User Reviews

I remember seeing this movie for the first time at a Saturday matinée around 1974-75 and I was about 7 or 8 years old. It scared the crap out of me at that time, especially the parts where young Jimmy was hiding from the werewolf. I can remember having dreams where I was in Jimmy's place and I must admit it is one of the few horror movies that I can deem memorable from my childhood. It is not as high tech as the horror movies of the 80's or by todays standards by any means, but it did allow the young boy watching this movie to imagine the possibility of such creatures at that time. Now as a much older person, whenever I see this movie from time to time, I still can enjoy the simplicity of the movie and not be overwhelmed with the blood and gore of our movies today. If you can just let yourself go and accept the simple effects of the time, I am sure you will enjoy this werewolf movie for what it is, good fun!

I remotely recall seeing some if not all of this a kid, but it's now like night and day. Literally.

The Boy Who Cried Werewolf was a perfect movie for a boy my age – I'm guessing I was 4-5 years old when I remember seeing or hearing about this. It's an all-but rated G monster movie – and a werewolf, my favorite kind of monster as a kid – with a super amount of scenes with the creature (something sorely lacking in 90% of all werewolf films.) And it's certainly not for adults.

There are times I laughed out loud at this. From the same clothes the wolf-man wore – and still, no one believe the movie title's statement, to the countless and continual full-moons, to the mask the actor wore that revealed a hairless neck, to the incontinuities and finally to the most distracting part: the movie that takes place mostly at night during those 15 full moons that month, it was shot entirely during the day but the camera tricks made it into "night."

Not much new in this story, just a riff off of the old Boy Who Cried Wolf fable. Man gets bitten by a werewolf in the opening scene, werewolf dies, man turns into werewolf when the moon's full, only child knows it and the town finally believes him. Or…is it too late?

It's passable. Like I said, it's a monster movie made for kids, but I'm thinking more like the kids of the 1970s and 1980s. Today, children might laugh as hard as I did at times as much as they've seen. I mean, we even having a real-life monster running for President. Hope he just goes back to being the monster of his haunted towers after November 8th.

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Final thoughts: Day 8 Movie in the Can! I'm watching a NEW-2-ME horror movie every day of October 2016 and this one is such a distant memory of mine. It came out 1973, I was born the year after so if I did see it, it must've been on TV in the late 70s. All the flaws I stated above certainly didn't mean anything to me, if I did actually see it. I mean, I couldn't get enough of the Wolf-Man, especially the kind that turns into a man-wolf, vs. just a regular wolf. Bah! Can't stand those kinds. (The exception to my rule is Jack Nicholson's Wolf where he did turn into an actual wolf. And that's only passable because the movie itself was so damn good. I forgave he wasn't a full-man-beast.)

I remembered seeing this movie on TV when I was a kid on the Saturday afternoon Sci-fi theater. At the time It was hard to follow (hint: anyone over the age of 10 will find it stupifying) and there was one scene that really frightened me out of my wits. For years I'd forgotten this movie when recently it popped up on a late night 'creature feature' and I watched it with my 8 year old nephew. Yes, from a film-making standpoint this movie is terrible..but so terrible it's FUN to watch. And the same scene that had me cowering under the blankets as a kid also terrified my nephew! I'm talking about a mid-film scene where the young boy witnesses his father (tranformed into a a truly laughable werewolf) lurching around in the middle of a road, causing cars to veer and crash, then attacking the injured passengers in the wrecks. Even as an adult I find this one small part singularly disturbing. If you see this is coming up on late night TV definitely check it out. It's like Ed Wood on bad acid.

Nathan H. Juran directed plenty of films, but we probably know him best for Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Deadly Mantis, 20 Million Miles to Earth and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Becca and I had seen the trailer for years, but this was one of those films that you could only find on the grey market until Shout! Factory released it this year.

Robert Bridgestone (who starred in Juran's aforementioned Sinbad film) is a divorced dad who tries to bond with his son, Richie, by taking him on a camping trip. On a midnight hike, the men are attacked by a werewolf, but Robert is able to toss it into a ravine where it's revealed to be a human, impaled on a wooden fence. The sheriff and Robert are happy with the conclusion that the man was simply a drifter, but Richie isn't so sure. And since his father was bitten in the attack, he's worried about what will happen next.

Sandy, Robert's ex-wife, insists that father and son go to counseling together, because Richie has become obsessed with lycanthropes. The psychiatrist (George Gaynes, Commandant Eric Lassard from the Police Academy series) believes that Richie has invented the werewolf story as he can't deal with the knowledge that his father has killed another man. He suggests they go back to the camp, an act he believes will stop Richie's fixation with werewolves.

As they return to the cabin, Robert finds himself in great pain and transforms into a werewolf that chases Richie - who has no idea that the beast is his father - across a highway. The werewolf attacks and massacres a driver while Richie hides with two newlyweds who are camping. Finding his father missing, Richie stays with the couple, but when Robert comes to get him in the morning, he's ill-tempered and not about to listen to his son's werewolf shenanigans.

The next night, Robert changes into a beast again, but Richie has already found a hiding space. No worries - the werewolf will kill the newlyweds instead, shoving their camper down a hill, then mutilating their bodies and decapitating them. Richie emerges just in time to see his father go from wolf back to man. As they drive back home, Richie grills his father, who doesn't take kindly to it. When they get back to his mother's house, he runs, telling her he doesn't want to be alone with a monster.

After another visit to the psychiatrist, its determined that between the divorce and murders, Richie sees his father as a beast. The film would be much more interesting here were there any doubt as to whether Robert was the werewolf. But no - instead the entire family is put into harm's way. Too bad they didn't see the headline of today's paper: Local Psychiatrist Murdered.

As the estranged family heads out to camp, they run across a hippie commune. Sandy enters their circle of power that wards away evil spirits, but when Robert tries to join her, he is stopped dead in his tracks.

Back at the cabin, that whole 1970's liberated women need men and were all wrong for divorcing their spouses paradigm rears its ugly head. Sandy confesses how much she missed Robert, who starts transforming into a wolf.

Robert finds Richie in the shed and begs his son to lock him in. Sandy barges in, only to nearly be killed. They escape to the sheriff's office, but no one will believe Richie. Even now. I mean, he may be the most annoying kid ever, but his logic is starting to add up.

Even after he attacks the hippies, they pray for his soul and watch him transform. That night, he rises again and a search party - read that as mob of angry townsfolk - give chase. The wolf grabs Richie and bites him on the arm before he's shot and stumbles onto a stake in the ground, which pierces his heart.

Everyone is shocked as the werewolf reveals his true form: Robert. But Sandy is more concerned that her son is now a werewolf, thanks to his father's bite.

The Boy Who Cried Werewolf can't live up to the manic trailer that sold it to me. But it's still an enjoyable yarn, mixing end of the 20th century problems - divorce and hippies, man - with the traditional werewolf mythos.

Richie (Scott Sealey) isn't exactly a liar, but nobody believes him when he begins to claim that his father, Kerwin Matthews, has been bitten by a werewolf and is turning into one. Matthews is divorced from Elaine Devry, and it is very apparent that they should have really worked on their problems because they are obviously still in love.

When son and dad begin taking camping trips together, dad meets up with another werewolf he kills after being bitten, and after Sealey tells his psychiatrist George Gaynes about his fears, Gaynesconvinces Matthews to take him back to the mountains so he can see that it's not true. But of course it is, and it comes to a head when Devry, wanting a reconciliation, suddenly announces that she's going camping with them.

Made by Universal who of course was responsible for many of the great horror films of the 1930's and 40's, this is a modern version of a classic tale and is very entertaining, greatly aided by the presents of a hippie commune who has taken refuge in the mountains. Bob Homel adds a lot of humor in his wild performance as a head of the commune, and that adds a lot of excitement and laughter into the over-the-top tale. A pleasant surprise in 1970's horror that isn't too scary for kids and not too juvenile for adults.