to blow to get you in here?” she asks Baio when he complains about being stuck at the party. His response, “Who do I have to blow to get out of here?” is just as funny. This movie may not go down in history as one of Craven’s best, but I still like it for some reason.

Ee gads.

PLOT

So Marie is losing her mind, seeing visions and all that jazz. Since she’s a pretty famous author, her husband Richard decides that they should escape the big city of L.A. and head off to a small town in the middle of nowhere. Once there, she starts seeing even more visions and hearing wild wolves running through the woods. Richard won’t listen to her, but a former nun looking for information on dead friend does believe her. The two women set out to prove that something odd really is going on.

TRIVIA

Apparently this movie and the original were based on the book The Howling and this one more closely follows the book.

THOUGHTS

I have a friend who went through a hardcore horror movie fan a few years ago and was also a huge fan of “The Pretender”. So I can’t believe that I saw this movie until now. Now that I have, I want the $4 I paid to buy it back. I figured that this movie would be fairly cheesy and good fun, but it wasn’t even that. It was annoying and too long, despite the fact that it’s less than 100 minutes long. The only “joy” I got out of it was the fact that Michael T. Weiss from “The Pretender” still looks as good as he does now, despite having a pretty serious mullet. Usually I try to find something good about a movie, just hard to find one of those in this one. Why are there so many horrible werewolf movies?

The fate of one race lies in the hands of one little boy.