I am seeing a real theme here with another 80’s movie in my list. This one is set in a High School and starring Michael J Fox as a ‘Teen Wolf’. Released in 1985 this was produced by Thomas Coleman, Mark Levinson, George W. Perkins, Michael Rosenblatt, and Scott M. Rosenfelt. This was directed by Rod Daniel and co-written by Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman. It was made on a budget of $1.2m and went on to recoup $80m at the box office, which for the time had to be seen as a huge success. Unfortunately, time and critics have not seen this one given longevity as the other mentioned critics gave it scores of 6.1 out of 10 from IMDb and a meagre 42% from Rotten Tomatoes. Well, I loved it much more than them and that speaks credits for me compared to them as this is a loved movie. There was a sequel that is owned by me so is on this list by way down in #386 place (63%) and I think I was generous. So, to get a 42% from RT cuts me let alone the makers. Many years later there was a tv series with the same name, but I believe it was a vastly different story. Whilst about the story here’s an idea of the plot.
This is a coming-of-age movie based on the life of Scott Howard a 17-year-old high school student who is fed up with being just average. He plays for the basketball team and they are awful, he drools over Pamela Wells who doesn’t know he exists and is in the school play. She is also dating Mick who plays basketball for a rival team called the dragons. His best friends are Stiles who is always up for a party and having fun just not concentrating on schoolwork and Booth a girl who he grew up with and they’ve been friends since they were toddlers, she is the sensible one of the groups. Scott starts to experience some strange things about his body. Sprouting strangely long hair, pointy ears, nails growing and getting pointy. Until one night it happens, and he turns into a Werewolf (a teen wolf) hence the name of the film. His life is transformed when he is unable to control his anger and the Teen Wolf burst out on the basketball court. Not only transformed into a teen wolf he has also been transformed into Michael Jordon as he takes over the game and scores for fun transforming his team from the worst team ever into the Chicago Bulls of the 1990’s. Following this success Teen Wolf is now the most popular student at the school what could possibly go wrong with all this popularity that Scott was craving for all this time.
Not just a great movie this has a typical great eighties soundtrack. OK some of tunes would be dated by now but I still can’t help loving it. From the second the final ball falls through the hoop to the many musical montages throughout this is great. This was another film that my sister loved so she no doubt influenced me into watching but it was such a good movie I was hooked myself. This is just a simple story told in a fun and entertaining way. The humour is perfect for my teenager self and it this movie just worked perfectly for me at the time. I was terrified of scary movies at this time so a film about a were-wolf terrified the idea of watching it. I had to be quite brave to even start watching this movie and I was glad I did. Clearly not everyone’s cup of tea sees the critics scores above, but this is a harmless fun romp without causing any offence just fun! If you haven’t seen it before, it may be dated now but I hope you can still love it as I do.
Next up after all those 80’s horror movies I love we move into the 90’s for possible one scary movie that terrified many people just by walking into a bathroom…
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