The Wolfen

Most people who saw the 1981 movie WOLFEN did not like it. Many who did not view it themselves know that it was withdrawn after a brief showing and was a box office flop. I would say: rightly so. With one important note of demurral: the film WOLFEN had a great, symbolic, cinematically brilliant ending, far, far better than the ending of the otherwise vastly superior 1978 novel THE WOLFEN. ***** Wolfen are large wolf-looking creatures with amazing paws, blinding speed and advanced mental achievements, including limited telepathic ability. They are not and have never been either humans or changelings. They are not people in wolves' bodies. Wolfen look like very large wolves, if you are unlucky enough to see one. If you do see a Wolfen, you are very likely about to die. They have been around at least as long as humans. Wolfen are looked up to by their distant evolutionary cousins, the grey and red wolves, which respect men and almost never attack and kill them. Wolfen provided the basis of the legends of werewolves. Or so the novel tells us; the movie gives us little useful prehistory behind a contemporary tale set in a part of New York city largely devoid of humans, abandoned, decayed, with great hiding places for wild creatures whose safety depends on invisibility. *****Werewolves and their immemorial parasitical relation with humans, the novel tells us, were most noticed and most carefully studied in medieval and early modern France. The novel draws on alleged French sources for drawings of Wolfen and descriptions of the sign language developed with men who interacted with and protected them. There is none of this prehistory in the movie, which is senselessly padded out by a subplot of terrorists who call themselves wolves and who leave wolf pelts as calling cards at the scenes of their crimes.Nonetheless, it is the only movie that makes dramatic of a prehistory of beast/human interaction found only in the book! It does so to improve the movie's ending. The central human characters are two police officers, an older man played by Albert Finney and a younger married woman played by Diane Venora. Cornered by Wolfen in confined quarters, Finney and Diane are crouched side by side with pistols drawn and pointed at their enemies. If they shoot, they will surely kill two or three of the Wolfen, before the remaining pack members tear them limb from limb. But Finney locks eyes with the leader. Is there some telepathic understanding between the two, some ancient racial memory? Very likely. In any event, Finney points his pistol in the air, unloads it, places it on the floor and lifts his hands in submission. Venora then does the same. The Wolfen let them live. Other than its photography of a decaying New York City, this submission scene is the only thing that makes WOLFEN, the film worth seeing. And it is not in the novel. *****The novel is vastly better than the film at every level -- except the ending. In the novel, the two police characters waste at least two Wolfen (with corpses unfortunately left behind for now aware government forces to know what they are up against). Governments will very likely annihilate Wolfen worldwide. The remaining Wolfen, younger and more easily confused, run away through other policemen investigating all the noise in the apartment. ***** In either medium, DIE WOLFEN (novel) or WOLFEN (film), the theme is two species recognizing each other. Wolfen and humans have been around each other for millennia. Wolfen are carnivores and have formed the habit of eating exclusively men and women. Traditionally, they are virtual scavengers. They seek out and feed on the old, the terminally ill. What triggers the plot of both book and film is that a young, inexperienced pair attacked humans who were not marginal, who would be missed and whose disappearance and deaths would be investigated by police. Great themes. One wishes for sequels in which these two uniquely intelligent species would find a way to live together in mutual respect. -OOO-