One of my fondest memories as a small Paul is watching the TV show Werewolf on Fox at my grandparents’ house, recording it on audio tape and listening to it later while I made Werewolf comic books. It was my favorite TV show as a kid. Of course, growing up, I’ve not met a SINGLE person who remembers it. Most people just tilt their head and look at me when I start talking about the pentagram on the good guy’s hand and how it would glow when he turned into the Werewolf, or the episode where he fought a bad guy on a roller coaster before the baddie got decapitated. I specifically listened to the audio tape of that one many times.
Those awesome guys at TVShowsonDVD made me a very happy Paul today,
It’s the Fall of 1987, and a new network has come on the air. It’s the Fox Network, but at the moment it’s only broadcasting on Sunday nights. What’s the line-up? 21 Jump Street fills the first hour, and Married…with Children closes out the last half of the second hour. Nestled in between them is Werewolf, which debuts with a 2-hour pilot before settling in with 28 further half-hour adventures. Special effects for transitions into a 7-foot-tall werewolf were done in this series by none other than Rick Baker, who was the man behind the ground-breaking transformations in films such as An American Werewolf in London and The Howling (and who has a new movie he’s done the special effects for, The Wolf Man, coming later this year!).
The show starred John J. York (General Hospital) as the lycanthropic “Eric Cord”, who was chased by Lance LeGault as bounty hunter “Alamo Joe Rogan” (you may have also seen LeGault also chasing The A-Team as “Col. Decker”). Cord was searching for a way to rid himself of his curse, by seeking out elder werewolves “Janos Skorzeny” and “Nicholas Remy”. Remy was played by Brian Thompson, who was also seen on the Fox Network later on as the recurring Alien Bounty Hunter of The X-Files. The character of Skorzeny was named after the vampire from the 1972 pilot telefilm for Darren McGavin’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker. In this series Skorzeny was naturally a werewolf, played by Chuck Connors (The Rifleman) in one of his final television roles.
A few days ago one of our readers, Jaeson Jrakman, wrote in saying that he had heard from their customer service people that Shout! Factory was possibly pursuing a DVD release of the series. We spoke to our friends at Shout! about this, and they kindly gave us the scoop: yes! Werewolf – The Complete Series is indeed in the works from Shout!, and they have penciled it in on their calendars for September 1st. That is still subject to change, naturally, as the release (including extras) has not yet been finalized. Still, it is most certainly coming, so start saving up for it! And stay tuned, because we’ll update you as developments occur.
Don’t remember Werewolf? Check out more info on this fan site!