Moon of the Wolf is a made-for-TV horror movie from 1972. The title is easy to get confused with Scream of the Wolf, which is a made-for-TV horror movie from 1974.
In fact, I thought they were the same movie, the same way I think Michael B. Jordan and Nick Cannon are the same person.
A white knight speaks up from the back row: “They all look the same to you, don’t they, Wrenage?”
To which I reply, “Hey, I’m not the person dressed in white here…”
Regardless, this means a made-for-TV werewolf movie exists that has not graced my eyeballs with its 1970s network goodness.
I feel like Diddy in a Baby Oil store. Let’s slide into this sucker and see how it compares to previous made-for-TV movies like The Intruder Within, Midnight Offerings, Curse of the Black Widow, Satan’s Triangle, Killdozer, Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell , Invitation to Hell, Summer of Fear, and Savages.
Moon Of The Wolf
The story is based on a book by Les Whitten. He worked as an investigative reporter and translated French poetry, along with writing horror and science fiction novels.
His book, Progeny of the Adder, is considered an influence of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
Daniel Petrie directed. He also directed Cocoon: The Return, so you know he’s got the goods.
Moon of the Wolf stars The Fugitive himself, David Janssen, It Came From Outer Space beauty Barbara Rush (who passed away earlier this year), Piranha star Bradford Dillman, the man who gave half his DNA to build Juliette Lewis, Geoffrey Lewis, and a smattering of character actors like Royal Dano (Something Wicked This Way Comes) and John Davis Chandler (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid).
Moon of the Wolf also stars former major-league-baseball-player-turned actor John Beradino, who once popped up as a patrolman in Them! Finally, Claudia McNeil (A Raisin in the Sun) appears.
Full Moon High Of The Wolf
The movie starts with baying hound dogs and their hillbilly owners, Dano and Chandler. They treat us to dialogue like “get your back waddle out of that bed” and “oh, sweet jeepers.”
The duo is riled up about wild dogs on their property and go out to blast the varmints with their trusty double-barrel shotguns.
Whether or not they also yearn to run into Warren Beatty and Jon Voight is up for debate, but probably not very much up for debate…
Instead of wild dogs, Dano and Chandler find a dead woman. They get the sheriff, played by Janssen. Some question exists as to how dead the woman is exactly.
Chandler clarifies: “Anything deader would be stinking by now.”
Janssen shows up with his shirt open down to mid-chest. It looks like he is wearing a salt-and-pepper sweater under that shirt.
Beradino also arrives as the town doctor and displays a bedside manner that he probably didn’t acquire by watching Dr. Kildare. Beradino calls everyone “neighborhood clods” and “scratching rustics.”
Finally, Lewis joins the party with incredibly bad hair that probably served as inspiration for Hulk Hogan.
It turns out that the dead woman is Lewis’s sister. Or maybe his wife. Or both. We can’t be sure at this time because the movie takes place in the Louisiana Bayou.
Moonstruck Of The Wolf
Beradino does an autopsy on the dead woman and discovers a couple of things. Wild dogs gnawed on her but not before she was killed by a blow from a lefthanded person.
“Maybe darkness did it,” Ursula K. Le Guin suggests.
Janssen goes to visit Lewis, who lives with McNeil and an old man who lays in bed like a grandfather who can only be healed by winning a trip to a chocolate factory.
The old man keeps repeating a French word that sounds like “Lou Grant” which is odd because that show did not air until 1977.
Lewis reveals that the dead woman (it’s his sister and only his sister…whew!) had trouble with a man, but he doesn’t know who. Lewis also admits he hit her during an argument about her catting around and bringing shame to their hillbilly shanty.
“Show me how hard you hit her,” Janssen said. Lewis throws a punch, and Janssen blocks it. “You’re left-handed,” Jannsen says. Looks like corn starch just got added to the plot, friends and neighbors!
A Trip to the Moon Of The Wolf
Janssen visits Dillman, who plays a southern gentleman. Dillman lives in a big mansion, and the dead woman was found on his property. Dillman has no idea how the woman got there, though.
He reveals he suffered a bout of malaria overnight and spent the evening shaking in bed.
I didn’t know malaria worked like that. That’s probably because I choose to not live in a swamp.
Rush comes out of the house. She plays Dillman’s sister. Rush reveals she had a crush on Janssen when they went to junior high together. Janssen says he wished he would have known that. Then they could have “compared them.”
“Compared what?” Rush asks.
Due to my progressive 2024 brain, I automatically assume Janssen is talking about comparing penises because Rush is transgender. Apparently, he meant comparing “crushes,” though.
Boy, I was way off!
Rush also wears an amazing dress. It combines every shade of orange, brown and yellow that existed in the 1970s. I’m pretty sure if a person looked at that dress while on DMT, they would end up having to be lobotomized after going mad from seeing into the center of the universe.
Moonlight Bay Of The Wolf
Janssen gathers clues. First, he finds a locket in the swamp. Next, he talks to McNeil, who is on her way to buy sulfur. “Why do you need sulfur?” Janssen asks.
It is for the old man. He needs it to “drive Lou Grant away.”
McNeil also reveals she knows who killed the dead woman. The person who murdered her is the man who got her pregnant! Unfortunately, she doesn’t know his identity.
Janssen visits Doctor Beradino, who reveals that he knew the woman was pregnant, as well. He was “third in his class,” after all. Not sure why that is impressive. I can tell when a girl is pregnant, and I wasn’t even thirty-third in my Remedial Retards Class.
Janssen also asks Beradino why a person might want sulfur.
“To keep wolves away,” Beradino says.
Okay, I’m pretty sure this guy isn’t a doctor at all. He’s just pretending to be one to get girls pregnant.
From The Earth To The Moon Of The Wolf
Janssen and Rush have coffee together. She reveals she moved back home because the man she was shacked up with ditched her. Now she isn’t sure what to do with her life.
This is understandable. What is a woman without someone to eat the sandwiches that she makes?
Meanwhile, the yokels gather together for a wild dug hunt. Between them all, you might get one complete set of teeth. Dillman and Beradino also attend.
Lewis found out that Beradino got his sister pregnant and punches Beradino good. Janssen then puts Lewis in jail. His guard is Robert Phillips, who played one of the MPs in The Dirty Dozen.
At last, we get some werewolf POV. For a werewolf movie, this movie has precious little werewolf action. Zero, actually. The camera kills Phillips and advances on Lewis, who delivers perhaps the best reading of “AHHHH!” I have ever seen.
Imagine Bobcat Goldthwait fighting for his life on a toilet. That is what Lewis channeled here. I bestow a posthumous Emmy upon him.
Everyone returns from the wild dog hunt and discovers the carnage. Janssen discerns that whoever killed Lewis weren’t no wild dog. He is a detective, after all.
He also reckons they should put a guard on the old man who talks about Lou Grant all the time. All the dead people are members of that family.
Moonraker Of The Wolf
Dillman pulls into town and volunteers to be a deputy since the previous one got turned into a set of vertical drapes. They drive out to guard the old man.
Upon walking into the house, Dillman pitches a fit. His performance here surely elicited a moved, envious comment of “brilliant” from William Shatner.
Beradino’s diagnosis is that Dillman must have smelled something that triggered a fit (sulfur, perhaps?). Again, there is no way that this character is a real doctor.
I’ve never seen a doctor automatically fall on “he smelled something” when a person has a seizure.
Janssen leaves Dillman in the hospital and visits Rush. He is probably betting that Rush needs comforting, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
She talks about the “spells” her granddaddy used to have. Perhaps, that is what is wrong with Dillman.
Janssen also notices a picture of Rush. She is wearing the locket he found in the swamp. He asks if she knows what happened to it. Goodness, no, she says.
The two of them return to the hospital to question Dillman about the locket. He admits he gave it to the murdered woman in return for “favors.”
“Not the kind of favors you’re thinking,” though.
I like to imagine that she maybe pretended to be his wife and let him win arguments. I would pay a girl roughly $150 an hour for something like that.
Dillman asks if Janssen has heard of Seibert’s Syndrome. He admits to having it. It is an offshoot of malaria and causes him to black out and have no memory of what happened.
It can be controlled with medication. Apparently, the murdered woman brought him that medication.
“Are you left-handed?” Janssen asks.
“I’m ambidextrous. I can sign my name with both hands at the same time.”
Moon River Of The Wolf
It appears that Moon of the Wolf is trying to be a southern gothic whodunit rather than a werewolf movie.
It should have used a different title if it wanted to go that route. Viewers want to see a werewolf. We are now 80 percent through the movie, and it still hasn’t delivered on its marketing.
Janssen tells Rush about the “Lou Grant” thing and how nobody knows what it means.
Rush speaks the language of 1970s television drama, so she offers to talk to the old man. The two drive out to see the old duffer and solve the mystery.
The man yells “Lou Grant!”
Rush frowns and says it is the old man’s dialect that is throwing everyone off. He is actually saying “loup-garou,” which every horror fan knows means “werewolf.”
We finally get some glimpses of the werewolf. It is pretty obvious who it is at this point. Dillman wolfs out, and his makeup hearkens back to the classic Lon Chaney Jr. look.
The movie culminates with Rush putting her brother down like that copy of The Last Jedi you picked up in the $5 DVD bin because you couldn’t quite see the title and thought it might be a copy of The Last American Virgin.
You Are My Sun, Moon Of The Wolf And Stars
Moon of the Wolf does not deliver on its promise. Yeah, it has a werewolf in it, but that is like saying Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a Sean Connery movie.
Most of the enjoyment from Moon of the Wolf is derived from watching 1970s actors in 1970s settings. It also has the sense to know that if it can’t be interesting, it can at least be short. The movie clocks in at 74 minutes.
Nevertheless, it can’t be recommended for its lack of sufficient werewolf scenes. It makes one suspect that the title Moon of the Wolf is not what we think.
It is actually the creators of the film bending over and giving you both cheeks for the practical joke they played on your expectations.
On the flip side, my action/horror novel, DogSS of War, has werewolf action up to, and including, loup-garou tank driving. Plus, I get almost a dollar every time someone reads it. I don’t mean to brag, but I will make enough money in about nine years to pay for one hour with a woman pretending to be my wife and let me win arguments.
Let’s go out on some werewolf jokes…
What is a werewolf’s favorite type of salad? Aroooooo-gula!
What happened to the werewolf that swallowed a clock? He got ticks!
What type of motorcycles do werewolves ride? Lunar cycles!
