. . . and here's a not-so-great adaptation of that fun, scary novel. B-film director Philippe Mora (The Howling II and III [1985 and 1987, disrespectfully]) starts out well enough, with Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch driving through a suitably creepy wooded area. She is attacked by an unseen, but clearly non-human, entity, and when the scene fades out and the words "seventeen years later" appear on-screen, it's a good bet the teenager in the next shot wasn't fathered by Ronny Cox.
Ronny Cox gets the job done. He's like Steve Buscemi or Michael Moriarty, always fun to watch, no matter the quality of the film. Bibi Besch is all right, does what she's supposed to, and Paul Celemens, the actor who plays their afflicted son, well . . . he isn't given an awful lot to work with, so maybe that's why his character comes off as somewhat flat. The inner torment this guy experiences in the book only comes across about halfway in this film version.
Not that the movie has much of anything to do with the novel, aside from the very basic premise. The book was adapted by Tom Holland, who wrote several screenplays, including this one (and Psycho II [1983]) before his directing debut, the magnificent Fright Night (1985)--which, by the way, is one of the latest horror films of the 80's to be lined up for an unnecessary remake. Holland is a good writer, but this adaptation is weak. The story consists of some nonsense about a dead man coming to life through Ronny Cox's poor son, and what they come up with isn't all that interesting. There are no werewolves to speak of, psychological or physical, but strangely, the filmmakers do come up with a fairly interesting monster towards the end, one that is aided by some pretty gnarly early 80's fx, and that is nothing like a wolf.
I'm not the kind of person who cares at all if a film adaptation stays close to the source material, or if it gives it a big middle finger--but this one's confusing. See, just as the film is wrapping up, the lead characters come out with some exposition that goes right back to Edward Levy's original novel--taking some of the most interesting aspects of that story, the first few chapters, and jamming them into the end of this one.
It's a somewhat interesting move, but is completely botched. For my money, I can't figure any good reason for keeping that information until the conclusion of the film, and wasting all this time unravelling a truly uninteresting mystery. And by the time the true source of the boy's affliction is revealed in the film's final minutes, I just didn't care.
It isn't bad overall, just very flawed. Worth seeing for Tom Holland fans--and with this guy's reasonably impressive body of work (dir. Child's Play [1988], The Langoliers [1995]), I'm sure they're out there.
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