My Mom's a Werewolf (1989)

           

My Mom’s a Werewolf is an absolutely awesome horror comedy (leaning more on comedy) from 1989 that’s about, well, basically what the title says. It tells the story of teenage Jennifer, whose mother, during an extramarital affair, is bitten by a werewolf, and Jennifer’s struggle to cure her. Well, at least, ideally. A good chunk of the movie is dedicated to the mom slowly turning into a werewolf and being all confused and embarrassed. Those parts are pretty gosh dang boring, but I think the rest of the film more than makes up for it.

This is absolutely one of my favorite B movies; it definitely lands above Snowbeast (1977) on the Wolfman-Wongo scale. It’s just so campy and full of really weird scenes, I can’t help but love it. Literally my only complaint about the movie is there’s too much time devoted to the mom’s transformation, that’s it, everything else is perfect. Since I enjoy this movie so much, I don’t really know how to look at it critically. After I watched it, I looked at my notes, and I was just so lost as to how to even structure this review. I had just made a note of every scene I thought was funny or weird. I suppose there’s no other way to talk about this movie than to not think about the film as a whole, but to think of it in smaller parts, so here we go:

• One character in the movie, Jennifer’s best friend, Stacy, is one of my favorite characters in cinematic history, ‘cause she’s so me. She is mad obsessed with old horror movies, specifically monster movies and b movies, and she won’t shut up about them and her friends don’t care and she annoys them constantly. She even name drops two super obscure B movies that I own, The Beast of Yucca Flats and Galaxina, which I may talk about sometime in the future.

• This movie subscribes to the idea that werewolves have animal traits even when they’re in human form, which is whatever, but it’s done in a very strange way. The main bad guy werewolf eats mice and fish and roars like a lion, which, ya know, are kind of more cat things, than wolf things, so that’s weird. He does eat dogfood too, though, which isn’t a cat thing, it’s just gross. He also just has fangs all the time, which would be fine, except the mom doesn’t, she only has fangs while she’s transforming, but they go away when she’s back in human form.

• The lack of fangs isn’t the only weird thing about her transformation, her fingernails also grow, but they’re painted. Like, once they’ve grown, the whole thing is still painted. Speaking of her fangs, after they first grow in, she visits a dentist to get them filed down (it doesn’t work) and the dentist appears to be turned on by teeth. That is all I have to say about that. Also, the first time she transforms, she doesn’t really. She just grows fangs, fur, and pointed ears, which worried me while I was watching because I thought that may just be the extent of the werewolf transformation, which leads me to my next point.

• The werewolves look horrible, and it’s great. This movie came out in 1989, 8 years after my favorite monster movie*, and one of my favorite movies period, An American Werewolf in London (1981). I know it isn’t really fair to compare the two, given that An American Werewolf in London had a budget of 10 million usd, and I am sure whatever My Mom’s a Werewolf’s budget was**, it was a fraction of that, but it’s still kinda hard not to. On one hand, An American Werewolf in London has amazing practical effects that are still unrivaled to this day, and on the other, My Mom’s a Werewolf literally dressed up their actors in Halloween store rubber masks and gloves and called them werewolves. I’m not really complaining though, it really adds to the cheese factor to see a couple guys in cheap wolf costumes throwing each other around and having a slap fight, which is essentially what the climax is.

• The bad guy werewolf owns a pet store full of exotic animals, like monkeys and emus, and it is in this pet store where the mom gets bitten by him during sex. I say sex, but it never really goes that far. They engage in a little foreplay, in which he immediately starts sucking on her toes (ew) and bites one of them, which is when she calls it quits. To make things extra weird, a cop is watching them secretly, through a window.

• After the mom is bitten, it, uh, for some reason, increases her sex drive, which I really don’t wanna get into, but there is one scene in particular that must be addressed: Jennifer hosts a Halloween party at which her mom hits on a high school kid (ew) and shoves raw meat into his mouth (double ew), which he likes, somehow? I suppose the power of boners is stronger than E. coli. Later, she shoves some of her shaved werewolf hair into his mouth (Triple ew). That same kid then tells Jennifer that she has a hot mom, which, you know, is totally how kids talk to each other.

• There’s one other scene, that’s pivotal to the plot, where the neighbors realize there’s something going on next door and calls the police. How does this happen? Well, obviously we cut to the neighbors engaging in some light BDSM before a shoe is accidentally thrown into the window from Jennifer’s house, how else would you do it?

Next up, I’m gonna talk about some truly spectacular quotes from My Mom’s a Werewolf

JENNIFER: (referring to crystal balls) “Why do you have two of ‘em?”

FORTUNE TELLER: “I like a second opinion.”

~

NEWSCASTER: (Describing an eyewitness account of an animal attack) “A dog she described as a cross between a rottweiler and councilman Lou Lamont.”

~

JENNIFER: “My mother’s a werewolf!”

STACY: Big deal, my mother’s a cow.”

~

STACY: “Holy shit! Your mom’s a werewolf! Do you realize what this’ll do to your social life?”

~

This one requires a bit of an explanation. After the mother is cured, she starts asking a bunch of relevant questions, like what’s going on, why are the police here, standard stuff, but then, she hits us with this gem:

LESLIE: “What’s the volume of the Caspian Sea?”

COP: “88 Billion Cubic Meters.”

This isn’t even close, its 64.9 trillion cubic meters, but whatever. I understand that this is supposed to be a joke, given it’s a comedy, but it’s just so out of the blue. None of the other attempted humor in this movie is anything like this, it’s just so weird and it doesn’t fit. Then again, nothing in this movie really does.

            I’m sorry this review was structured so strangely, but it’s only because the movie was structured so strangely. I suppose life imitates art that way. Anyway, I’d like to close with a quote from Greg S on Rotten Tomatoes: “This clumsy and unfunny comedy might have worked as a raunchy R-rated sex romp, but it’s shot with the timid tone of a TV movie.” What’s wrong with you, Greg?

*It’s just barely above Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2006).

**I could not find a budget anywhere.