#324 -- Wolf (1994)

Director: Mike Nichols
Rating: 2.5 / 5

Let me tell you, the idea of Jack Nicholson as a werewolf if fucking amazing. I've always found him to be one creepy motherfucker, and to turn him into this supernatural beast with a hunger for people meat? Please! I was pretty sure that Wolf would be wonderful, but...well, I was wrong.

I do think that 'ol Jack is a terrific actor, and it's definitely not his fault that this movie didn't work for me. He played a guy named Will Randall who, after getting into a car accident, was bitten by a wolf. Afterward, he returned to his job at a publishing company, where he was being put out of a job by his younger co-worker (who happened to be sleeping with his wife...and this guy was supposed to be his friend). He left his wife and started sleeping with Michelle Pfeiffer who, seriously, should have played his daughter instead. That whole relationship made me uncomfortable for some reason. He was working on a way to get revenge on that asshole I mentioned earlier, and hopefully get his job back in the process. Oh, and sometimes he'd wake up thinking that he might have killed someone in the middle of the night.

Really, this is more of a drama movie that focuses on Will's relationships and the betrayals that he has to face. All that's okay, I guess, but I really didn't give a shit. The werewolf seemed like more of an afterthought, rather than the main focus of the movie. As a drama, it would have been better had Will fallen deeply in love with Pfeiffer's character. He said he loved her, sure, but I wasn't really able to feel that. All I felt was that he was extremely angry about his friend betraying him, and that maybe that was why he couldn't control his transformations as well as he should have. As a horror movie....there are several ways that it could have been better. The pacing was extremely slow, and the whole thing was just boring. They spent more time in the bedroom than anything, and even that wasn't any good. It wasn't steamy or sexy at all, because the entire time I was thinking that he was way too old for her. If she'd called him Daddy, I would've lost it. Also, Jack Nicholson as a werewolf wasn't as awesome as I'd thought it would be. He just looked weird. Maybe it was their special effects; I'm not sure. But I think he's creepier the way he is, without putting on those contacts and fangs and dumping all that extra hair on him.

There was a fight scene at the end of the movie, so there is some action; but it takes far too long for it to show up, and when it does, it's not that great. It's lame. So, I'm sorry Jack, I love you. But as for Wolf...I didn't hate it, but I definitely didn't like it. I grew up in the '90s, and I still love all those goodies. It was a great decade for cartoons, that's for sure. But I'm starting to think that the '90s wasn't the decade for horror...at all.