Wolfen 1981 Film Review- Okay

Wolfen (1981) Review

Wolfen from 1981- I say that this film is fair. It was based on a book by Whitley Striber who is best known for bringing us those grey aliens with the olive shaped black eyes in his book Communion, which he says was autobiographical. I think it’s a little bit of a coincidence that Striber was also a horror writer, the film the Hunger I think was also either written by him or based on a book he wrote, to lazy to look it up. Maybe I’m just saying that because I’m scared senseless of those little grey aliens and always have been. The other interesting little trivia bit about Wolfen is that, and someone can correct me if I’m wrong on this, there’s a scene where the homeless black dude buys some drugs and it appears that he is buying cocaine in rock form, which would probably make Wolfen the first major film to reference crack cocaine, being as that’s around the time rock form cocaine started to appear on the streets of US cities. If anybody knows differently feel free to write in.
Wolfen is alright. In the beginning you’d be lead to believe that this is a werewolf film, but without giving to much away it is actually very intelligent wolves type creatures that don’t assume human form at all, making it more like Jaws, Attack of the Killer Bees and any number of other killer animal movies. It takles place in sort of a run down grindhouse type early 80’s New York, a new killer is on the streets leaving a distinctive fur trace on its victims, starting with a wealthy real estate developer. One thing that is really cool about Wolfen, the police get all kinds of leads that are false leads that go nowhere, just like in real police investigations. The real estate tycoon has political enemies overseas that don’t have anything to do with why he was killed- very true to the investigations that take place in the news.
I will warn that while this film did not make me want to claw my eyes out and shut it off there are two major flaws with the film. It is nearly two-hours lng which is quite long for a killer animal movie and there’s a whole cheesy bit when the detective has to consult the local Native American community about the killings, which is cheesy as all get out. Otherwise a decent film. Dig the early crack reference, dig the sex scene in infra red.