The Boy Who Cried Werewolf

Infobox Film
name = The Boy Who Cried Werewolf


image_size = 250px
caption = Promotional movie poster for the film
director = Nathan H. Juran
producer = Aaron Rosenberg
writer = Bob Homel
starring = Kerwin Mathews
Elaine Devry
Scott Sealey
music = Ted Stovall
cinematography = Michael P. Joyce
editing = Barton Hayes
distributor = Universal Pictures (theatrical, USA)
released = 1973
runtime = 93 min
country = flagicon|USA USA
language = English
budget =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0069820

"The Boy Who Cried Werewolf" is a 1973 film directed by Nathan H. Juran.

Plot summary

A boy visits his father in a secluded cabin. The father is attacked by a werewolf and then becomes a werewolf. The boy constantly tries to tell others, but nobody will believe him.

Plot detail

Robert Bridgestone (Kerwin Mathews), a divorced father, takes his son, Richie, up to the family mountain cabin. As the movie opens we see the car winding through the hills, and zoom in on a very unpleasant looking werewolf running around the woods along the side of the road, and finally snarling at the camera through some branches. The two arrive at the cabin and unpack, then dad suggests they eat in town after taking a late night walk through the woods. Needless to say, the werewolf has been watching them, waiting for his moment to strike, and as the father and son stroll around the dark woods, sure enough, the werewolf jumps out and attacks Richie. Dad rushes to the rescue, and a violent fight follows, ending in the werewolf tripping and falling over a cliff...but not before biting Robert. Richie looks down to see the monster, impaled on a wooden fence at the bottom of a ravine, only now it has changed back to human form.

The Sheriff concludes that a crazy drifter attacked the two, and is satisfied to leave it at that, despite the disturbing fact that absolutely no identification can be made on the man. Richie insists it was a werewolf that attacked them, and his father and the Sheriff are amused at his childish imagination. Robert takes Richie home to his mother, Sandy (Elaine Devry), who is immediately treated to an excited Richie's recounting of his dad's brave fight with a werewolf, as well as her former husband's clear interest in reuniting. She appears to have no such interest herself, but is adamant that Robert have a talk with Richie's psychiatrist. He agrees, reluctantly, and makes an appointment. The psychiatrist (George Gaynes, famous character actor) tells Robert that Richie's werewolf fixation stems from his inability to accept that his father killed a man, and instead has concocted a fantasy wherein his father bravely battles a monster. He suggests that Robert take his son back up to the mountain cabin, predicting that when Richie is returned to the scene of the crime and sees that everything is normal, his interest in werewolves will cease.

Travelling up to the cabin during another cycle of the full moon, they pass a hippie Jesus commune, and Richie asks if they can stop and visit. His father reminds Richie that they are going to do some fishing and have a grill-out afterwards, and tells him they will stop and watch the hippies the next time. Upon arriving at the cabin, they begin to unpack, and Robert suddenly is hit with a wave of pain. He tells Richie to take the fishing poles down to the stream, and that he will join him in a minute. Stumbling into the storage shed below the cabin, Robert looks into an old mirror and watches, horrified, as he turns into a carbon copy of the creature that he had killed the previous month. Later, at the stream, Richie hears something coming through the brush, and looks up to see, not his father, but the hideous werewolf, apparently resurrected from the dead. He runs, screaming through the dark woods, the werewolf in hot pursuit. Richie crosses a mountain road, and the werewolf gets halfway across, when a car's headlights illuminate the wolfman, who screams and gestures wildly. The car goes over an embankment. Suddenly a TV repair truck, travelling down the other lane, picks out the creature in its headlights, and the driver swerves and hits the hillside on the opposite side of the road. The werewolf runs to the crash, and the driver, still alive, is viciously attacked and dismembered by the vicious monster. Richie witnesses all of this and then continues his flight through the dark night, finally finding a camper belonging to two newlyweds. He tells them his story, and although they aren't ready to believe in werewolves, see the boy is distressed, and the man agrees to take Richie home. Upon arriving back at the cabin, they discover that Richie's father is not there, and Richie begs the man to let him return with him to the camper for the night. The next morning Robert, appearing dazed and confused, shows up at the camper, and tells the couple he has been searching for Richie all night. Richie tells his dad about the werewolf, but Robert is clearly losing patience with his son's fantasies. The next night, another full moon, and this time the werewolf, stealthily opening the cabin door and creeping silently through the house, is disappointed to discover that Richie has anticipated his moves, and hidden himself. The werewolf leaves the cabin, where he seeks out the newlywed couple, pushes their camper down a steep hill, and drags the bodies out to mutilate them, beheading one of them, and saving the head as a sort of trophy, which he carries back to the cabin in a burlap bag. He returns to the cabin just before daybreak, sneaking into the shed beneath, and digging a hole which he plans to bury his victim's head in. Richie, hearing the werewolf return, sneaks down into the shed to see what is going on, and witnesses the werewolf's transformation back into his father. The Sheriff visits seconds after the transformation is complete, to report on the killings of the previous night, apparently convinced that there must be a connection between the horrible attack on the TV repairman, and the newlyweds. On the drive home, Richie questions his father about his actions on the previous evening, but Robert dismisses everything, clearly irritable and bothered about his memory blackout. Richie jumps hurriedly out of the car upon arriving at his mother's house, telling her that he is scared to be alone with his father, because his father is a monster.

Sandy asks Robert to have dinner with her at a Japanese steakhouse. During dinner she tells Robert what Richie has said, and it is agreed that another visit with Richie's psychiatrist is in order. The psychiatrist tells Robert that he believes that Richie is genuine in his belief that Robert is a werewolf, and that these type of fantasies can be quite powerful for children. It is suggested that this time a family weekend should be planned which includes Richie's mother. Robert is now pacing back and forth in the psychiatrist's office, and we see that the meeting was apparently one which lasted into the evening. Another month has passed since Robert and Richie's last trip to the cabin. The full moon is rising...

The next day, a reluctant Richie and his mom prepare to leave for the cabin with Robert, unaware that the front page of the morning paper reveals a grisly headline...Local Psychiatrist Murdered. The three set out for the cabin, stopping at the hippie encampment on the way, as Robert had promised Richie they would do so on their last trip. The hippies, lead by a wild-eyed Alan Ginsberg type in a cassock (played by Bob Homel) are forming a circle of power to drive away evil spirits. When the family stop to watch, the hippies shout at them to join them in the circle, and while Sandy finds it merely amusing and agrees, when Robert tries to pass over the boundary of the circle, he is stopped short and cannot move further, as if an invisible barrier were in front of him. Sandy, disturbed, grabs him and they get back in the car and continue on to the cabin. At the cabin, they settle down for the evening, and all is well for a while. Sandy starts to talk with Robert in a gentle voice, confessing that she really has missed him, and that perhaps they should get back together. The full moon rises, and Robert turns his back on her, silently walking away. In the shed he finds Richie, digging up the bag he had seen his father (in werewolf form) burying on their last visit. Robert grabs Richie, clearly in the first stages of transformation, and begs Richie to lock him in the shed. Richie does this, but just as he finishes, his mother sees him, and hears the noises in the shed. She asks who is in there, and Richie tells her it's his dad, whereupon she scolds Richie and tries to open the shed. Richie screams at her just as a clawed hand bursts a hole in the shed door. Richie and his mom run to the car, escaping just as the werewolf emerges, screaming and snarling, from the shed.

In town they tell the Sheriff of the attack, and upon returning to the cabin find the creature gone. The Sheriff leaves some men to stand guard for the night. Later that evening, as Sandy sleeps in a chair by the fire, the werewolf slips silently through a window of the cabin. It sniffs at her evilly, and Sandy awakes to find the thing staring her directly in the face. The werewolf grabs her and begins to carry her off, but the deputies hear the screams and burst into the room. They shoot at the monster as it jumps back out the window. Richie begs for them not to hurt his dad, but of course everyone still cannot accept that it is a werewolf, let alone Richie's father. Toward morning the werewolf attacks the hippie camp, enraged at his latest failure, and as the sun rises, the werewolf grows weak and falls to the ground, the hippies praying for the creature's soul, and the transformation is witnessed by the entire commune, although they do not understand what they have seen. Later the day, toward evening, the Sheriff organizes a search party to find the murdering creature, and as everyone leaves to hunt the woods, Richie breaks away from his mom and heads off to try and save his dad. As the moon rises, Richie finds his father, once again transformed, who grabs him and carries him off, with a mob close behind him, and Richie's mom screaming. Cornered, the werewolf attacks Richie, biting him on the arm, before a hail of gunfire distracts him. The bullets cannot kill him, but as he frantically tries to seek a way out of the crowd, he stumbles and falls backwards onto the broken stake that had held the hippies' makeshift cross into the ground. It pierces his heart, and as a horrified Richie and Sandy watch, the werewolf transforms back into Robert. The last thing we see is Sandy examining her son's bite mark, a look of dawning horror on her face...

External links

*imdb title|id=0069820|title=The Boy Who Cried Werewolf