My Mom’s A Werewolf
(1989) Color, 90 min.
Rated: PG
Country: USA
Director: Michael Fischa
Starring: Susan Blakely, John Saxon, John Schuck, Ruth Buzzi, Marilyn McCoo, Marcia Wallace
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Leslie is a wife, a mother, and now a werewolf.
Synopsis:
Leslie Shaber (Blakely) arrives home tired after doing grocery shopping. Her husband Howard (Schuck) does not like her vegetarian cooking and avoids going home for dinner. Her daughter, Jennifer, has left to go to a sci-fi con and she’s left alone at home, feeling unloved.
Meanwhile at the con, Jennifer and her friend Stacey mill about the con and decide to get their palms read by a gypsy named Madame Gypsy (Ruth Buzzi). The lady tells them that they will have conflict with two dogs.
Back at home Leslie is feeling ignored by her husband. She goes out to buy a flea collar for her dog at a local pet shop, when a man in glasses hands her four boxed collars and tells her “it’s on the house”. Once outside a man steals Leslie’s purse. As the man runs away, the mysterious man in glasses appears before him and growls, taking the purse and tossing him onto a pile of eggs in the back of a truck.
Leslie gets her purse back and goes to a restaurant where the man wishes to buy her dinner and introduces himself as Harry Thropen (Saxon).
Jennifer and her friend plan to give Leslie flowers saying they’re from her father but when they walk into the restaurant they catch Leslie talking to Harry who then starts to lick and kiss Leslie. However, once food arrives on fire Harry hisses and runs out of the restaurant. The girls then decide to follow him.
Leslie, left with the bill at the restaurant, returns to the pet shop intending to give Harry a piece of her mind. When she arrives he lures her into his bedroom and gets her drunk. He then sucks on her big toe and bites it, waking her from the trance and so she leaves. Jennifer and Stacey leave after a policeman sees them spying outside the petshop backdoor.
At home Leslie has no memory of what happened but she bandages her bitten toe. Jennifer tries to get a conversation about Leslie’s lunch with Harry out of her, but she doesn’t respond. That night Leslie makes a roast beef for Howard and dresses up in lingerie. They (presumably) have sex that night, as howling can be heard. As they sleep Leslie has a nightmare of Harry chasing her. Also one of the weirdest and unintentionally funniest scenes happen when Leslie wakes up and her husband tells her she is having a nightmare, then his head turns into a melty volcano looking face and he spits on her while she screams in terror.
The next morning she discovers that her canine teeth are longer so she goes to the only dentist open on the weekends. Dr. Rod Rodriguez assures her that her canines are beautiful, and tries twice in vain to destroy them.
Leslie leaves and goes to a butcher shop where she literally drools on the display case of meats. She then decides to buy some meat and eats it raw in her car on the way home.
Then later she arrives at home where her daughter is having a Halloween party. She goes up to the bathroom and tries to shave her hairy legs to no avail as it instantly grows back. That night Harry visits the house and tells her that he wants to make her into his “were-wife” once her transformation is complete and that he will visit her the next night.
A frustrated Jennifer decides to visit Madame Gypsy for help with her werewolf mother.
The next day Leslie shrugs off the events of last night as if they were a dream. She goes to visit her hairdresser Peggy (Wallace). Peggy decides that Leslie’s hairiness is a challenge and styles her hair.
As she goes back home, Leslie turns into a werewolf and Harry also visits her. He tries to take her, but instead the two werewolves end up fighting each other and tearing up the bedroom.
Jennifer and Stacey put together a spear tipped with a silver fork in order to kill the head werewolf Harry. So Jennifer enters and stabs Harry. He writhes on the floor for ages dying.
The cops are called to the house because of the noise and after Harry dies from his wound Jennifer returns to her human self. The event gains media attention and the family is interviewed by a reporter.
In the evening Howard and Leslie patch up their marriage. Howard promises to pay more attention to Leslie in the future. That night, Stacey calls Jennifer to warn her that in her magazines she read that a werewolf killer turns into a werewolf within 48 hours. A disbelieving Jennifer yawns, revealing her large canine teeth. The movie ends as she desperately calls Stacey back to ask for help.
Review:
This is one of the weirdest werewolf movies I have seen. It’s hammy, odd and goofy. Not in the Serial Mom type of amusing way, but more of the cornball flat joke 80’s type of movie. At times I thought it would be better fit if it was shown on the Lifetime network. It felt like they wanted to make a kid’s flick, but were trying to be funny and incorporated some more adult things, like several moaning sex-simulation jokes.
Though the movie is about werewolves, there are no murders, except a few in the past mentioned in passing. Best of all the werewolf make-up looked very cheap and fake. Yet each character that noticed Leslie turning into a werewolf during the Halloween Party scene kept commenting on how realistic she looked for a werewolf. She basically looked like she had tufts of loose fur glued to her arms.
Also what’s with the odd spitting and drooling? I just thought it was weird to have Leslie foam and drool on the glass.
If you can stand unfunny jokes and love 80’s style, this movie might be for you. There is very little gore (the nightmare sequence) and just one death in the film.
Notes:
This movie is Austrian Michael Fischa’s directorial debut.