Summer of '94: Wolf
Jack Nicholson is a wolf, man.
Like its titular creature, Mike Nichols’ Wolf is a strange hybrid. An unwieldy mix of monster movie, adult drama and glossy romance, it’s too grown-up to be scary and too beastly to be taken completely seriously. And yet, there’s a lot to like, and it’s a mature attempt to mingle genre and drama that I wish more movies attempted.
Jack Nicholson plays Will Randall, a New York publisher known more for coddling the talent than for his cutthroat tendencies. That puts his job in jeopardy, as a wealthy exec (Christopher Plummer) has just purchased the publisher, and a slimy lower-level manager (James Spader) is gunning for Will’s job.
In the opening moments, Will strikes a wolf with his car and is bitten. Thankfully, he’s no worse for wear; on the contrary, he has more energy, his senses of smell and hearing are enhanced, and he’s more aggressive in the boardroom – and, to the delight of his wife (Kate Nelligan), in other areas of the home. When his wife is revealed to be unfaithful, he quickly meets up with the beautiful daughter of Plummer’s character, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. The only downside is the weird hair growth and the fact that Will now blacks out at night and wakes up with strange injuries and blood on him – blood that he’s pretty sure is not his.
Wolf is a star-driven horror movie, but the horror often feels tangential to the other parts of the story, almost as if Nichols was uncomfortable about its creature feature aspects. The scarier aspects aren’t exactly what we’d call “elevated horror” these days (yes, I shuddered using that term); they’re not elegantly woven into the story, but sit at odd angles to scenes of corporate maneuvering and office intrigue. The film often cuts away from any shots of overt violence, but its finale is an almost laughable sequence of two furry middle-aged men wrestling. When it’s not making the werewolf aspect front and center, it feels more akin to something like The Firm than an out-and-out monster movie.
But I admire Wolf for attempting an adult take at genre during a time when grown-up audiences were more interested in legal thrillers and prestige dramas. It’s not scary enough to be an effective horror movie, but watching the sequences of Will discovering his enhanced senses and experimenting with the super speed and instincts that come with turning into a wolf are the monster movie tropes that comic book movies like Spider-Man would appropriate the next decade, except instead of learning that with great power comes great responsibility, Will runs into the woods and bites a deer in the jugular. That comparison is even more interesting when you consider that, at the time, Nicholson and Pfeiffer were both coming off recent turns as Batman villains. This is an early attempt to treat material seriously that had formerly been treated as schlock, something the comic book film would attempt down the road.
Oddly enough, the scenes of corporate intrigue are among the film’s most exciting, and I don’t mean that as a dig. Wolf is best when it allows the werewolf elements to serve as a metaphor for Will gaining confidence, growing more aggressive and taking moves to screw over the people who were out to get him. Nichols, perhaps unsurprisingly, seems most energized when he can use the supernatural elements to satirize Alpha male behavior and the dog-eat-dog (pun perhaps intended) mentality of corporate life. And there are some sharp laughs as Will’s lupine behavior causes him to smell coworkers who’ve just left or pick up on conversations from across the building. Populating your cast with faces like Plummer, Spader, David Hyde Pierce and Richard Jenkins ensures that the office politics are always gripping; Plummer and Spader, in particular, basically just play the “Christopher Plummer” and “James Spader” roles, and they’re a ton of fun.
One element that keeps Will’s arc from being as compelling as possible, however, involves the casting of Nicholson. Don’t get me wrong: Nicholson is great through the majority of the film. No other actor could play ruthless, mischievous and seductive at the same time as well as Jack, and he has a great time in the scenes where Will gives in to his wolf impulses. There’s a scene midway through where Will visits a spiritual advisor, hoping for answers, and the man asks him if it felt good being the wolf. Nicholson’s smirk in that moment is perfect. He never puts too much ham on it and instead gives a grounded and thoughtful performance. Sure, it’s great to watch Will indulge in his more primal instincts – in the film’s most memorable sequence, he pees on Spader’s shoes and says he’s marking his territory – but Nicholson also portrays a man who is both emboldened by his new abilities and terrified by them. He convincingly portrays the confusion Will feels when he wakes up in the wilderness with blood on him, and the fear that fills him as he prepares for nightfall, when the beast will take over.
The problem is that Will is supposed to be a milquetoast man who gains confidence and aggression. And there’s no way that Jack Nicholson could ever be mistaken for milquetoast. He makes an admirable attempt to look schlubby and fawn over his elderly writers, but the result is still that Will feels more like a charming guy always on the cusp of being a rascal, not a wet blanket who needs to grow a pair. When he clumsily stumbles into Pfeiffer’s character after a panic attack and inadvertently grabs her breast when trying to steady himself, there’s no sense of awkwardness; just a question of whether it really was an accident of if Jack was just being Jack.
Pfeiffer is fine in an underwritten role. She doesn’t have much to do but quickly fall for a strange man who occasionally falls down, spooks horses just by existing, and abandons her in the middle of the night without an explanation – although, to be fair, the fact that he was killing animals and baying at the moon might have been more difficult to accept. When she shows up later at his hotel to find Will handcuffing himself to his radiator and warning that he’s going to hurt someone, her instinct is not to run away but to seduce him and stay the night. And when (spoiler alert) the police show up the next morning because his ex-wife’s throat has been ripped out, she doesn’t for a second suspect that this man who claims to turn into a beast might be a tad dangerous. But Pfeiffer brings a flinty strength and has a likable chemistry with Nicholson, and watching it again, I’m reminded we see her on screen far too rarely these days.
Like I said, Wolf’s overt horror elements are its weakest portions, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. Nichols rarely goes full-tilt with the horror; there’s very little gore. But he’s effective with atmosphere. Much of the film takes place in the shadows, particularly in the evening sequences. Ennio Morricone’s score instills a proper sense of dread. And Nichols understands the power of a good image and powerful jolt. The aforementioned sequence where Will chase a deer through the woods before biting its neck is a great bit of slow-motion work, and when Will jumps to absurd heights to get away from the cops – including one played by David Schwimmer, just shortly before Friends debuted – it’s surreal without being silly. Rick Baker’s werewolf effects aren’t as iconic as his work in An American Werewolf In London, but it’s still strong physical work that is reminiscent of the original Wolfman look.
And yes, the film’s finale – (spoiler again) when it’s revealed that Spader’s character is also a werewolf (the spiritual advisor Will visits earlier hints that sometimes just being around another werewolf is enough to infect someone with dark sensibilities) – is a silly bit of camp, in which Spader tries to overpower Pfeiffer’s character while Will is locked in a cage. But Nichols understands that camp and a bit of absurdity are the only way to end this; in the end, this is two douchebags fighting it out over a girl, and while the fight between Spader and Nicholson is sometimes ludicrous, there’s a bonkers appeal to it. Likewise, I don’t know if the film’s final shot, which suggests that Pfeiffer’s character is now also a wolf, really makes sense. But it’s as good a note to close on as any. I wish the movie’s melding of the adult drama and genre horror were a bit more organic, but Wolf is never boring.
I’d always been under the impression that the film was a financial and critical disappointment, but it was a bit more of a mixed bag than that. It holds a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes – making it “fresh,” even if it’s barely so. It cost $70 million to make – I’m not entirely sure why, outside of star salaries – but it took in $131 million worldwide. Not a game-changer, but it was profitable. The down-the-middle success seems right; there’s nothing great here, but it’s a valiant attempt. It’s exactly the kind of experience I enjoy having with these Summer of ‘94 movies; something that was previously unseen by me that I’m glad to have caught up with.
Previous Summer of ‘94 entries: