Wednesday

Last night's after-midnight movie was Werewolf of Washington (1973)*, a disjointed horror spoof starring Dean Stockwell's eyebrows. They play Jack, an up-and-coming press corps hotshot so favored by the administration that when he relocates to Budapest, to avoid breaking-up with the First Daughter, he's offered a job in the press corps. It's too late, of course. While leaving Hungary he swerves into a tree avoiding a gypsy motorcyclist, only to be bitten by a wolf in a foggy headlight-lit attack! The police are no help, but the dead wolf's mother offers him an anti-werewolf charm, junky jewelry he later flushes down a White House toilet. Thus begins a string of daily full-moon murders and clunky seventies political-climate send-ups. Werewolf makeup is in the classical underbite tradition, looking more like the Shaggy Dog* than the Wolf-Man* due to frosty coloration. There are wonderful horror moments: a victim is stalked across a grocery store parking lot collage of price advertisement posters; a survivor suffers through an attack while trapped in a phone booth. There are instances of the truly bizarre, too: after one romp though the aggressively expressionist and labyrinthine White House, wolf-Jack comes across a laboratory hidden behind a toilet stall. Here among giants on slabs and women in cages, he pauses to lick the midget Doctor Kiss on the mouth like a puppy. One particularly funny slapstick bit has Jack's transforming fingers getting stuck in his bowling ball (how many movies have a scene in the White House bowling alley?). The resulting movie is very uneven, very amateur: there are no master or establishing shots, and the scenes don't logically narrate the plot. Who cares? The movie certainly is a hoot. The Alpha Video DVD of this movie is not recommended due to watery-looking sights and watery-sounding sounds. [Cavin]