Che fatica essere lupi

In continuing to review werewolf movies in chronological order, we're still at 1981 with probably the most obscure one yet, one that I didn't even know of its existence till a few weeks ago when I saw it listed on Wikipedia before then finding it on YouTube. It seems to mainly be inspired by the Michal Landon-starred I Was a Teenage Werewolf as Adam Arkin plays a teen named Tony (like Landon) and it takes place during the late '50s (like IWATW) but then moves on through the years (as exemplified by the changing of the presidential portraits though the one after Carter was meant to be a joke) before Tony comes back to his high school of the title to once again play football having not aged during that time. I'll stop there and just say while I was pretty amused much of the time, there were also many places where I wondered if maybe it could have been funnier. I did like the scenes involving Ed McMahon as Tony's father and Adam Arkin's real dad-Alan-as an insulting shrink. Oh, and also the scene involving his new girlfriend and her tying up Tony in bed was also fun in an adult humor kind of way. So on that note, I say give Full Moon High a look.

But this morning it was on cable and I was amazed how something this silly got past me. Sure, if you watch it, don't expect any academy award nods... I think the makers of this film were looking to follow in the footsteps of airplane and other goofball flicks. Every paradox for every situation was used in this. And that's not bad... Every once in a while we need these no brainers to make us watch like zombies, just so we can say "Man this movie is so stupid, I can't wait to see what happens next". Remember, the 80's killed at flooding us with bad movies that we've seen 30 times (even if we don't admit it publicly).

This horror spoof contains enough corny jokes to last you a lifetime, but is generally harmless and even has a certain schlocky charm. Produced on an obviously low budget and sloppily directed by Larry Cohen, it tries to do for werewolf flicks what "Airplane!" had done for disaster epics the previous year, but it's just too "unpolished" to succeed. (**)

One of those films you can guess the entirety of simply from the title, this disjointed movie from Larry Cohen is definitely one of his lesser films. It's kept watchable through the sheer level of gags on offer (often with lots of sight jokes that are very missable if you're not concentrating) although most of the one-liners are excruciating. A better than average cast do their jobs well even though their characters are limited to doing/saying mainly one thing. Sadly the low budget often shows, with the film cutting away from the action on more than one occasion, and also in the ridiculous werewolf makeup which reaches new lows in tackiness (seemingly a riff on I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF's makeup but with hardly the same impact).

Adam Arkin is the good-natured high school boy who is turned into a werewolf while blundering in Romania. From then on, he turns into a wolf basically every night (bizarre moon cycles then) and is stalked by a mystery violinist who pops up at every occasion and quickly becomes repetitive. His mad father (played hilariously by Ed McMahon) believes that a nuclear bomb will explode at any minute and is ready to take refuge in his bunker. An inordinate number of homosexuals are also present at Full Moon High to admire Arkin, giving plenty of room for lots of jokes and laughs in the men's locker room! The film's highlight undeniably has to be a cameo by Arkin's father, Alan, as a loud-mouthed shrink who attempts to make a man stop from committing suicide by hurling abuse at him! Otherwise, this is strictly business as usual, and pretty cheesy in a bad '80s kind of way, complete with absurd fashions and silly dialogue. With only a few funny bits and a lot of complete nonsense, I would recommend this to nostalgia buffs or Cohen fans only.

Larry Cohen's movie "Full Moon High" is one of the more obscure entries on the prolific filmmaker's resume, seldom shown on cable and taking forever to be released on videotape (and to this date has not gotten a DVD release.) It does not take long upon watching it to figure out why it doesn't have a cult following. Now, unlike some of the other IMDb users who have commented on this movie, I *did* find some of the gags in the movie to be amusing, and I thought that Adam Arkin was pretty good in the lead role - you can really see his father Alan in him from his looks to his comic timing. (Alan himself does also appear in the movie, and he's amusing as well.) However, the movie as a whole does not work. While there are some funny moments, most of the gags die upon arrival. The real problem with the movie is that it is really sloppily made. A number of scenes feel unfinished, missing punchlines or simple conclusions. A bigger problem with the script is that there isn't much plot here, with scene after scene with little to nothing advancing things. It does not take long for the movie to become tiring, even though Cohen jam- packs the movie with energy. I think a documentary on what went wrong with this movie would be a lot more entertaining than the movie itself.