FILM · 1981 · USA
The Howling
71 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (71)
- #001
Rick Baker was originally set to do the special effects for The Howling, but he left to make An American Werewolf in London (1981) and handed the effects work to his assistant, Rob Bottin. Both films were released the same year and both were praised for their makeup work.
- #002
At times during the shoot, Robert Picardo was quite despairing about the hours spent in makeup. He said of the DVD Special Edition: "One day, after spending six and a half hours in the makeup chair, I thought: 'I trained at Yale, I had two leads on Broadway. My first acting role in California, my face melts off in a low-budget horror film.'" The crew's only response was: "Bob, next time read the script all the way through first!"
- #003
In the scene where Terri calls Chris from Dr. Waggner's office, a photograph of Lon Chaney Jr. can be seen on the office wall. Chaney played the Wolf Man in a series of five films (The Wolf Man (1941), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)). He was the only actor to play the Universal Classic Monster in the original film and all of its sequels.
- #004
The following characters take their names from werewolf film directors: George Waggner, Roy William Neill, Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, Erle C. Kenton, Sam Newfield, Charles Barton, Jerry Warren, Lew Landers and Jacinto Molina (an alternative name used by Paul Naschy).
- #005
The final transformation had to be shot entirely in close-up because the film had gone over budget by then and there was no money left for sets, so it had to be filmed in Joe Dante's office.
- #006
When Karen White (Dee Wallace) transforms into a werewolf on the news broadcast, there is a shot of a couple watching the broadcast in their living room; the man on the couch is director Mick Garris.
- #007
Their work on this film earned Joe Dante and Michael Finnell the chance to make Gremlins (1984) for Steven Spielberg. That film references The Howling with the smiley-face image on the refrigerator door. Throughout The Howling, Eddie Quist leaves yellow smiley-face stickers as calling cards in many places. James MacKrell's news reporter character, Lew Landers, also appears in both The Howling and Gremlins, suggesting the two films share the same universe.
- #008
Dr. George Waggner is the only werewolf in the film whom viewers never see in werewolf form or transforming into a werewolf.
- #009
This was Robert Picardo's first film experience and his first collaboration with director Joe Dante. As of 2020, Picardo had appeared in nine films directed by Dante (always alongside Dante regular Dick Miller) and in five Dante TV episodes.
- #010
Shot in 28 days plus days of reshoots, the film stood out for its special effects, which were the state of the art at the time.
- #011
Karen White looking different from the other werewolves was Dee Wallace's idea. She reportedly told the crew she did not want to be an ugly werewolf, but a beautiful and feminine one. Rob Bottin struggled to find a new design, which ended up resembling a female Wookiee. According to Bottin, Karen's werewolf form looks softer and less threatening to show her resistance to becoming a monster.
- #012
This was Dick Miller's favorite of his own films.
- #013
There is debate in the critical community over which werewolf effects are better: those of this film or those of An American Werewolf in London (1981). Most critics lean toward "London"; however, the effects of both films are heralded as revolutionary and highly influential in the film world.
- #014
Joe Dante said makeup artist Rob Bottin was a perfectionist. He spent the entire first day of actor Robert Picardo's memorable transformation applying makeup to him; they actually shot nothing, because they had to send the crew home to avoid overtime. This also meant Picardo had to stay in the werewolf makeup overnight so that Dante could finally shoot the scene the next morning. Dante said this was an arduous experience for him.
- #015
Dee Wallace (Karen White) and Christopher Stone (Bill Neill) were involved in real life while making this horror film.
- #016
Jack Conrad was originally going to direct and write this film, but problems with the studio forced him to leave the project. At one point Terence H. Winkless was writing the script, but he left the project when the script proved inadequate. It finally fell to director Joe Dante, who tasked John Sayles, with whom he had previously worked on Piranha (1978), with writing the script.
- #017
In one scene, Erle Kenton (John Carradine) talks about UFOs and cattle mutilations. While writing the script for The Howling, John Sayles was also working on a script for Steven Spielberg known as "Night Skies," which involved UFOs and cattle mutilations. However, the project was canceled when Spielberg chose to make E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) instead.
- #018
Alongside Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kimberly Beck, Dee Wallace was one of the scream queens of the era. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, Dee Wallace appeared in three classic horror films: Cujo (1983), this film and The Hills Have Eyes (1977).
- #019
Dick Miller's character in this film is named Walter Paisley, as in A Bucket of Blood (1959). The director of that earlier film, Roger Corman, also appears in this film as the man in the phone booth.
- #020
In addition to the hidden wordplay in this film, a book is placed next to the telephone in one scene: Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". In the scene where Bill and Karen are in bed, Bill is also reading Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again".
- #021
Roger Corman's cameo (he stands outside with his back to the phone booth while Dee Wallace's character is inside) is undoubtedly a tribute to William Castle's similar cameo in "Rosemary's Baby", where Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is also inside on a payphone. (Additional note: at a convention in June 2025, director Joe Dante confirmed this was intentional.)
- #022
Gary Brandner, who wrote the novel on which this film is based, wrote the screenplay for Howling II:… Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985), the only installment in the "The Howling" film series for which he served as screenwriter.
- #023
The porn loop shown in the sex shop scene was created solely for the film. The entire loop consisted of two scenes: one in which a woman is sexually assaulted on top of a car by three men, and another in which a gagged woman is sexually assaulted in bed by a man (the sequence shown in "The Howling"). These scenes were to be included in full as part of the DVD release but were banned by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) for eroticizing sexual assault.
- #024
David W. Allen's stop-motion animation and puppetry were intended to give the werewolves an even more inhuman appearance.
- #025
The silhouette of Bill Neill and Marsha Quist having sex as werewolves is clearly a cartoon animation. Director Joe Dante attributed this to budget reasons.
- #026
Rob Bottin's most famous effect was Eddie Quist's on-screen transformation, which used air bladders beneath latex face appliances to create the illusion of the change.
- #027
John Carradine played the vampire Count Dracula in Erle C. Kenton's House of Frankenstein (1944). In this horror film he played a werewolf named Erle Kenton.
- #028
This film won the 1981 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and was also nominated for Saturns in the Best Make-Up and Best Special Effects categories.
- #029
While Terry Fisher is looking at the cabin in the woods, a can of "Wolf" brand pepper sits on top of the refrigerator.
- #030
The county where the colony is located is called Llanwelly. This was also the name of Lawrence Talbot's village in The Wolf Man.
- #031
Above the bed in Karen White and Bill Neill's cabin hangs a picture of a wolf attacking a flock of sheep.
- #032
Although the film's basic plot is generally based on the 1977 novel "The Howling", the characters and setting are very different. So is the nature of the psychological trauma the protagonists face. The novel's protagonist was a rape victim, while the film's protagonist has a traumatic encounter with a serial killer.
- #033
While rummaging through Dr. Waggner's filing cabinet, Terry Fisher (Belinda Balaski) pulls out all three files belonging to the Quist family. Marsha Quist's file is the thinnest of them, indicating her reluctance to cooperate with Dr. Waggner.
- #034
It is sometimes mistakenly cited as the first film to feature a female werewolf. In reality, the black-and-white films Cry of the Werewolf (1944) and La loba (1965) came before it, so it would be more accurate to call it the first English-language color feature film to feature a female werewolf.
- #035
Along with many "wolf" puns, character names and joking references, the book Bill Neill reads in bed after being bitten is Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again". The author's name is a joke and the book's title is a joke; it refers to the fact that Bill is now a werewolf and has changed forever. He too "can never go home again."
- #036
The picture was released during the early 1980s cycle of werewolf films. These include Wolfen (1981), Teen Wolf (1985), Howling II:… Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985), An American Werewolf in London (1981), Full Moon High (1981), Teen Wolf Too (1987), The Company of Wolves (1984), Howling III (1987) and Silver Bullet (1985).
- #037
Marsha Quist (Elisabeth Brooks) speaks only sixty-seven words across just five scenes in the entire film, and more than half of them come in a single scene (in the barn). Her presence in the film derives mainly from her seductive manner and her frightening yet alluring presence.
- #038
It is not known which werewolf bit Bill Neill, though many fans speculate that it was probably Marsha Quist or her brother T. C. Quist, but most people accepted Marsha as the werewolf who bit him.
- #039
One subplot of the film involves a series of incidents in which cows are mutilated. One of the characters blames UFOs for the incidents. These scenes appear to have been inspired by many real-life cattle mutilation incidents in the 1970s, particularly in Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. Several news reports linked the incidents to UFO sightings in Kansas and Nebraska.
- #040
Director Joe Dante and screenwriter John Sayles had previously worked together about three years earlier on Piranha (1978), with Sayles later appearing in the director's film Matinee (1993).
- #041
Dee Wallace was very uncomfortable with the porn shop scene. The discomfort on her face is clearly visible.
- #042
Dee Wallace's contract reportedly stated that there would be no nudity whatsoever in the film, despite her having been nude in her previous film 10 (1979). During the shooting of the barn scene at the end of the film, Wallace is said to have arrived on set and been upset to see naked women standing next to men in werewolf makeup. Director Joe Dante explained that the women were playing human characters about to transform into werewolves, but that Wallace refused to shoot. Dante called one of the producers to persuade Wallace to film the scene; when the producer arrived, annoyed at the delay, he looked at the prepared scene and told Dante not to shoot it because it seemed ridiculous to him. Wallace later shot a scene in which her character and Donna are naked in an outdoor tub and Donna comes out naked. Because it is shot from a distance, Donna's body is barely visible, so it appears Wallace had no problem with the scene at the time. However, she apparently became very upset when she saw Elisabeth Brooks's fully nude scene in the final film. Brooks later claimed she had been told her nudity would be largely concealed with visual effects and that she was disappointed by the exposure in the film's final cut.
- #043
Elisabeth Brooks was set to reprise the role of Marsha Quist in Howling II:… Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985), as she initially accepted the sequel, but she later backed out. At the time she was suffering from pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), and the influence of her colleague Kristy McNichol played a part in the failed salary negotiations for the sequel.
- #044
At one point Sam Newfield (Slim Pickens) is seen eating from a can of "Wolf" brand pepper.
- #045
The film's stop-motion animation was done entirely by David W. Allen (1944-1999). Until the mid-1970s, Allen worked primarily as an animator on television commercials. He later provided stop-motion effects for many science fiction and horror films and eventually founded his own production company.
- #046
At the end of the film, Karen White transforms during the broadcast of the news program and tries to reveal the existence of the werewolf society. The single mid-transformation animatronic head designed for the sequence, added to the film later, was designed to reflect the fact that Karen rejects the werewolf society and wants to resist her newly discovered instincts.
- #047
Variety claimed that the greatest flaw of "The Howling" is that the impact of this first transformation never reaches its peak at the film's climax.
- #048
Annette Haven was offered the role of Marsha Quist, but she turned it down because she objected to the violent content in the script.
- #049
As the werewolf Eddie Quist attacks and kills Terri Fisher, animated images of the Big Bad Wolf are shown on a television. The cartoon shown is Ub Iwerks's "Little Boy Blue" (1936). The Wolf's voice heard in the scene belongs to voice artist Billy Bletcher, who specialized in voicing villains.
- #050
This was Elisabeth Brooks's (Marsha Quist) first feature film. Although she had previously appeared in many TV shows and two TV movies, she received an "introducing" credit.
- #051
The total shoot lasted 28 days.
- #052
When Chris and Terry go to the bookstore, the owner tells them that the only way to get rid of werewolves is silver bullets. Contrary to what Hollywood has portrayed in werewolf films, no werewolf legend anywhere in the world indicates that werewolves can be harmed by silver in any way. According to some historical records, people believed to be werewolves were either burned at the stake or banished, among other methods.
- #053
The burger in the final scene was reportedly poorly prepared and fell apart immediately after filming.
- #054
This horror film ranks 81st on Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments."
- #055
In this film, werewolves experience resurrection after being killed and also regenerate lost limbs. However, a bookstore owner explains that they resurrect on the third day after being killed, not earlier. This idea seems to be based on traditional accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus, who is said to have been brought back to life on the third day after his death on the cross. Three days may simply be an arbitrary number, but during the standoff in the barn, Jerry apparently expects TC to resurrect immediately after being shot, not yet realizing he has been shot with a silver bullet.
- #056
Rob Bottin was fully involved in the filming of his effects and directed how his work would be lit, staged and shot. His contributions to the cinematography earned him a credit as associate producer. "There was John Hora, who is a very good cinematographer, and John Murray, who is a very good gaffer. We all got together on the lighting of the makeup scenes and how they would be shot. They were so good about it that they let me come in and make suggestions, so I can't complain about the way anything was shot. Whatever is said on screen, I'll have to take it on my shoulders."
- #057
The location of the Colony's resort is the Mendocino Woodlands Camp in Northern California.
- #058
About four years passed between the 1977 publication of Gary Brandner's novel and the filming of this movie.
- #059
When you think about it, Eddie is responsible for ruining Karen's life. He attacked her, which led his allies to cover up her impending death by sending her to the Colony to be killed or turned. Her husband is later transformed, and the local nymphomaniac betrays her, and when Karen tries to escape, she changes too. However, to avoid losing her humanity, she plans to go on live television and be killed. It is doubtful that she receives the blessing of resurrection.
- #060
A subplot of the film is that Bill Neill is a vegetarian and avoids eating meat. On his first hunt with a rifle, he shoots and kills a rabbit. Bill then has no idea what to do because he does not want to eat the rabbit's carcass. The idea may have been inspired by the cartoon character Elmer Fudd. Elmer, who worked as a hunter for years, explains to Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck that he is a vegetarian. He wants to shoot and kill them but has no intention of eating them. Of course, this only happens in one cartoon. In most of the others, Elmer makes it clear that he fully intends to cook and eat his prey.
- #061
Two characters investigating serial killer Eddie Quist's apartment discover his drawings and realize he is a talented artist. Commenting on Eddie's fascination with murder and other violent crimes, the characters joke that he could illustrate a book by the Marquis de Sade. Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), was a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher, novelist and libertine. His literary works generally focused on physical and psychological suffering, sexual slavery, rape, murder, corrupt authority figures (such as bishops and judges) and black humor. The Marquis is synonymous with the term "sadism," although his philosophical ideas were closer to nihilism.
- #062
Similar techniques were used for the film's other minor transformation effects used in the partial metamorphosis sequences: makeup tools, contact lenses, prosthetic teeth and mechanical masks. A scene transforming the puppet's hand and arm was also designed for a scene in which the werewolf's severed limb is seen. A particularly complex effect involved the teeth transforming into werewolf teeth; to achieve this, Bottin built a prosthetic device concealed in the actor's mouth. A compact lever device, hidden by a piece of palette and with the tongue control masked by the actor's growl, controlled a rod that extended the teeth accordingly. The structure of the prosthesis meant it could only be shot from certain angles to achieve the desired effect.
- #063
At one point, Bill Neill claims that the craziest thing his wife has ever heard is Wolfman Jack. This was the stage name of disc jockey Robert Weston Smith (1938-1995). His stage persona involved speaking in a raspy voice, growling, howling and displaying eccentric humor. At its peak, Smith's broadcast program was heard on more than 2,000 radio stations in 53 countries.
- #064
When a bookstore owner says his shop attracts strange people, he claims that members of the Manson Family visited his store to steal. The Manson Family was a religious cult in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s led by the habitual criminal and musician Charles Manson (1934-2017). Eventually, several members were arrested for a series of murders and attempted murders, most famously the Tate-LaBianca murders (1969).
- #065
The acid Karen throws in Eddie's face is the brand "Wolf's."
- #066
In the film Howling II: ... Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985), Karen White's birthday is given as August 8, 1959. Dee Wallace was actually born on December 14, 1948.
- #067
At one point a male fan compliments news anchor Karen White by telling her she is prettier than Walter Cronkite. Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) was a broadcast journalist whose active career ran from 1937 to 1981. He was the main anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, but faced mandatory retirement at age 65. After retiring as a journalist, Cronkite frequently worked as a voice actor in animation and as a narrator on documentaries.
- #068
Karen White is a news anchor. When she first arrives at the colony, she speaks with a character played by James Murtaugh, who played the news anchor in Blue Thunder (1983).
- #069
For the first stage of the transformation, several air bladders were placed on Robert Picardo's forehead, cheeks, neck, chest, shoulders and arms and concealed with makeup tools. He also wore contact lenses and prosthetic teeth. The effect of Eddie's fingernails turning into claws was achieved using a hollow hand fitted with cable-controlled spikes that could snap out slowly. The technique, inspired by stiletto blades, became known as the 'stiletto nail' effect. When the features of Eddie's face began to change more radically, the actor was replaced by a series of animatronics that Rick Baker labeled 'Change-o-Heads.' The Change-o-Heads were sculpted by Ron Bottin and, much like the test transformation head, were built using techniques first tried on Tanya's Island and developed for The Howling. The animatronics and their mechanical designs were devised by Bottin and Doug Beswick. Complex gear and lever mechanisms shifted parts of the skull, altering its appearance in predetermined areas, such as extending the jaw. A total of three 'Change-o-Heads' were designed, each able to perform up to 15 different actions to represent the later stages of the transformation. The effect was also supported by editing that showed each stage in shots where the heads were already in motion. The transformation scene required several takes. In a single continuous shot, Picardo faced the risk of suffocation when the bladder on his neck over-inflated, and overall the bladder effects often over-inflated and burst multiple times, failing to function. To heighten the dramatic effect, certain sequences of the transformation were filmed at a higher or lower frame rate.
- #070
At one point Karen White and her new friend Donna are stranded at night in a remote rural area when the only flashlight they have stops working. Karen compares their situation to being stuck in Timbuktu. Timbuktu is not a wilderness but a historic city in Mali. Over the centuries it grew as a center of the salt, gold, ivory and slave trades. In the 17th and 18th centuries much of Europe's gold came from Timbuktu, though its economic importance has declined since then.
- #071
Both Wolfen and The Howling share something in common: each features werewolves and a character named Eddie.
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