Howler

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

WOLFEN Directed by Michael Wadleigh Screenplay by David Eyre and Michael Wadleigh

A rich-as-Rockefeller tycoon and his ice-blond wife are found murdered, their throats torn open but no trace of metal from a weapon in the wounds. Who could have savaged them? Wolves. Or, rather, American Indians who have "shifted shape" and become supernatural "wolfen." They hunt in tribes in decaying slums, preying on "the diseased and those who won't be missed." They never come downtown -- until the tycoon's urban renewal plan threatens their turf.

From this nonsense emerges an eerie, seductive thriller that works equally as a mordant police procedural, an occult horror story and an ambivalent look at aborigines fighting for tradition in the technological age. Dialogue is cynical and the cast beguilingly quirky, notably Albert Finney as a detective and Gregory Hines as a manic, mock-suave coroner. Visual effects evoke for the audience the heightened senses of a preternatural predator.

Wadleigh may take that identification too far: he ends hoping we will want the wolves to win.

-- By William A. Henry III

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.