FULL MOON HIGH (1981)

FULL MOON HIGH (1981)

Tagline: It's tough enough being a teenager . . . try turning into a werewolf every full moon.

(Comedy, Horror, Wolf On…Wolf Off) [PG]

Romania, it's quite a country. It's deep behind the Iron Curtain. It's steeped in the superstition of the Dark Ages. A country wrapped by ignorance and fear. You'll enjoy it.

In this one, a teenage football player named Tony gets bitten by a werewolf while on a trip to Romania. When he gets back he begins to rampage at night, but still has to deal with all the issues that come with being a teenage werewolf during the day. 

First off, yes, this movie is basically a satirical nod to werewolf films in general, but its main influence is I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF. It was not influenced by TEEN WOLF which came out 4 years later with essentially the same premise. During the 80’s we also had TEEN WOLF TOO, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and MY MOM’S A WEREWOLF rounding out a healthy dose of “werewolf-centric” comedies for the decade. This one is better than all of them in the comedy department because it is completely self-aware and really isn’t even trying to be all that coherent. Essentially it’s a string of gags, but I guess was labeled a horror film or at least a fun Halloween season movie due to the off-screen kills and bloodless kills onscreen. 

Unfortunately, even though this movie is funnier than the werewolf films I’ve listed here, it’s still not that funny. Most of the film comes across as a dry 80s stand-up comedy act. In this one, you feel like even if you miss a joke you aren’t missing much. It’s very dry and by today’s standards, comes across as a very ho-hum lackluster effort for well over the entire first half of the movie. The good news is that it does find its stride a bit.

There are a few good lines and scenes though. One is where Ed McMahon who plays Tony’s father, Col. William P. Walker, basically re-enacts an Alpo Dog Food commercial that became famous on late-night television. Another thing I actually thought was pretty hilarious was the running violin jokes throughout the whole movie. I think it cracked me up because of how much violins were overdone in horror flicks, especially in the 50s. Another thing that may not have been intentional that I thought was pretty funny was the original werewolf sounding a heck of a lot like a jaguar rather than anything wolf-related. There are also some pretty whack props, like a high school paper that has the headline “Werewolf Annoys Community”.  

Acting-wise, Alan Arkin (SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER) who plays Dr. Brand in this is also pretty funny when he’s on screen. We also get a small amount of Pat Morita (THE KARATE KID) and Jim J. Bullock (SPACEBALLS) as kind of side characters in this and are pretty good. We also have a Laurene Landon sighting as Blondie. She is most famous for MANIAC COP. On top of that, we also get Roz Kelly who plays Jane. Roz Kelly was also famous for being in NEW YEAR’S EVIL and playing Pinky Tuscadero on “Happy Days”. The movie's main actor is Adam Arkin who plays Tony. He is okay but was given a LOT of the cheesiest lines. So it was definitely loaded in the talent department.

Where this thing kind of goes off the rails is in the story department. At least in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, we got a crazy amount of story and even though some elements get out of hand, it’s very hard to look away. This movie isn’t visually challenging and doesn’t really ever have a point where you feel scared. This is probably going to be more fun for the 40-somethings than kids who will likely have a lot of the adult jokes go over their heads.

Overall this is a 4 out of 7 if you are in the mood for dialog-driven dry humor and gags before everything got super sensitive and humor had to dumb itself down to the point of being listless and dull.

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