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Post by dem bones on Jun 8, 2016 20:47:16 GMT
Whitley Strieber - The Wolfen (Avon, March 1988; originally Bantam, 1978) Blurb: They exist. They have lived on humanity for thousands of years. They are hideously ugly ... unbelievably savage .. . inescapably fast. And smart. Very, very smart.
Now they must be destroyed. By the Only two people who have grasped the full horror.
A man. And a woman. Both cops. And both locked in a strange passion of love, hate, and sheer, absolute, cold, unrelenting terror ...Very grateful to Paul Finch for persuading me to finally exhume The Wolfen from the leaning tower of too-read pile, doubly so as his enthusiastic review on Walking In The Dark means I can enjoy it without the hassle of repeated note-scribbling breaks. The Wolfen are far removed from the familiar werewolf of 'fact,' fiction, folklore & Co. Forget any showy man-into-beast transformations. These magnificent creatures are stuck with their appearance for keeps, necessitating a clandestine existence in the shadows of any and every major city you care to mention. Where better for the New York chapter to function than the derelict slums of the Bronx? The Wolfen prey upon the destitute and socially outcast without anybody realising or caring. On the rare occasion they are glimpsed in public, the pack are invariably dismissed as stray dogs. But now the Wolfen come under threat of discovery. The reckless young hot-head contingent attack and cannibalise two armed cops in an alley without troubling to dispose of the vomit-inducing leftovers. Police Chief Underwood is desperate to whitewash the incident as a horrible fluke - the men were overcome by carbon-monoxide fumes and devoured by starving canines - until the corpse of a tramp is found in similar condition. Detectives' George Wilson and Becky Neff, who disputed his ridiculous version of events, are reassigned the grisly case, not least for their scapegoat potential should the investigation go belly up. As it most surely will. [To be continued ...]
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Post by mattofthespurs on Jun 9, 2016 7:27:58 GMT
I remember really enjoying this when I originally read it in the 1980's, don't know why I haven't gone back to it in all this time.
Recently re-watched the film which I very much enjoyed.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 9, 2016 10:43:48 GMT
I remember really enjoying this when I originally read it in the 1980's, don't know why I haven't gone back to it in all this time. Recently re-watched the film which I very much enjoyed. Might be time for a rematch, Matt. I've 100 pages to go and it's been all good so far, violence on a graphic novel scale, and characters you can believe in if not exactly identify with. Wilson is a curmudgeonly fifty-something misanthrope, in love with his colleague and loathing himself for it. Beth, meanwhile, 34 and "attractive," is all out of love with husband, Dick, a cop on the take. Throw in Chief Underwood, whose only concern is saving his own arse and sod the collateral damage, Dr. Evans, Chief medical examiner with a Ph.d in advanced sarcasm, and his callow understudy, Carl Ferguson, who has just spent an afternoon at the library boning up on Montague Summers' "classic" The Werewolf, and you've not got a dream team. It's probably an advantage that I've not seen the film because the way things are shaping up, logically there can only be one winner, and it ain't the humans. |
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 9, 2016 16:25:54 GMT
It's many years since I've seen the film or read the book - the vague memory I have is that I enjoyed both, but they take quite different views of what "The Wolfen" actually are.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 9, 2016 16:48:57 GMT
It's many years since I've seen the film or read the book - the vague memory I have is that I enjoyed both, but they take quite different views of what "The Wolfen" actually are. Strikes me that it would be very difficult to do 'The Wolfen' justice on film. Think I'll have to exhume The Hunger next as I'm not even sure if I read it. Seen the film a number of times - once at a Vampyre Society meeting: that was a good night! - but it's only Bauhaus's finest four-or-so minutes lodged in my brain. |
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Post by mattofthespurs on Jun 10, 2016 7:29:39 GMT
I love both the book and the film of The Hunger.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 10, 2016 17:49:44 GMT
I love both the book and the film of The Hunger. Turns out I read The Hunger way back in the last century, awarded it one * denoting "good" under tragic marking system. The Wolfen has definitely put me in the mood for a rematch. |
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Post by Middoth on Oct 16, 2021 10:47:11 GMT
The film adaptation is noteworthy. The werewolf's perspective uses the same shooting technique as "Predator". For me, a definite plus of the sight of demolished neighborhoods of houses - a sight immortalized here and in "Night of the Juggler", not to mention "Escape from New York".
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Oct 16, 2021 15:35:23 GMT
The film adaptation is noteworthy. The werewolf's perspective uses the same shooting technique as "Predator". For me, a definite plus of the sight of demolished neighborhoods of houses - a sight immortalized here and in "Night of the Juggler", not to mention "Escape from New York".
Some areas of New York in the 1970s and 1980s were shocking. The white middle classes had fled to the suburbs, and landlords were burning down their own properties for insurance money. New York also nearly went broke. I found this, but haven't been able to watch it fully yet. |
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