BAD MOON (1994)

star: Mariel Hemingway; Michael Pare
lensed in Canada, pretending to be Seattle

Mariel Hemingway is a somewhat attractive lady attorney who acts rude and condescending to everyone she meets and lives in the deep woods with her young son and a big old dog and berates her younger brother who lives in a trailer even farther into the woods, and even though she’s an attorney she can’t seem to figure out that the guy might be a little wacked out even though people start dying immediately wherever he goes and he lives alone and says his fiancé is on a long vacation and the dog, who used to like him, keeps barking at him all the time. C’mon, Mariel, get a clue! He’s a werewolf! OK?

But Mariel insists on wearing these funky, earth-mother, brown slacks that are about two sizes too big and keeps rationalizing that they just happen to be going through a crime spree every time her brother comes around, and that her dog is weird. Would you really want someone as dumb as this representing you in court?

As for the brother, Michael Pare gives a typically tired-looking, phoned-in performance (the same one he’s been doing since Streets of Fire, over 25 years ago!) as the scientist who got bit by the werewolf but thinks his condition can be controlled, not by medication, but by industrial strength handcuffs and being tied to a really strong tree!

What really saves “Bad Moon” is the outstanding photography of NW Washington (make that Canada!) and the un-self-conscious direction of the picture, which moves very quickly through its under-90-minute running time. Horror buffs will enjoy the mostly pre-CGI special effects which hearken back to the original “Werewolf of London,” starring Henry Hull (which the characters actually watch on TV, as sort of a smug in-joke) and the fact that Mariel, as the dyspeptic attorney, and Pare, as the sleepy-eyed wolf dude, both take the proceedings more seriously than this big-budget B-movie actually deserves.

It’s a lot less pretentious than The Howling and far better than any of the discombobulated Howling sequels (especially the Australian one!). If you only watch one horror film this year, don’t make it “Bad Moon.” But if you’re staying home tonight and you’ve called Chicken Delight, and the lights are low, with nowhere to go, pop the “Moon” into your player and let it take you back to the ‘70s when there were still drive-ins and walk-in snack bars and the worst crimes committed were hiding in a smelly trunk even though the driver only paid by the carload.

When I was in college, we did a lot of “bad moons” on people and, believe me, looking at Mariel Hemingway, even in funky, oversized kahkis, is still better than that! Oh, the horror!