Wolfen (1981) on Netflix
When a magnate, his wife and his bodyguard are killed in Battery Park, Dewey Wilson returns to the force. He traces the deaths to a legend of wolf spirits.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.3/1012,968 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dewey Wilson, a former NYPD captain, returns to the force when Christopher Van der Veer, a high-profile magnate, is killed in Battery Park along with his wife Pauline and his bodyguard. Executive Security, the private firm that guarded him, blames a group of left-wing anarchists, but the bodyguard was a 300-pound Haitian with voodoo ties who was torn apart with ruthless efficiency, and Wilson doubts the story. The Police Commissioner and the Mayor press him for an answer, and he is paired with criminal psychologist Rebecca Neff. A homeless man is killed in an abandoned church in the South Bronx that Van der Veer's development company plans to demolish, and the coroner, Whittington, finds non-human hairs on the victims that a zoologist identifies as an unknown subspecies of wolf.
Cast
- Sam Grayas Mayor
- Ralph Bellas Commissioner
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wolfen (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After Wolfen went over budget and over schedule, Orion Pictures tried to fire director Michael Wadleigh; a dispute let him shoot what he needed before being let go, though he kept director credit. John D. Hancock was brought in for the ADR sessions, and Richard Chew cut the film to an acceptable length without credit.
- Dustin Hoffman was interested in playing Detective Dewey Wilson, but director Michael Wadleigh insisted on Albert Finney for the part.
- Wolfen used an early in-camera effect to show a wolf's subjective point of view, similar to thermography, and the technique was later adopted by other horror films such as the Predator series.
- The ruined South Bronx buildings were real decay, not effects, while the church seen in the film was built and then burned exclusively for the shoot.
