Le loup garou de Washington

I had a lot of fun watching this completely offbeat film. This is obviously a spoof of horror flicks and a good natured, tongue in cheek comment on American politics during the Nixon era. The editing is horrible, the lighting even worse, and there is no escaping this movie is early seventies to the max. In the end though, all of this only seems to add to this little movies charms which are considerable.

I think the writing is excellent, the idea of a werewolf among the Washington elite is pretty darn original. At times it seems almost like a skit from an early classic Saturday night live show. Very much so actually. There are some very funny moments like the bowling scene which made me laugh out loud. My eleven year old daughter laughed also which is good. The scene with the girl in the phone booth is also hilarious, and the bit with the Chinese diplomat on the plane cracked me up again.

Dean Stockwell is terrific in this movie, he delivers a very edgy performance that amazingly has you laughing at one scene and feeling very sorry for him at other times. His increasing anxiety and frustration over becoming a werewolf actually made me squirm a bit and almost made me stop watching the movie!!!! But then came the bowling scene and you realize its all for laughs. He gets great support from others in the cast especially the actors playing the president and the attorney general(Biff Mcquire and Clifton James), they are both a ton of fun.

I think i have a cool bit of trivia for you. Dean's dad Harry Stockwell makes a cameo appearance in the scene where the president briefs the joint chiefs of staff. Another hilarious scene. In the Harry Stockwell section of IMDb that isn't mentioned, i think it should be. Overall, the Werewolf of Washington is a c movie that delivers and a verl cool comment on a memorable time in American history. I liked it a lot!!!!

Here's an oddity. It's a werewolf movie which operates as a comedy about a Whitehouse press secretary who is bitten by a lycanthrope while stationed in Hungary. He is recalled to Washington and winds up killing a bunch of people connected to the President. This came out during the Watergate scandal and the main character does stay in that famous hotel but I think it would be a stretch to push this one too far as a satire, as the material is a bit thin for that; after all, one of the best gags has our hero getting his fingers jammed in a ball while bowling pre-full moon. Its still kind of hard to dislike though, and I am always a sucker for werewolf make-up. The transformation scenes were actually not bad and Dean Stockwell is pretty committed in the main role - he looked wired to be perfectly honest. Overall, a fun 90 mins for werewolf fans.

As you can probably guess from the title alone, "Werewolf of Washington" is basically a direct take on "The Wolf Man" story, shaped into a kind of political satire.

We join press secretary Jack Whittier on assignment in Hungary, where his girlfriend buys him a silver cane with a wolf's head handle. When his car breaks down he encounters some strange gypsies, and is attacked by a wolf which he beats to death with his cane. After the wolf is dead it changes back into human form, but the police don't even arrest him for murder. Jack is convinced that there is some kind of a government cover-up going on, but a gypsy woman tells him that he has become a werewolf, cursed with the sign of the pentagram ("Oh, so the pentagon's involved?"). He then returns to Washington, and finds that a series of people he meets are murdered in animal-like attacks ...

This movie does have a lot of very funny and memorable moments. The "phone booth" attack and most of the scenes with the president (particularly the bowling alley sequence) rank particularly highly, and this is certainly a film you won't forget in a hurry. It's one of the most original werewolf movies I've seen in a long time. The acting is surprisingly good considering how incompetent some aspects of the film appear to be, and that's where a lot of the comedy comes from. Dean Stockwell gives an excellent, nervous performance reminiscent of Lon Chaney Jr, and Biff McGuire as the president is just great.

However, it isn't all good news ... it was directed by Milton Moses Ginsberg, who seems primarily to have worked as an editor but has directed several obscure movies (his first movie "Coming Apart" actually appears quite popular critically). The film-making isn't terrible, but it's not really of professional quality -- in some scenes you can even catch that elusive shadow of the cameraman. Considering it was made by an editor, the movie is slow-moving and doesn't flow as well as it should, and some of the cuts just don't work at all. The dialogue is pretty clunky most of the time, although there are some clever plays on words. It's a political satire made at a time when it was fashionable to attack the administration, so of course there's plenty of topical humour going on.

Yes, it's silly and it's cheap and it's pretty incompetent, but it's also a lot of fun. I'm even tempted to give it a higher rating, but I might not live that down. Just see it if you want some quick laughs.

My copy of this film may have been so worn and old it may well have been discovered in a cave next to the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I enjoyed this freaky horror comedy, mainly down to the acting talents of the always great Dean Stockwell (and some nifty werewolf makeup).

Dean's a young press aide, self-exiled to Hungary after having an affair with the President's daughter. While there, he gets attacked and bitten by a werewolf, but as you would imagine he ignores the pleas of a gypsy woman and is recalled back to Washington to help out the President. It's not long before he's becoming as hirsute as Robin Williams and chomping down on various people.

It's more comedy than horror, this film, but it still has its moments. Stockwell hams up the werewolf angle, panting like a dog, chewing up his room. The guy playing the President was good too, and the whole piece is played rather broadly and ends on a pretty good gag. It all looks to have been made for about six dollars but I found it to be pretty entertaining stuff.

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