Happy birthday!

Happy birthday!

Mel Brooks & Anne Bancroft

From the Huffington Post

Mel Brooks has made audiences laugh for more than a half century, but it was his wife, the late Anne Bancroft, who made him smile.

It's been nearly five years since the actress passed away, but not a day goes by that Brooks doesn't think about her.

"I had 45 of the greatest years of my life," Brooks says.

During a recent interview, the 83-year old Brooks recalled their first meeting in 1961. It was on the set of "The Perry Como Show" in New York, where Bancroft was performing a song called "Married, I Could Always Get." After she finished, she was greeted by Brooks who proclaimed, "I'm Mel Brooks and I'm going to marry you."

Bancroft responded: "Hey, I have your record." She was referring to the classic comedy album Brooks did with Carl Reiner, "The Two-Thousand Year Old Man."

"The album came out in 1960, and this was Feb. 5, 1961," Brooks recalls. "From that day, until her death on June 5, 2005, we were glued together."

The Brooklyn-born Brooks began his career as a writer for Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows." Alumni from that classic TV program included Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon and Woody Allen.

After the success of his comedy record, Brooks established a long career as a writer, director and actor. His first feature film, 1968's "The Producers," won an Academy Award for best screenplay. It became a Broadway hit in 2001.

"Anne was responsible," Brooks says of turning his Oscar script into a Tony-winning musical.

bla bla bla on Bond 23

(TTNews) - Daniel Craig has confirmed that he will return for the next chapter of the James Bond saga, if only a bit later than expected.

In a recent interview with the U.K.'s Daily Mail, a source close to the actor confirmed that he will delay work on "Bond 23" to finish up work on his current project, "Dream House." directed by Jim Sheridan.

Though Craig initially indicated that work on the new Bond film would begin early this year, the source says it could be a long way off.

"The producers have been working on the script for two years and hired Sam Mendes as the director," the source said. "They're not even close to starting filming yet."

There is speculation that the film will not be ready until 2012, which will dovetail with the 50th anniversary of the series.

The production delays are not the only recent news surrounding the James Bond franchise. According to recent reports from Australia's Herald Sun, producers are have already chose "Avatar" star Sam Worthington to take over the super spy when Craig's run ends.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is a 1969 American drama film directed by Sydney Pollack. The screenplay by James Poe and Robert E. Thompson is based on the 1935 novel of the same name by Horace McCoy. It focuses on a disparate group of characters desperate to win a Depression-era dance marathon and the opportunistic emcee who urges them on to victory.

Robert Syverton (Michael Sarrazin), who once dreamed of being a great film director, recalls the events leading to an unstated crime. In his youth, he saw a horse break its leg, after which it was shot and put out of its misery. Years later, he wanders into a dance marathon about to begin in the shabby La Monica Ballroom, perched over the Pacific Ocean on the Santa Monica Pier, near Los Angeles. He is recruited by emcee Rocky (Gig Young, who won the Oscar for Best supporting Actor) as a substitute partner for a cynical malcontent named Gloria (Jane Fonda) when her original partner is disqualified due to an ominous cough.

Among the other contestants competing for a cash prize of $1500 are Harry Kline (Red Buttons), a middle-aged sailor; Alice (Susannah York), a would-be Jean Harlow with delusions of grandeur, and her partner Joel (Robert Fields), an aspiring actor; and impoverished farm worker James (Bruce Dern) and his pregnant wife Ruby (Bonnie Bedelia). Early in the marathon the weaker pairs are eliminated quickly, while Rocky observes the vulnerabilities of the stronger contestants and exploits them for the audience's amusement. Already frayed nerves are exacerbated by the theft of one of Alice's dresses and Gloria's displeasure at the attention Alice receives from Robert. In retaliation, she takes Joel as her partner, but when he receives a job offer and departs, she aligns herself with Harry.

Weeks into the marathon, Rocky—in order to spark the paying spectators' enthusiasm—stages a series of derbies in which the exhausted remaining contestants, clad in track suits, must race around the dance floor, with the last three couples eliminated. Harry suffers a fatal heart attack during one of these, and an undeterred Gloria lifts him on her back and crosses the finish line. It is clear that Harry dies as Gloria drags him, and she unloads him on Alice, which causes her to suffer a nervous breakdown. Robert and Gloria, now without partners, once again pair up.

Rocky suggests the couple marry during the marathon, a publicity stunt guaranteed to earn them some cash in the form of gifts from supporters such as Mrs. Laydon (Madge Kennedy). When Gloria refuses, he reveals the contest is not what it appears to be on the surface. Numerous expenses will be deducted from the prize money, leaving the winner with close to nothing. Shocked by the revelation, the couple drops out of the competition.

Distraught and despondent, Gloria confesses how empty inside she is. She tells Robert that she wants to kill herself, but when she takes out a gun and points it at herself, she cannot pull the trigger. Desperate, she asks Robert: "Help me." He obliges. Questioned by the police as to the motive for his action, Robert responds: "They shoot horses, don't they?".

The full story is about assisted suicide, as Gloria begs Robert to pull the trigger for her. The title and the final sentence point to this "coup de grâce", the "blow of mercy". For helping Gloria to commit suicide; the film shows directly, (and indirectly) that Robert will be found guilty of murder and executed by hanging. The marathon continues on with its few remaining couples, including James and Ruby. The eventual winners are never revealed.

In the early 1950s, Norman Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin were looking for a project on which they could collaborate, with Lloyd as director and Chaplin as producer. Lloyd purchased the rights to Horace McCoy's novel for $3,000 and planned to cast Chaplin's son Sidney and newcomer Marilyn Monroe in the lead roles. Once arrangements were completed, Chaplin took his family on what was intended to be a brief trip to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. Because Chaplin faced a Mann Act charge related to a previous underaged lover and was accused of being a Communist supporter during the McCarthy era, J. Edgar Hoover negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke his re-entry permit, and the film was aborted. When McCoy died sixteen years later and the rights to the book reverted to his heirs, they refused to renew the deal with Lloyd since nothing had come of his original plans.

When Sydney Pollack signed to direct the film, he approached Jane Fonda with the role of Gloria. The actress declined because she felt the script wasn't very good, but her then-husband Roger Vadim, who saw similarities between the book and works of the French existentialists, urged her to reconsider.

Meeting with Pollack to discuss the script, she was surprised when he asked for her input. She read the novel with a critical eye, made notes on the character, and later observed in her autobiography, "It was a germinal moment [for me] . . . This was the first time in my life as an actor that I was working on a film about larger societal issues, and instead of my professional work feeling peripheral to life, it felt relevant." Experiencing problems in her marriage at the time, she drew on her personal anguish to help her with her characterization.

Warren Beatty originally was considered for the role of Robert Syverton, and Pollack's first choice for Rocky was character actor Lionel Stander.

In later years, Turner Classic Movies observed, "By popularizing the title of McCoy’s novel, [the movie] gave American argot a catch-phrase that’s as recognizable today as when the movie first caught on." The title has been imitated in various media having little relation to the plot or themes of the original film. Episodes of Happy Days, Webster, Due South, Family Matters, Sex and the City, Designing Women, Gilmore Girls, Class of '96, Sledge Hammer! , Ally McBeal, and Gossip Girl have used variations of the phrase for their titles. Humorist Patrick F. McManus titled one of his story collections They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?. A song named after the movie is included on Canadian indie rock band Apostle of Hustle's first album, Folkloric Feel, also noted is an indie rock band from Ft. Myers, Florida named "They Shoot Poets (Don't They?), and the story served as the inspiration for a hit 1976 single of the same name by the band Racing Cars. A Vancouver band named themselves after the film.

At present, the film holds the record for being nominated for the most Academy Awards (nine) without receiving a nod for Best Picture.

The film is notable for using the technique of flashforwards (glimpses of the future), which are not commonly used in motion pictures.

100yearsin5minutes

The Black Stallion (1979)

The Black Stallion is a 1979 American film based on the 1941 classic children's novel The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. It tells the story of Alec Ramsey, who is shipwrecked on a deserted island, together with a wild Arabian stallion whom he befriends. After being rescued, they are set on entering a race challenging two champion horses.

The film is adapted by Melissa Mathison, Jeanne Rosenberg and William D. Wittliff. It is directed by Carroll Ballard. The movie stars Kelly Reno, Mickey Rooney, Teri Garr, Hoyt Axton, and the Arabian horse Cass Ole. The film features music by Carmine Coppola, the father of Hollywood producer Francis Ford Coppola, who was the executive producer of the film.

In 2002, The Black Stallion was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Cass Ole, a champion Arabian stallion, was featured in most of the movie's scenes, with Fae Jur, another black Arabian stallion, being his main double. Fae Jur's main scene is the one where Alec is trying to gain the trust of the Black on the beach. Two other stunt doubles were used for running, fighting and swimming scenes.

El Mokhtar, an Egyptian Arabian racehorse, was the producers' first choice to portray the Black, but they were unable to secure his services for the film from his owners, who declined any offers. He does appear in The Black Stallion Returns, alongside Cass Ole, by which time the studio bought out the syndicate of owners in order to secure El Mokhtar's services.

The movie was followed in 1983 by a sequel, The Black Stallion Returns, which also starred Reno. There was also a television series called Adventures of the Black Stallion which aired from 1990 to 1993 and starred Richard Ian Cox and Mickey Rooney. In 2003, a 45-minute prequel called Young Black Stallion was shot and released for IMAX theaters.

Happy birthday!

Vanessa Redgrave is to receive Bafta Fellowship honour

Vanessa Redgrave is to be presented with this year's Bafta Fellowship for her contribution to film.

The 73-year-old campaigning actress has appeared in more than 80 films, including 1977's Julia for which she won the best supporting actress Oscar.

David Parfitt, chairman of the British Academy of Film and Television, paid tribute to Redgrave as "a hugely talented and respected actress".

She will receive the honour at the Bafta awards show on 21 February.

"I'm truly delighted - it's such an honour to be recognised in this way," Redgrave said.

"Looking through the list of past recipients shows what a wonderful accolade this is.

"The fact that Alfred Hitchcock was the very first recipient makes it even more special as my father made his first film with him."

Hitchcock's cameo in The Simpson : The Birds

Joseph Kosinski Talks The Black Hole

Source: MTV

Last December, it was announced that Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski had been handed the keys of another venerable Disney title, The Black Hole. Few details were available at the time, but now Kosinski has decided to elaborate a little on what his plans involve.

Turns out, he really is sticking to the mantra from before: he’ll preserve some parts of the film he thinks are fundamental. "It won't be a sequel like Tron," he's told MTV. "This one will be a reimagining. For me, it would be taking ideas and iconic elements that struck me as timeless and cool and preserving them while weaving a new story around them that's a little more 2001."

So what are those ‘timeless’ elements? “I saw Black Hole as a little kid. What sticks out most is the robot Maximilian. The blades and the vicious killing of Anthony Perkins. That freaked me out and that's definitely going to be an element that will be preserved. The design of the Cygnus ship is one of the most iconic spaceships ever put to film."

Oh, and he still plans to pepper in some realistic science based on modern theories. Well, as “realistic” as you can get considering that black holes aren’t exactly the easiest celestial occurrences to study…

“From a conceptual point of view, we know so much more about black holes now, the crazy things that go on as you approach them due to the intense gravitational pull and the effects on time and space. All that could provide us with some really cool film if we embrace it in a hard science way."

What is your favorite film?

For many years I've answered this question with Sleuth, directed in 1972 by Joseph Leo Mankiewicz, starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine ONLY.

A very teathrical film, from a play by Anthony Shaffer who also wrote Hitchcock's Frenzy, it has been for many year my personal little gem, not only for the perfect performances by the two actors continuosly facing each other on the screen, but also for the sets of Ken Adam, creator of early greatest Bonds, the cinematography of Oswald Morris and the music of John Addison.

A film that thought me a lot about human nature and life....talking of which, LIFE IS A STATE OF MIND is the last sentence of Being There, a 1980 Hal Ashby film starring the great Peter Sellers in his probably best performance (after The Party....), another of my favorite...

Among the others Terry Gilliam's Brazil, that I watched 3 times in a row when was released in 1981, every time most astonished than before, The Night of the Hunter, the only film directed by Charles Laughton and Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson, that literally changed my vision of reality since 1999.

So, what is your favourite film?

Freud (1962)

Freud: The Secret Passion, also known as Freud, is a 1962 American biographical film drama based on the life of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, directed by John Huston. Montgomery Clift stars as Freud.

This pseudo-biographical movie depicts Sigmund Freud's life from 1885 to 1890. At this time, most of his colleagues refuse to treat hysteric patients, believing their symptoms to be ploys for attention. Freud, however, learns to use hypnosis to uncover the reasons for the patients' neuroses. His main patient in the film is a young woman who refused to drink water and is plagued by a recurrent nightmare.

The story compresses the years it took Freud (Montgomery Clift) to develop his psychoanalytic theories into what seems like a few months. Nearly every neurotic symptom imaginable manifests itself in one patient, Cecily Koertner (Susannah York). She is sexually repressed, hysterical, and fixated on her father. Freud worked extensively with her, developing one hypothesis after another. Also shown is Freud's home life with his wife Martha (Susan Kohner), whom he alternately discusses his theories with and patronizes when she reads one of his papers.

Asked in 1958 to write the script by the director John Huston, Jean Paul Sartre wrote the first synopsis of some 95 typed pages. Huston accepted this, and Sartre went to work on a shooting script. Like the synopsis, it was too long. Sartre was asked to chop this first version, which he did. The result was that the revamped version was longer still. In any case, Sartre and Huston could not get along, so the French philosopher asked for his name to be removed from the credits. However, the film Freud still shows faint signs of Sartre's work on the script.

Marilyn Monroe nearly got to play the part of one of the more colorfully hysterical patients, Cecily.

By the time Clift was making Freud his destructive lifestyle was affecting his health. Universal sued him for his frequent absences that caused the film to go over budget. The case was later settled out of court; the film's success at the box office brought numerous awards for screenwriting and directing, but none for Clift himself.

Jerry Goldsmith

Today would have been the 80th birthday of Jerry Goldsmith, who sadly died in 2004.

Goldsmith provided tailor-made scores for many genres; including war films (The Blue Max), film noir (Chinatown), action movies (Rambo: First Blood and the first two sequels), erotic thrillers (Basic Instinct), sports pictures (Rudy), family comedies (The Trouble with Angels), westerns (Breakheart Pass), comic book adaptations (Supergirl), animated features (The Secret of NIMH), and science fiction (Total Recall, Alien and five Star Trek films). His ability to write terrifying music won him his only Academy Award for his violent choral/orchestral score for The Omen. He also was awarded with Emmys for television scores like the Holocaust drama QB VII, and the epic Masada, as well as the theme for Star Trek: Voyager.

Goldsmith composed for The Waltons TV series (including its theme), a fanfare for the Academy Awards presentation show and the score for one of the Disneyland Resort's most popular attractions, Soarin' Over California. Goldsmith did not like the term "film composer", as he felt the term "composer" was more than sufficient.

Goldsmith loved innovation and adaptation, and using strange instruments. His score for Alien featured an orchestra augmented by shofar, steel drum and serpent (a 16th century instrument), while creating further "alien" sounds by filtering string pizzicati through an echoplex. Many of the instruments in Alien were used in such atypical ways they were virtually unidentifiable. During the 80s, with the development of more sophisticated synthesizers and technology such as MIDI, Goldsmith started to abandon acoustical solutions to create unusual timbres, and relied more and more on digital instruments. He continued to champion the use of orchestras however (to which, for him, electronics were merely an adjunct). He remained a studious researcher of ethnic music, using South American Zampoñas in Under Fire, native tribal chants in Congo, and interwove a traditional Irish folk melody with African rhythms in The Ghost and the Darkness. His concept for creation and innovation often intimidated his peers. Henry Mancini, another film-music composer, admitted that Goldsmith "scares the hell out of us."

A list of his distinguished film scores, most of which were Oscar nominated, include Freud, A Patch of Blue, The Blue Max, The Sand Pebbles, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Escape from the Planet of the Apes,Papillon, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, Logan's Run, Islands in the Stream (acknowledged by Goldsmith as his own personal favorite), The Boys from Brazil, Capricorn One, Alien, The First Great Train Robbery, Poltergeist, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Lionheart, The Russia House, First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo III, Total Recall, Medicine Man, Basic Instinct, Hoosiers, The Edge, The 13th Warrior and The Mummy. Goldsmith's Oscar-nominated score for Under Fire (1983) prominently featured solo guitar work by Pat Metheny. Of all the scores he wrote, Goldsmith has said that Basic Instinct was the hardest and most complex.

Goldsmith received a total of 17 Academy Award nominations, making him one of the most nominated composers in the history of the Academy Awards. Despite this Goldsmith only won the Oscar on one occasion, for his score to the 1976 film The Omen. This makes Goldsmith the most nominated composer to have only won an Oscar on one occasion.

Goldfinger on Punch.

my wife favourite.....

encore...

Un Taxi Mauve, after the book of Michel Deon, is set in Ireland during a time in which the nation announced it would no longer demand income taxes of artists, bringing a steady stream of creative bohemians to the Emerald Isle. Philippe (Philippe Noiret) is a French novelist recently relocated to Ireland, where makes friends with Jerry (Edward Albert), an American expatriate who left his home after the death of his girlfriend. Philippe and Jerry become chummy with Taubelman (Peter Ustinov), who is looking after Anne, a beautiful young woman who cannot speak. Jerry becomes infatuated with Anne, while Philippe tries to win the heart of Sharon (Charlotte Rampling), Jerry's sister. Fred Astaire also appears as Dr. Scully, an American physician who has come to Ireland to live out his final years, as a Deus ex machina among all the other carachters.

Music by Philippe Sarde, cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli, directed by Yves Boisset .

Around the World Under the Sea (1966)

Around the World Under the Sea is a 1966 science fiction film directed by Andrew Marton and starring Lloyd Bridges, Shirley Eaton and David McCallum. It follows the adventures of a crew of the deep-diving nuclear-powered civilian research submarine Hydronaut making a submerged circumnavigation of the world to plant monitoring sensors on the ocean floor that will help scientists better predict impending earthquakes. Although Jules Verne isn't credited by the film makers, his influence can be seen throughout the film.

Great poster, boring movie.

Farewell (2010)

"FAREWELL tells the story of Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, the only female passenger on the first journey around the world of the Graf Zeppelin in 1929. Grace writes about her adventures on the journey, not only in articles in the Hearst Newspapers, as a reporter, but also in her diary. Traveling high in the sky, up over a world, in a way she has never experienced before, Grace changes. Her former lover Karl von Wiegand is amongst the other passengers. During her long voyage their love is once again tested. When the Zeppelin finally flies over New York Grace says goodbye to Karl and the lovers lose touch. Landing in New York she is welcomed like a cinema star.

In 1929 people were convinced this journey would be a splendid turning point in history. A few weeks later Wall Street crashed and a dark period in history began."

Lady Grace Drummond-Hay

Lady Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay (born Grace Marguerite Lethbridge, 1 September 1895 in Liverpool - 12 February 1946 in Manhattan) was the first woman to travel around the world by air, in a Zeppelin. Although she was not an aviator herself at first, she certainly contributed to its glamour and the general knowledge about her aerial adventures by writing articles about it in mainstream American newspapers in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Gracie Lethbridge married in 1923 to Sir Robert Hay Drummond-Hay (1846-1925) at the age of 28, her husband being fifty years older. Sir Robert was born in Tanger, Morocco and had been the British consul-general for years in Beirut, Lebanon. He added Hay to his surname in 1906, being a descendant of a noble family. Sir Robert was previously married to Euphemia Katrina Willis Flemming. Four children were produced in this marriage, Arnold Robert, Edward William, Cecil and Florence Caroline. The children were all significantly older than their new stepmother, Florence Caroline being 15 years older. After hardly three years of marriage, Sir Robert died. Lady Grace then was 31 years old. As a young aristocratic widow she lived in her apartment in London.

Having contributed to English papers such as The Sphere, she became involved as a journalist for the papers of William Randolph Hearst in the late 1920s. As a star journalist, she wrote articles for The Chicago Herald and Examiner, edited by the Hearst Press, as one of the passengers aboard the first transatlantic flight of a civilian passenger Zeppelin in 1928.

This airship, the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was also the first one to circumnavigate the world in 1929. This trip around the world took place in August 1929, taking off at Lakehurst, New Jersey and arriving there again 21 days later, after stops in Friedrichshafen (Germany), Tokyo and Los Angeles. Lady Hay Drummond-Hay, or Lady Drummond-Hay, as she was often referred to, was the only female passenger. Among her companion travellers were the Australian explorer Sir George Hubert Wilkins, the American multi-millionaire William B. Leeds, U.S. Navy Commander Charles Emery Rosendahl, Naval observer Jack C. Richardson, renowned American Hearst correspondent Karl Henry von Wiegand, Hearst photographer Robert Hartman, Spanish newspaper correspondent Joachim Rickard, German correspondent Heinz von Eschwege-Lichbert, and Geronimo Megias, a physician and the personal doctor of Spanish King Alfonso XIII. Hugo Eckener was the captain of this flight around the world. Lady Drummond-Hay became a star after she arrived in New York, her career as a journalist being consolidated for the next decade.

She went to war zones such as Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and was a foreign correspondent in Manchuria. She worked closely together for many years with her senior colleague Karl H. von Wiegand. Being praised for her extraordinary beauty and wit, and the intelligence and flair with which her articles were written, Lady Grace was a well-known and respected journalist of her time. At her funeral she wore a precious jewel that was given to her by the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie.

During World War II, Lady Drummond-Hay and Karl H. von Wiegand were interned in a Japanese camp in Manila, Philippines. When they were set free in 1945, she was very ill. They returned to the United States, but during their stay in New York Lady Grace Drummond-Hay died of coronary thrombosis in the Lexington Hotel. At her burial service many notables paid their last respects, amongst which William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. After being cremated, her ashes were brought to the United Kingdom by her life-long companion Karl H. von Wiegand.

StarWarsVSStarTrek

The Howling (1981)

The Howling is a 1981 werewolf-themed horror film directed by Joe Dante. Based on the novel of the same name by Gary Brandner, the screenplay is written by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless. The original music score is composed by Pino Donaggio.

Karen White (Dee Wallace-Stone) is a Los Angeles television news anchor who is being stalked by a serial murderer named Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). In cooperation with the police, she takes part in a scheme to capture Eddie by agreeing to meet him in a sleazy porno theater. Eddie forces Karen to watch a video of a young woman being raped, and when Karen turns around to see Eddie she screams. The police enter and shoot Eddie, and although Karen is safe, she suffers amnesia. Her therapist, Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee), decides to send her and her husband, Bill Neill (Christopher Stone), to "The Colony", a secluded resort in the countryside where he sends patients for treatment.

The colony is filled with strange characters, and one, a sultry nymphomaniac named Marsha Quist (Elisabeth Brooks), tries to seduce Bill. When he resists her less-than-subtle sexual overtures, he is attacked and bitten by a wolf-like creature while returning to his cabin. He later returns to find Marsha waiting and the two have sex by the campfire in the moonlight. During the encounter, their bodies have undergone a frightening transformation as they both shapeshift into werewolves.

After Bill's wolf bite, Karen summons her friend Terri Fisher (Belinda Balaski) to the Colony, and Terri connects the resort to Eddie Quist through a sketch he left behind. Karen also begins to suspect that Bill is hiding a secret far more threatening than marital infidelity. While investigating, Terri is attacked by a werewolf in a cabin, though she escapes after cutting the monster's claw off. She runs to Waggner's office and places a phone call to her boyfriend, Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan), who has been alerted about the Colony's true nature. While on the phone with Chris, Terri is attacked and killed by Eddie Quist. Chris hears this and sets off for the Colony armed with silver bullets.

Karen is confronted by the resurrected Eddie Quist once again, and Eddie transforms himself into a werewolf in front of her. She escapes, and Eddie is later shot by Chris with a silver bullet. As it turns out, however, everyone in the Colony is a werewolf. These werewolves can shapeshift at will; they do not require a full moon. Karen and Chris survive their attacks and burn the Colony to the ground.

Karen resolves to warn the world about the existence of werewolves, and surprises her employers by launching into her warnings while on television. Then, to prove her story, she herself shapeshifts into a werewolf, having become one after being attacked at the Colony by her husband Bill. She is shot by Chris on live television, and the world is left to wonder whether the transformation and shooting really happened or if it was the work of special effects. It is also revealed that Marsha Quist escaped the colony alive and well.

Director Joe Dante put many in-joke references in the film, including subtle references to wolves (The Big Bad Wolf from Walt Disney's The Three Little Pigs (1933) is seen on TV, Sheriff Newfield is seen eating Wolf Brand Chili, a copy of the Allen Ginsberg book Howl appears, a mention of disc jockey Wolfman Jack).

Furthermore, many characters in the film are named after horror film directors who directed other films that featured werewolves, including George Waggner, who directed The Wolf Man (1941). Others include R. William Neill (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Terence Fisher (The Curse of the Werewolf (1960), Freddie Francis (Legend of the Werewolf (1975), Erle Kenton (House of Dracula (1945), which co-stars John Carradine, who plays Kenton in The Howling), Sam Newfield (The Mad Monster (1942), Charles Barton (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Jacinto Molina (La Marca del Hombre Lobo (1968) and Lew Landers (The Return of the Vampire (1944).

Dick Miller's bookstore owner Walter Paisley gets his name from Miller's starring role in the low-budget horror film A Bucket of Blood (1959).

The film's screenwriter (later director) John Sayles, Dante's former producer Roger Corman and science fiction and horror film personality Forrest J. Ackerman all have cameos.

Though the film has been noted for its semi-humorous screenplay, it began life as a more straight forward 1977 novel by Gary Brandner. After drafts by Jack Conrad (the original director who left following difficulties with the studio) and Terence H. Winkless proved unsatisfactory, director Joe Dante hired John Sayles to completely rewrite the script. The two had collaborated before on Dante's 1978 film Piranha. Sayles rewrote the script with the same self-aware, satirical tone that he gave Piranha, and his finished draft bears only a vague resemblance to Brandner's book. Winkless still received a co-writers credit along with Sayles for his work on the screenplay however.

The cast featured a number of recognizable character actors such as John Carradine, Kenneth Tobey and Slim Pickens, many of whom appeared in genre films themselves.

The Howling was also notable for its special effects, which were state-of-the-art at the time. The transformation scenes were created by Rob Bottin, who had also worked with Dante on Piranha. Rick Baker was the original effects artist for the film, but left the production to work on the John Landis film An American Werewolf in London, handing over the effects work to Rob Bottin. Bottin's most celebrated effect was the on-screen transformation of Eddie Quist, which involved air bladders under latex facial applications to give the illusion of transformation. The Howling also features stop-motion animation by notable animator David W. Allen, and puppetry intended to give the werewolves an even more non-human look to them. Despite most of the special effects at the time, the silhouette of Bill and Marsha having sex as werewolves is quite obviously a cartoon animation.

Due to their work in The Howling, Dante and producer Michael Finnell received the opportunity to make the film Gremlins (1984). That film references The Howling with a smiley face image on a refrigerator door. Eddie Quist leaves yellow smiley face stickers as his calling card in several places throughout The Howling. A second reference to The Howling in Gremlins comes at the end of the film when the TV anchorman Lew Landers (played by Jim McKrell) is shown reporting on the gremlin attack in Kingston Falls.