His Hair was Perfect

Film: Wolf
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!.

There’s something very teenager-y about a lot of the classic movie monsters. Nowhere is that more the case than with werewolves. Werewolves are the ultimate teenagers—they get filled with urges that they can’t control and they sprout hair all over their bodies. The fact that in Wolf it happens to a late-50s Jack Nicholson is beside the point. The fact that he becomes more or less a creature of his urges like the average horny 16-year-old boy is what makes it a classic werewolf story.

New York book editor Will Randall (Nicholson) is driving in New England and hits a wolf with his car. This is very much out of the normal range for wolves, and when he gets out to check on the animal, he is bitten. In a movie called Wolf, you can pretty much bet that the wolf that bit him wasn’t a normal wolf, and of course that’s going to be the case. We also discover that the publisher he works for has just been purchased by a billionaire named Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer), who is making some changes. One of those changes is offering Will a significant demotion or no job; Will is being replaced by his protégé Stewart Swinton (James Spader). This is also where Will meets Laura Alden (Michelle Pfeiffer), Raymond’s wayward daughter.

Because the wolf that bit him was not a normal wolf, Will is starting to gain some wolf-like traits. One of those is heightened senses. Noticing a particular scent on his wife’s clothing, Will discovers that Stewart has not only sniped his job, but has been cuckolding him. Since Will is essentially fresh out of fucks to give, he leaves his wife (Kate Nelligan) and moves into a hotel and starts a plan to get his job back. As a long-time senior editor with a lot of loyal writers in his past (and a few loyal employees including one played by a young David Hyde Pierce), Will powerplays to get his job back, more or less buoyed by the wolf blood running through his veins.

But the wolf stuff is a problem, and it’s one he can’t get help with from his doctor. He turns to mythology instead, getting some advice from Dr. Vijav Alezais (Om Puri), who is himself dying and wants Will to bite him in an effort to save himself.

So where are the complications? Well, Will is becoming a wolf, and we see him frequently as a sort of humanoid wolf. If you remember the first X-Men movie, he looks a great deal like Sabretooth. He also attacks a few people and has no memory of it—all of the classic werewolf tropes. So what happens with his new relationship with Laura Alden? And when his estranged wife turns up with her throat ripped out, what happens when he can’t confirm his alibi? And, of course, we forget for a while that he bit Stewart, which means that Stewart might be turning into a wolf as well.

Wolf has a deep cast. In addition to those already mentioned, Richard Jenkins shows up as a police detective, and David Schwimmer has a few lines as a cop who tries to arrest Will in the zoo. There’s also an appearance by Prunella Scales who you’ll know if you know your post Monty-Python British sitcoms.

Wolf is only vaguely a horror movie; it’s much more a supernatural romance than anything else. It’s perhaps a bit of a cliché to turn mid-‘90s James Spader into a sexually-charged bad guy, but that’s where this goes, and Spader actually makes it work. He’s always been a pretty good villain, and he’s never been afraid to play up the sexual angle in anything that he’s been in—and that’s the case here. While there’s a certain animalism to Nicholson’s performance, Spader’s is pure sex.

I like what Wolf does with the werewolf idea. This is not a werewolf like we’ve seen in previous films like The Howling. According to this mythology, anyone bitten by a werewolf literally turns into a wolf at some point and stays that way. It’s a very interesting way to take the curse of lycanthropy because it frees up the victim in a lot of ways. Will doesn’t have to worry that the police are looking for him if he turns into a wolf; after all, his former self will be gone and won’t be found.

The question, though, is whether or not this is worth watching. It probably is, but only once. Once again we’re going to get that Hollywood age gap—Nicholson is something like 20 years older than Michelle Pfeiffer, and that’s unnecessary. A younger actor might have been a better choice for this, or an older love interest might work better as well. But it is what it is, and what it is is an interesting and weird romance and not a whole lot more.

Why to watch Wolf: Jack Nicholson turns into Wolverine. How can you resist?
Why not to watch: Honestly, it needs more wolf-iness.