The Howling had a troubled production from script rewrites to creative differences and even the director leaving. After Jack Conrad left, Joe Dante took over the project. They didn’t have enough money for groundbreaking werewolf effects, so they shot the movie mostly without werewolves. Belinda Balaski recalls:
When we actually shot The Howling, the werewolves were not finished. We didn’t even really know what it was going look like and how big it was…
Rob Bottin instead only built werewolf hands and a head.
The final death scene might look fairly tame compared to these shots, but the issue with the puppet head was they had to cut many times and each shot had to be up close or else you would have seen it just a guy holding a head. It was very limiting, a puppet like this can’t give you the impression of an actual wolf.
After they finished shooting they asked for a budget increase from Avco Embassy. The footage they showed was strong and convincing, so they gave The Howling the extra funding it needed. 3 months late they went back and reshot the werewolf scenes.
They still kept the puppets and reused them in the car attack scene at the of the movie.
The extra budget allowed them to experiement with many different effects and werewolf looks, which deserves an article of it’s own, but due to time constraints that’s all I could write right now, but The Howling will soon get a deep dive about its effects and production. Be on the lookout! 🐺
