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The Film: 2/5
Over two decades after the drive-in horror classic I Was a Teenage Werewolf and four years before the first Teen Wolf, lycanthropy infiltrated the student body in 1981’s Full Moon High, a goofball wannabe spoof of hairy scare flicks written, produced, and directed by the legendary B-movie auteur Larry Cohen.
Part of the film catalogue of the long-shuttered Filmways Pictures bought up by MGM, this howler of a movie makes its Blu-ray debut from Shout! Factory care of the company’s Scream Factory imprint geared towards resurrecting beloved horror and sci-fi titles. The existence of Full Moon High in high-definition leads me to suspect that Scream is finally scraping the bottom of the barrel for fresh product on which to slap their good name.
When aspiring high school football star Tony (Adam Arkin) agrees to accompany his military man father (Ed McMahon) on a top-secret trip to Romania to recover microfilm for the C.I.A., a nocturnal encounter with a werewolf leaves him alive but cursed to transform into one himself whenever the moon is full. Not a killer werewolf who rips his victims to shreds and feasts on their blood, mind you, but one that just bites unsuspecting townsfolk on their ass, legs, etc., and becomes more of an annoyance than a threat. After inadvertently causing the death of his dad, Tony leaves his small town to carry his curse elsewhere. He returns about two decades later and decides to pose as his own son so he can reenroll in his alma mater Full Moon High and try to complete his education and finally realize his dreams of football stardom. His attempts at reestablishing a normal life are complicated by some trigger-happy citizens who haven’t forgotten his harmless rampage in the 50’s, not to mention his predilection for wolfing out at the most inconvenient moments.
Larry Cohen knew how to add dashes of levity to his memorable genre efforts like It’s Alive, God Told Me To, and Q: The Winged Serpent to increase their entertainment value and ensure repeat viewings, but his first out-and-out comedy is a scattershot affair further hampered by sight gags and one-liners that miss more than they hit and a leaden pace that makes the 95-minute running time feel twice as long. Cohen chose to bury the decent story he had concocted under an avalanche of sub-National Lampoon/Mad Magazine humor, taking the focus off Tony’s dilemma at the moments where it would be most valued. Plus, there is too much screen time given over to wacky supporting characters somewhat brought to life by a game and talented cast. After a while you start to wonder if Cohen just wanted to make a goofy comedy and was compelled by his investors to add the horror elements in order to make the final product more enticing to moviegoers of the time.
Werewolves came back big time in the early 1980’s. 1981 alone saw the debut of three of the horror sub-genre’s greatest films – The Howling, Wolfen, and An American Werewolf in London. Full Moon High was the last of the major modern werewolf fright films to be released, and it certainly deserved to come dead last. Cohen aimed to make a horror spoof in the vein of the Zucker Brothers, but he forgot to provide his contribution to the genre with a solid foundation consisting of an interesting plot and characters both likeable and relatable on which he could then construct something scary and screwy in equal doses. Jokes and ideas are thrown at us at top speed, but few are able to barely produce a chuckle and the rest don’t linger long enough to die on screen, which is one of Full Moon High’s scant saving graces – it moves so fast that the lamer gags are quickly forgotten while the next round of shenanigans are being set up. But seriously, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf is a much funnier werewolf movie than Full Moon High, and it wasn’t even trying to be funny.
Too busy coming up with raucous gags to pay closer attention to his own story, Cohen forgets to lay down any ground rules and doesn’t even seem to care about honoring the tropes of past werewolf films. In a desperate attempt to secure the PG rating that turned out to be Full Moon High’s worse enemy, he restricts the body count to one single, accidental death and goes out of his way to develop Tony into the screen’s suckiest wolf man. He doesn’t kill his victims, only bites them, but those bites don’t result in his curse being passed on even though that’s how he became a werewolf in the first place. Instead of human flesh, Cohen gives Tony an appetite for dog food. Our hero’s first transformation occurs 16 minutes into the movie and it takes place on an airplane during a well-timed hijacking, which would indicate that Tony doesn’t have to wait for a full moon to get hairy and vicious. Cohen could use these sequences to build tension and surprise, but they would be instantly drained by his “jokes”. At least the werewolf make-up designed by Rick Baker protégé Steve Neill (Ghostbusters) dispenses with full-body suits (apart from the one glimpsed in the Romania scenes, and it is terrible) in favor of an old school look that owes much to the Jack Pierce brilliance that turned Henry Hull into The Werewolf of London and Lon Chaney into The Wolf Man.
Adam Arkin is a solid actor, but he seems disengaged and distant from the craziness Cohen was trying to generate in Full Moon High, though he does give some scenes his all and delivers a professional performance. It’s just that the role, and the film, deserved much more. The director surrounds his lead with co-stars ready and willing to go for broke when the cameras roll. Despite being a mere vehicle for the film’s tepid homophobic humor, the great Kenneth Mars scores a few worthwhile laughs as the school’s gay football coach. Stand-up comics Bill Kirchenbauer and Bob Saget are intermittently amusing as former teammates of Tony’s who grow up to become a cop and a sportscaster respectively. Best known as the star of classic exploitation flicks Switchblade Sisters and The Visitor, Joanne Nail shows off impressive comedic chops as a kooky and kinky student who takes a liking to Tony. 80’s TV fixture Jim J. Bullock has moments as a dork at Full Moon, and the one and only Pat Morita shows up for one hilarious scene as a silversmith hired to make the bullets that could put Tony in his grave for good. Sanford and Son’s Demond Wilson makes a welcome appearance as a bus driver who lucks out into having Tony for a passenger at the worst possible time.
Full Moon High has two most valuable players in its acting ensemble, the first being longtime Tonight Show second banana Ed McMahon as Tony’s paranoid, right-wing military nut of a father. McMahon’s booming voice, honed through decades in the entertainment industry, make some of Cohen’s dumber excuses for humor worthy of laughs. But it is the second MVP who just about steals this movie and keeps it in an account in the Cayman Islands: Arkin’s father Alan, playing the hilariously insensitive psychiatrist Dr. Brand. From the moment he enters the story at the start of the third act, Arkin owns his every scene with a wickedly dry and fast-paced wit. He gets some genuinely funny dialogue from Cohen that he delivers with panache (“I’d like to see a wolf turn into a man! That would be progress.”) and a priceless fourth wall-smashing gag inside a jail cell that had me laughing so hard I would have rather watched it on repeat instead of finishing the movie.
Horror fans will get a real kick out of seeing the names of cinematographer Daniel Pearl and art director Robert Burns in the credits as both men got their start in film working on the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Pearl has gone on to shoot countless music videos for artists like Mariah Carey, Bon Jovi, Michael Jackson, and Jennifer Lopez, as well as films such as the TCM and Friday the 13th remakes and most recently Mom and Dad with Nicolas Cage and Selma. Before passing away in May 2004, Burns served as the art director on the original The Hills Have Eyes, Tourist Trap, The Howling, and Re-Animator, and as the set decorator for Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft adaptation From Beyond. Proving yet again that there was far more talent involved in the making of Full Moon High than it really deserved.
Audio/Video: 3.5/5
Full Moon High comes to Blu-ray with a respectable 1080p high-definition transfer encoded in MPEG-4 AVC video and presented in its original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio. Sourced from a recent HD master prepared by MGM, the picture quality, though hardly a dazzler, is bolstered by balanced grain content and warm color timing that doesn’t pop yet looks nice all the same. Flesh tones appear accurate, while the upgrade in sharpness brings out renewed texture in close-up shots and backgrounds. Print damage is virtually nowhere to be found. The film’s original mono soundtrack is recreated with effective results in the form of a surprisingly spacious and distortion-free English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack. Dialogue and sound effects are integrated into the mix with special attention paid to volume level consistency and the two elements never clash. Only the blaring “comedy” score by Electric Company alum Gary William Friedman threatens to drown everything else out, but otherwise the audio quality on this Blu-ray is solid. English subtitles have also been provided.
Extras: 1/5
The main new extra of interest is an audio commentary with director Cohen moderated by Steve Mitchell, the director of the documentary King Cohen. The two participants share a warm interplay that keeps the track running smoothly and full of interesting stories regarding the production and the themes Cohen was exploring in his narrative. He speaks candidly about his cast, particularly the Arkin men, but his comments are mostly of the praise variety. The original theatrical trailer (3 minutes) closes out this rather slim selection of supplements. Avoid the trailer if you haven’t watched the movie before because it gives away most of the jokes that work.
Overall: 2/5
A forgettable foray into horror-comedy that lacks bite (pun intended) and focus, Full Moon High ends up a scattershot collection of jokes that don’t always land and fascinating themes that are left underdeveloped and helpless in the face of the comedic chaos writer-director Larry Cohen wanted to create. Fans of 1980’s scare spoofs will find this one closer in spirit and execution to the likes of Saturday the 14th and Transylvania 6-5000 than Young Frankenstein (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but they may give Full Moon High a shot regardless of its squandered ambitions if they’re really desperate for an easy laugh. At least Scream Factory has given it a spiffy HD bump and the Cohen commentary is worth a single listen.
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