"Teen Wolf" (1985) reaches back to adolescent joy

"Teen Wolf" has gotten upstaged by the "Back to the Future" movies in Hollywood annals. All of that is a tribute obviously to Michael J. Fox, who as a young person really "had it" for being endearing on the screen. He had an everyman or "everyboy" quality.
American high school age youth could really relate to his characters in the 1980s.
Enough time has passed that the '80s encourages pretty strong nostalgia now. When I wrote about the movie "T.A.G. The Assassination Game," I noted that the '80s movie presented academic buildings as so "utilitarian." And more importantly, no one seemed to care. The student characters didn't act like they expected a whole lot of amenities. They seemed to deem their surroundings sufficient for the task. They had other issues and priorities.
We see the totally fun-seeking youth in 1985's "Teen Wolf" amidst school surroundings that today would call for a referendum for building something new. The referendum would almost certainly pass. In the '80s we here in Morris MN had a varsity basketball gym that none of us were inclined to complain about. The bleacher seats seemed a little hard but that was a nit-pick. My, as recently as 1968 we had a gym that might have passed for a setting in "Hoosiers." Not that we couldn't have had a lot of fun there. But it gave way to a new gym and even that wasn't good enough, as today we have bigger/better/brighter etc.
The "T.A.G." movie and "Teen Wolf" show the young people in school hallways that seem throwback now, not a lot of signs of handicapped accessibility. Arguments for new buildings have been made based on the accessibility aspect almost entirely. One could not have foreseen such a push in an earlier time.
Indeed, the future is hard to predict. So when the "Back to the Future" movies with Fox sought to envision the future, jumping to that future time, well, it was nigh impossible. Ergo, if we really knew what the future was, we'd skip to it right now. A review of the movie said the future scenes were just a "jazzed up version" of the present. Flying skateboards? Do we see them today? Maybe a few new scenes could be sneaked in, that show for example a portable computer with "Facebook" on the screen!
Long ago, future cars were foreseen that simply looked more sleek, more streamlined. Indeed, I have read an opinion of classic cars as an over-hyped hobby because all we're really talking about is the shape of the metal. We had a classic car club here in Morris - not sure if it still exists - with a member and his Ford Mustang of about 1980. A friend of mine chortled that the Mustang of that time was really not a well-made car. But, to each his own as far as hobbies are concerned.
Talk about dated, "Teen Wolf" was made in pre-digital times. Analog times. Mercy! As the years pass, 1980s movies show their recognizable spots more and more - the pre-digital lifestyle, culture and mores. There just seems to be more "clutter" around. More busy work to do. More sweating in one's employment, more tedium, more of a need to find a "release" from it.
 
Not for "Count Floyd"
"Teen Wolf" is a totally beautiful move, ages well. Critics were ridiculously hard on it at the time. Like I said, it was pre-Internet times when movie reviewers were an "elite" and entitled-feeling crowd. Roger Ebert became famous as an outlier, someone who argued that a movie should be judged on whether it accomplished what it set out to do.
"Teen Wolf" deserves an A-plus. Watching it today, I couldn't care less what any critic has to say about it. I wouldn't even call it a guilty pleasure, it's just a pleasure. It takes the old horror meme and has tons of fun with it, in a manner that doesn't present any "scariness" at all. "Count Floyd" (SCTV) can step aside - this movie about transforming into a wolf isn't "scary." It is amusing and charming. It's about image-conscious youth on the home stretch of their unbridled adolescent years. It's about how the Fox character becomes "big man on campus" as he escapes his pedestrian reality, by this bizarre trait of transforming into a wolf, apparently at will.
Remember "Gerela's Gorillas" of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers football team? Remember how the TV camera always gave us a glimpse of the guy in gorilla suit, in honor of kicker Roy Gerela? A friend of mine always laughed about how the character was just accepted among the surrounding fans - no big deal a gorilla's here. "Nobody cares!" my friend exclaimed.

Dancing on Wolfmobile, to Surfin' song

It's like that in "Teen Wolf," as even the first transformation in public creates only momentary surprise. Then the guy's powers take over as he helps lift his struggling high school basketball team.
My, the surroundings are so humble, a ho-hum gym and surprisingly small fan turnout, not to mention a coach who is mellow in a way that was accepted then. Today all high school coaches are expected to show intensity, to be very serious. Fox's coach is laid-back to say the least but totally likeable, as a guy who just wanted everyone to chill out, fulfill your obligations and then pursue whatever frivolities might interest you.
My community of Morris MN had a big push toward the end of the '80s to get a lot more serious and intense about extracurricular. "Teen Wolf" shows us the era just prior to that, an era that coincided with the end of the notorious baby boom era. That's me in the latter! Public education had such an embarrassment of riches, seemingly endless waves of kids coming through the system. Professional educators could get complacent.
Fox's coach, played by the delightful Jay Tarses, is complacent but also empathetic. Winning isn't the guy's be-all and end-all. Makes me want to pine a little for those days, really.
So "Teen Wolf" is kind of a time capsule.
 
Everyone had to love "Boof"
The secret to a good movie is a good story and appealing characters. "Teen Wolf" gives us everything, especially in the character named "Boof" (Susan Ursitti), who shall we say is the "girl next door." She is presented as less than glamorous - that's the whole idea - but really she's better looking than that. Oops, describing women on the "good looking" scale is politically incorrect by our 2020 standards. Wipe it out. In 1985 there were no inhibitions.
The movie showed us how the Fox character had it made with "Boof" at his side - he should have known it all along. They kiss at the end after the basketball team wins over an arch rival. Fox is finally able to forget the ingenue character (Lorie Griffin) who has distracted him. Also at the end, the team realizes it had the right stuff to win even with Fox not in his wolf mode. They had the talent all along, they just needed a catalyst to realize it. Fox inspires them as the guy he was before. Such a natural actor.
It's a movie I would want to watch again. The moviemakers got the last laugh on the stuffy critics by watching the movie do great at the box office. Fox rendered a gold mine with this movie plus "Back to the Future" with its Delorean. "Teen Wolf" debuted at No. 2 in its opening weekend, behind "Back to the Future."
Fox's character in "Teen Wolf" is Scott Howard. James Hampton is perfectly cast as father Harold Howard, right in the template of hardware store owner. Oh, then there's "Stiles," the kind of fun-loving character we all remember from school. Supposedly he exploits Scott Howard once the "wolf" becomes notorious, and that would suggest something negative, but I didn't react that way. A pothead who sometimes dons sunglasses, I found "Stiles" to be endearing.
 
It doesn't get any better
The best scene in the movie? Allow me to plug the one where the wolf dances and does backflips on top of the moving "Wolfmobile" driven by Stiles. The scene is accompanied by "Surfin' in the USA." It's the epitome of the sheer joy that can consume adolescent youth at times. It doesn't get any better than that.
Jerry Levine plays Rupert "Stiles" Stilinski.
"Teen Wolf" was one of the first scripts written by Jeph Loeb. The studio observed the success of "Valley Girl" and decided the time was right for a low-cost comedy that just might work. Oh my, it did! And we have Meredith Baxter-Birney to thank too. Without her, no movie. She got pregnant. Thus there was a delay in the filming of "Family Ties," a TV series in which Fox co-starred. The delay opened the door.
The movie uses a beaver mascot that happens to be the Oregon State University symbol.
Too bad, Count Floyd, the movie is not "scary" despite the description. So is it camp or cheese? Well, not those qualities either. It touches memories in all of us, relating to the highs and lows of late adolescence, a time when many of us wanted to turn into a monster! But love rules in the end. It conquers all. "The girl next door" flowers and it could make us misty.
Here's a salute to the 1980s movie that touches us in so many ways. Let's just shrug about the critics.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com