SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (23)
By:
December 17, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite horror movies. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF | d. NATHAN JURAN | 1973
A post-war Packard sedan broken down on the side of the road. Fog and fake moon-glow obscuring the limits of a forest soundstage. Lon Chaney Jr. fighting off a wolf with a tire iron in front of his son. This scene from a black-and-white werewolf movie embedded itself in my mind for some thirty years — at first terrifying, then intriguing me.
My parents owned a bar and so worked late nights, leaving me to fall asleep and awake at odd hours with their comings and goings. So I acquainted myself with original cast SNL, SCTV, Monty Python — the good stuff they’d only show in the middle of the night. Which was also of course a great time to scare the bejeezus out of four-year-old me. As I watched this soon-to-be-werewolf assure his son on the drive home that his wounds were nothing, I couldn’t help but glance at my own father, asleep on the couch at 4 am. Could he have had a similar encounter on his way back from work? It was this movie and seeing Bill Bixby turn into the Hulk under nearly identical viewing circumstances that planted the idea of human duality in my developing brain. My father loved me, but what monster might be hiding inside him? This gave me a lifelong fascination with friends turned into foes: zombies, vampires, and yes, werewolves.
Except… that’s not the film I saw at all! After a decades-long search of werewolf movies from the ’40s and ’50s — including all the Lon Chaney Jr. ones — I couldn’t find the one I’d seen that night. It wasn’t until I streamed The Boy Who Cried Werewolf during the pandemic, and the roadside scene came on, that I realized this was it. Given how foundational the movie was for me, I was shocked that not only had I gotten the actor wrong, but also the era, the setting, the car, the clothes, even the fact that it was in color. I remembered something like the above still, while the movie in question actually looked this:
Now I’d found something scarier than the dual nature of man: the fallibility of memory.
SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Crockett Doob on THE SHINING | Dean Haspiel on TOURIST TRAP | Fran Pado on M3GAN | Erin M. Routson on THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT | Adam McGovern on THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER | Michele Carlo on THE EXORCIST | Tony Pacitti on JAWS | Josh Glenn on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) | Kathy Biehl on HALLOWEEN | Annie Nocenti on ROSEMARY’S BABY | Carolyn Campbell on WAIT UNTIL DARK | Marc Weidenbaum on DAWN OF THE DEAD | Amy Keyishian on SHAUN OF THE DEAD | Gabriela Pedranti on [•REC] | Mariane Cara on PARANORMAL ACTIVITY | Trav SD on FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY | Colin Campbell on EVIL DEAD (2013) | Lynn Peril on NIGHT GALLERY | Heather Quinlan on THE CHANGELING | Kenny Simek on REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on IT (1990) | James Scott Maloy on CONTAGION | Nick Rumaczyk on THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF | Max Alvarez on THE INNOCENTS | Michael Campochiaro on BLACK CHRISTMAS.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!