Divorced and exceptionally drab Robert Bridgestone (Kirwin Mathews) gets a weekend with his thirteen-going-on-six-year-old son, Richie (Scott Sealey) in a forest cabin. Their timing is bad when a passing werewolf starts shaking Richie; why is he shaking Richie? Dad intervenes which results in a dead werewolf and a bitten father. Dad never noticed that it was a werewolf but Richie insists on telling everyone, and jumping up and down and acting out the killing, because heās a rotten kid, so a psychologist recommends taking the kid back to the woods becauseā¦ Ā Plot? And wouldnāt you know they wait just long enough for another full moon. Oh, and thereās hippies because it is 1973.
While the title suggests a horror comedy, the only comedy is unintentional, but there is unfortunately a lot of it. This movie is in deadly earnest in the worst way.
It is hard to imagine that The Boy Who Cried Werewolf got a theatrical release. It has the look of a made-for-TV cheepie. There are few characters and fewer sets and it is clear reshoots were not in the budget. Nor were acting lessons for the kid. Although heās not much worse than Mathews or Elaine Devry as the underwritten ex-wife or Robert J. Wilke as the sheriff whose personality changes with each scene.
No money was available for the script either. Things just happen. The divorced wife who shows no sign of interest in her ex just suddenly says, āHey, letās get back together.ā Dad only plans weekends at the cabin during full moons. Night and day shift randomly, or dad loves taking his kid out for midnight fishing trips. The psychologist believes in werewolves enough to pressure dad, but not enough to avoid hanging with him during a full moon. Two vehicles crash when our werewolf steps onto a mountain road, even though the drivers have plenty of time to slow down or swerve out of the way. And being physically incapable of breaching a drawn prentagram is not the sort of thing anyone discusses after the fact.
The make-up is also cheap, resembling a Halloween mask, but most werewolf movies that donāt include Lon Chaney Jr. have sad makeup, so I donāt hold that against the film. I am not that generous with Richie, who is more or less the lead. There needs to be someone likable in order to care about what is happening. For the most past I didnāt care about these folks, but in the case of Richie, I really wanted the werewolf to eat him. Then this might have been passable entertainment. Though I must say, the ending is pretty funny. It isnāt supposed to be, but it is.
Kirwin Mathews is best known as the really white guy pretending to be an Arab in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.