Let's face it, from his "Back to the Future" years, this is probably the other Michael J. Fox movie that people most remember. It was teen fodder, really -- made hip by the soundtrack, the actors, and plenty of dodgy in-jokes. Not to mention the "van surfing" scenes, which got the filmmakers into a lot of trouble with concerned parents who were worried that their idiot kids might try to imitate it.

In "Teen Wolf", Michael J Fox play an unhappy high school kid who isn't popular and plays on a terrible basketball team (already stretching believability there) who finds himself going through some rather odd changes. As it turns out, he has inherited the werewolf genes from his father and is becoming, yup, a TEEN WOLF! He is unable to hide this from his high school friends, and ends up changing in the middle of a basketball game. However, in wolf form he is a star at basketball, as well as at pretty much everything else he tries. Suddenly he is popular and well-known, but does it all come at a price?

From a moral point of view, it's all very American. There's not much to seperate the good guys from the bad, being self-centred isn't necessarily a bad thing, and winning actually IS everything. It seperates itself from most previous werewolf movies simply because it's so lighthearted. There had been other werewolf movies that were aimed at the teen audience -- 1957's "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" being one that shares a lot in common with "Teen Wolf", the main difference being that it was primarily a horror rather than a comedy.

So how old was Michael J Fox when he played the "Teen Wolf"? Well, he was 24 of course. Nevertheless he does a good job, being the reliable actor that he is, but of course he can never really escape from his Marty McFly persona. The supporting cast are all decent, managing not to embarrass themselves despite the inherent silliness of the movie. The fact is, this could have been a lot worse -- and it surely would have been if it wasn't for the charisma of it's lead actor. But ultimately it was made as light-hearted entertainment for teenagers with nothing better to do, and that's exactly what it is.

You might also want to know that in the very last shot of this movie (right before the cheesey freeze frame), one of the extras is doing something very naughty. See if you can spot it. Go on.

Screw the moral meaning as a movie the film is awesome. It makes you feel as though this story could have really happened if werewolves existed. People are so desensitized these days that they probably would just accept a werewolf at there school. This is an excellent movie and I recommend it to anyone. No gore, no horror, just fun and laughs and besides it's Michael J. Fox come on!

Rob of Necrodemon's Review

I watched this movie quite a few times when I was in high school. Back then it was funny and all right to watch.

Stiles always made me laugh. The wolf costume isn't terrible. The father's costume is hilarious.

Write a Review for this movie.

The Wolf So here it is again, the use of lycanthropy as a metaphor for adolescence. It isn't the best attempt at this (that would be "Ginger Snaps"), but it is probably the most well-known one. The message of the movie does feel a little hazy. When Michael J Fox begins to become a werewolf, he finds that he has increased strength, more body hair and more sexual appeal. This leads to him becoming more popular and ultimately forgetting who his real friends are. There are a lot of movies like this, and to be honest it isn't a story that many teenagers can learn anything from ... does anyone at that age really have a problem with too much popularity? The werewolf design is pretty embarrassing ... it actually looks more like something from "Planet of the Apes", although it does bear some interesting similarities to Michael Landon's makeup in "I Was a Teenage Werewolf". Looking through their other credits, I discovered that one of the special makeup artists worked on the 1973 movie "The Boy Who Cried Werewolf", and another went on to work on the TV series "She-Wolf of London", both of which had similarly flawed werewolf costumes. There are two costumes we get to see, there's Scott himself (see bottom two photos) and then there's Scott's dad (see top photo), who has grey hair and still wears his glasses. This is odd since his character in human form doesn't have grey hair. Hmm. Anyway, since the Teen Wolf is shown playing basketball a lot, it meant that almost Michael J Fox's entire body had to be covered in hair, which must have been a painstaking process for all involved. The transformation scenes are reasonably well done, basically involving growing nails and teeth (see second photo down). Nothing too fancy, but you don't really expect anything too extravagant from a movie like this.

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