Teen Wolf

1985 werewolf comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Scott Howard has no identity. He's a mediocre basketball player on a terrible high school team. The object of his affection doesn't know he exists. He's even got a really boring name! That all changes when he turns into a werewolf, the transformation suddenly giving him this dynamic personality and superhuman abilities. Becoming a wolf, however, has its price, and the price for Scott Howard is his true self.

Here's the deal. Since 1985, I've had recurring nightmares where I die after an accident while surfing on my friend's van. The dream is generally the same with slight variations. I'm surfing, and my friend starts turning into a wolf, gets really freaked out by the sight of his wolf fingernails, and swerves wildly. I spill off, the Beach Boys music stops, and a steamroller rolls over me. My last words are almost always, "Learn to fucking drive, Alex P. Keaton!" For the past 25 years or so, I've been convinced that I will die while surfing on a van and have done my best to avoid the activity.

Recently, as most of my readers know, I've been working at the dumpiest motel on the face of the earth, an establishment crawling with drug dealers, prostitutes, and drifters. Lately, it seems that it's unlikely that I'll die while surfing on a van and will probably die while working a night shift at this motel.

So in retrospect, it was probably a terrible idea to watch Teen Wolf while working a night shift at the motel. I'm not supposed to sit on the couch in the lobby and watch television anyway. Well, I don't think I am. It's never been addressed officially, but it seems like a really strange thing for my manager to pay me to do. If he knew, I can imagine having a conversation with him that had the words "Do you think I pay you to sit around and watch Teen Wolf?" which would probably make me start laughing which would make him ask "What? Do you think this is funny?" which would make me say (of course!) "I am an animal! Woooo!"

The perfect end to that story would be for my manager and I to take advantage of the sweet van the motel uses to shuttle people to the airport (illegally, it seems, since we're told to take off the sign on the door that advertises the inn because "we're not allowed there") to ride the waves. It's the perfect vehicle for van surfing! We would go out on the highway and pull over on the shoulder. My boss, a little Indian fellow, would start to get out, but I'd stop him, look him in the eye, and say, "These waves are mine." And then I'd probably die.

But I digress. My manager isn't Stiles, and I doubt he'd ever take me van surfing. Watching the most dangerous movie of all time in the most dangerous motel of all time? I defied the odds by surviving the experience. It's like I stared Death in his scary skull eyes and chuckled. And I got paid like 15 dollars to watch Teen Wolf on a couch that smells like somebody urinated on it. That, my friends, is a win-win situation.

"I'm not a fag. I'm a werewolf." I think that line was in Universal's Wolf Man, wasn't it?