Greetings, and welcome back to Horror Business. We’ve got one heck of an episode in store for you guys as we’re talking about 1981’s The Wolfen and 2014’s Late Phases.
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We briefly talk about what we’ve been doing involving horror recently. Liam’s manga/anime obsession rolls on with Kaiju Number Eight, as well as reading Stephen King’s The Long Walk and Margaret Killjoy’s The Sapling Cage, the films Mickey 17 and The Shrouds, and Justin talks about the quiet existential horror of the Apple series Severance.
Up first is The Wolfen. We give a summary of the film and talk about some of the tropier elements of the film involving Native Americans. Justin talks about one of his rules of werewolf films (the werewolf design being the keystone of the entire film) and how the film got around this by just having larger than usual wolves as the werewolves.
We talk about how the film and novel take a slightly different path than the traditional werewolf movie by having it just be super intelligent wolf-like creatures that live secretly amongst people and hunt them.
We touch upon the film’s inclusion of environmentalist themes and how it strangely fits in with the source novel’s author Whitley Strieber and his history of environmental advocacy. We talk about the film’s use of the late ‘70s Bronx being utterly destroyed by urban blight and how it lends a very dreamy feel to the film in a sinister way.
Justin brings up the unsettling clash of “savage beast in modernity” during the climax where the wolves show up in the top floor of an office building.
Up next is Late Phases. Justin talks about his first viewing of the movie and loving but not being as nuts about it on rewatch.
We talk about how the film has enough weight in its initial plot without the added kind of human gravitas that Ethan Embry’s (who rules) character brings.
We discuss how the film doesn’t do the best job of setting up any kind of mystery as to who the werewolf is.
We briefly discuss lead actor Nick Demici’s filmography and how he always delivers, and how unlike a lot of the “classic” werewolf films it loses a lot of its punch when you’ve seen it once, as opposed to films like Dog Soldiers and The Howling and An American Werewolf In London that is always rewarding every time you watch it. We discuss the unsettling and unorthodox nature of the werewolf design.
As always thank you for listening and to everyone and anyone who donated on Patreon, checked this episode out, or shared a tweet/shared a post on FB/gave us love by recommending us to someone. We love you forever for listening and donating. Any questions, comments, suggestions for movies and guests, or if you yourself want to join us for a movie viewing or even an episode, can be sent to
thehorrorbiz@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you! Thanks always to Justin Miller,
