Ultimate Werewolf

NECA'd again! What was supposed to be a healing retreat in the woods for a TV news anchor turns out to be a terrifying ordeal full of transforming werewolves! Yes, despite my not-so-secret obsession, I've never seen The Howling. I've never seen a lot of "classic" werewolf movies. Heck, I've only ever seen An American Werewolf in London one time, and that was via Netflix. But until somebody makes some Ginger Snaps action figures, I will continue to be tricked into buying toys from properties I know nothing about. The Howling werewolf design is just as vertical as the London werewolf is horizontal - this wolfman is a wolf man. The Howling and American Werewolf came out within months of one another in 1981, and it's interesting that between them, they represent an inflection point in pop culture werewolves: before this, every single cinematic werewolf (that didn't turn into a full wolf) was a Lon Chaney-style hairy-handed gent. The dueling 1981 films presented two divergent paths future werewolves could follow (though they are, at their core, both simply an evolution/​exaggeration of the two forms we just mentioned). If you've seen The Real Ghostbusters or Tales from the Cryptkeeper or Altered Beast or Darkstalkers or Dog Soldiers or Underworld or Van Helsing or Doctor Who or Goosebumps or... well, you get the idea. You know which wolf won. At the earliest stages, The Howling's werewolf was being designed by Rick Baker: John Landis had been blue-balling Baker for over a decade with promises of making AWiL, but never seemed to get his act together to do it; so when Joe Dante asked Baker to work on his adaptation of the 1977 Howling novel, he agreed; Baker told Landis what he was working on, and that finally convinced the director he needed to make his movie. Since Baker had had a verbal agreement with Landis, he begged off Dante's movie, but suggested his protege, Rob Bottin, take over The Howling's actual work while he just remained on as a consultant. Eventually he realized his London designs were bleeding into Howling, and, recognizing that wouldn't be fair to either movie, he finally let Bottin be fully in charge of inventing this beast. What he came up with was this tall, upright beast, with a large lupine head and fur entirely covering the body. This action figure's sculpt is credited solely to Kyle Windrix, the Tankman himself, who's done a great job on all that fur and the long, weird fingers. The figure doesn't have any accessories, because what is a werewolf going to hold? A manilla folder? A tape recorder? We get several pairs of hands that all look fairly identical - one with short fingers, two (more flat or more curled) with long fingers. The important thing is the three swappable heads. Right out of the box, the figure has a nice, intimidating snarl on its lips. All three heads have the mouths open to show off teeth, because none of the puppets used to make the werewolf in the film were designed with closed mouths. So even the "basic" head looks furious. We also get one with the mouth open, as though the wolf were... making some kind of mouth noise? I don't know, is there a word for that? The sound a wolf makes? Does anyone familiar with The Howling know what name you might call a wolf's vocalizations? The third head is the only one where the werewolf's mouth is bloody, rather than clean. It's also the only one where the jaw is articulated, rather than sculpted in position, so you get to decide whether you want to see the tongue or not. That reminds me of the articulated jaw on the Creature from the Black Lagoon: namely, if you've got this one, why do you need the others? Why not just make two versions of the same head, with and without blood on the teeth? It's possible this was done for fans who don't like seeing joints there, but I personally don't know. Swapping the heads is slightly difficult. They go on via a balljoint, so that's not too bag, but that balljoint is just one end of a barbell, so getting it to stay still while you try to push the head on is annoying - something that's not helped by the sharp ears digging into your palm when you try it. The werewolf's neck is done as a "collar" rather than being sculpted on - there are just two rings of fur that rest over the two smooth plastic lumps beneath. Those interior pieces are what actually move, while the rings shift around them. You may never notice it when you're watching the film, but none of the puppets used to portray The Howling's werewolf had legs: it was easier to puppeteer it if it was just an upper body, with the effects crew hiding underneath; any scenes that showed feet were done with insert shots of a separate leg prop. Obviously the NECA figure is going to be more contiguous than that, so its articulation includes swivel/​hinge toes, heels, ankles, and knees; swivel thighs; balljoint hips and chest; swivel/hinge wrists and elbows; swivel biceps; swivel/hinge shoulders; and then, as we said before, a balljointed base of the neck, barbell mid-neck, barbell head, and a hinged jaw on one of the heads. Plentiful. Because it would be hard to keep such a tall figure standing on such tiny feet, NECA included a clear plastic display base with two different-height support rods, so you have options on how you want to pose him. This isn't the first time they've done something like this. Rather than a photo diorama backdrop behind the figure, we just get some blue smoke. Like, it may be a photo of real smoke, but it's not (for example) a doctor's office or a porno theater or a barn stuffed with reused Texas Chainsaw Massacre props - it's just smoke. You could have made the same thing in Photoshop. Is this NECA's way of cutting corners as the cost of manufacturing rises: not paying anyone to build an photograph an in-scale scene? If so, we'll miss those, but it beats Hasbro's plan of removing important leg joints because they think you're too dumb to notice. (By contrast, the Kessler Wolf's backdrop was aa dirty alleyway with bags of trash and a dumpster; the reason it's not shown in that review's photos? Forgot to use it, and then was too lazy to go back and retake all the photos again. And if you subscribed to our Patreon, you'd already know that story. Plug!) The Howling may have won when it came to defining the future direction of werewolf design, but American Werewolf in London had the better transformation effects - it shouldn't really be surprising that Rick Baker was better than his protege, no matter how good that protege was. SOTA apparently wanted to make a Howling figure long ago, but were unable to get the license, which is why we got Dog Soliders instead. This figure, almost 20 years later, would have been better anyway. Besides, it's fun to have both this one and the Kessler wolf, to re-create 1981's biggest duel. -- 10/30/25 What's the best Howling sequel? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.