The Werewolf of Washington
October. 01,1973 PGAfter being unknowingly inflicted with the bite of a werewolf while on a visit to Europe, White House press secretary Jack Whittier begins to turn into a deadly beast by night, terrorizing Washington D.C. and presenting a very deadly threat to the President.
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Reviews
Just what I expected
For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
In continuing to review werewolf movies in chronological order, I'm now at 1973 with something called The Werewolf of Washington. Dean Stockwell is a presidential associate in Hungary when he gets bitten by a wolf. I'll stop there and just say this was quite a funny and maybe a little horrific satire of presidential politics. In fact, I think it was meant to make fun of the Nixon administration! The low budget shows and some of the acting seems on the low energy side but this was so entertaining, I can forgive those flaws. In summary, The Werewolf of Washington is such an obscure treat!
The opening of this film is great - it sorta spoofs The Wolf Man (1941). LOL I love the humor from the get-go. The more the film goes on the more you'll find some cute & oddball werewolf and other humor. This is a comedy-horror so if you chose to watch it you should keep the fact it's a comedy in mind.The movie is not bloody - although there are people killed by the werewolf. The transformation is pretty neat - again reminiscent of the classic Wolf Man transformations. The look of the werewolf in this film reminds me a little bit like the werewolf in 'The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973)' - which came out the same year of this film.Overall this is neat werewolf flick with some silly humor. I found it worth watching.6/10
Dean Stockwell gives a deliciously droll and wired portrayal of Jack Whittier, a hotshot presidential press assistant who gets bitten by a werewolf while on assignment in Budapest, Hungary. Whittier comes back to the United States and begins terrorizing the nation's capitol, turning into a werewolf whenever there's a full moon and bumping off various folks in the immediate area. Writer/director Milton Moses Ginsberg concocts one hell of a strangely engaging and amusing eccentric blend of tacky horror and broad political satire, rather clumsily mixing the disparate elements together into a pretty messy, yet still funny and enjoyable synthesis. Technically, the film is very slipshod, with rough, grainy photography, ragged editing, generic spooky music and the laughably shoddy werewolf make-up leaving something to be desired, but still adding substantially to the picture's singularly screwy charm. Fortunately, the game cast come through with delightfully ripe performances: Biff McGuire as the smarmy Nixonesque president, Clifton James as an oily, huffy attorney general, Thayer David as a ramrod police inspector, June House as the president's desirable hottie daughter, Michael Dunn as quirky mad scientist Dr. Kiss, and James Tolkan as a shady fed in sunglasses are a total blast to watch. Best-ever scene: the werewolf attacks a screaming woman trapped in an overturned phone booth. An authentically offbeat curio.
Voting for this one is tough, it's either a one star or a 10 star! I picked it up the other night as an impulse buy when getting gas...there at the counter for $9.99 was a 10 movie, 3DVD crap compilation called "Werewolves, Vampires and Zombies." This was the movie that sold me on the package...ow had I not heard of this one? Technically, it's awful. Sound and visual quality are very spotty, as is usually the case with these cheap compilations. Heck, spotty implies there may be some good moments, so let me change that assessment to horrible. Continuity is an afterthought, camera shots attempt to be arty, from shots up through the bottom of a toilet bowl to dizzying handhelds.Perhaps the biggest plot issue is the appearance of the mysterious and diminutive Dr. Kiss, performing his Frankensteinian experiments in the White House basement. He seems to be some sort of power behind the throne, but we never discover more than that. Everything about the good doctor, from the deference of the president, his experiments, to his disappearing with a peculiar sunglassed man into the same stall of a bathroom, makes no sense whatsoever. It really seems like one day on the set someone said "hey look, we got a midget! Write him into the story!" Sure, it makes no sense, but after the movie you and your fellow viewers will be laughing and wondering wtf it was all about.The political humor has it's moments, lots of hippie hating and attempts by the administration to control the hated and feared media (the pres holds an unscheduled press conference to announce an agreement with the Chinese, he and his handlers hope it will deflect attention from his declaring martial law in D.C. to take care of the problems of the murders and the damned hippies).There are an abundance of laugh-out-loud moments, whether intentional or not, but more than anything else the greatest thing of this movie is its ability at the end to leave you with an overwhelming feeling of "what the heck was that?"