Monday 25 August 2008

Teen Wolf found on VHS

I've been away on a shoot up north and then down at my folk's house in Cornwall for a sorry attempt at a summer holiday. Hiding inside one day, away from the miserable rain soaked tourists and grey skies, I thought I'd have a little root around through my cupboards in my old bedroom. Amongst the childhood junk I came across a few VHS video tapes...you remember when you were a kid and you had to make do with VHS video tapes? You had to wait for the films you wanted to come on TV, then record them (usually over another film), then you'd watch them over and over again. Well I did anyway. And as I recall, there were a handful of films that I must have literally watched hundreds and hundreds of times:

Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Weird Science.
Live and Let Die.
Ghostbusters.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Gremlins.
Basic Instinct (well, one or two particular bits of it).
Teen Wolf.

Oddly, I realised I'd re-watched all of the above in more recent years, apart from Teen Wolf.











So I went out and bought it on DVD then watched it on the 5 hour train journey back to London today. First of all, whilst I'd forgotten bits of the plot (like when he opens the bathroom door to reveal his dad's also a werewolf) somehow I knew all the words...the child 'me' had obviously drilled the lingo into my brain so much that I'd never forget it. Scary really.











Actually, I seem to recall recording the audio from various films onto cassette tape via my tough-as-nails brown Fisher Price tape recorder then listening to them on my Walkman on long journeys. Weird. I've just been doing a bit of research about Teen Wolf on Wikipedia. Apparently, the film was shot before Back to the Future, with bits of it even shot in the same Pasadena street, but released afterwards. For its Italian release, Fox's character name in Teen Wolf was even changed from Scott to Marty in order to capitalize on the success of Back to the Future (awesome fact: my maths teacher at school had a Delorian car with the number plate 'BK2FUTR').































So, the verdict: most definitely worth a watch. My personal highlights include the bit where he's getting ready for the school dance a la John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, the token crazy buddy 'Styles' and of course the 'urban surfing' on top of the Wolfmobile.

2 comments:

Advertising said...

I used to watch most of those films, except Basic Instinct and Teen Wolf, on regular intervals too.

Now, Teen Wolf was always one of those films that I kept meaning to watch but for the past 16 odd years I've somehow managed to have something else to do. Brilliant. So when I got a job at Blockbuster's I thought, great! A chance to watch those films I never got a chance too. Except they didn't have Teen Wolf - they had Basic Instinct (best) - but not Teen Wolf.

Guy.

P.S: Where abouts "up north" were you? I'm from Newcastle - anywhere close?

Ferris said...

Hey. We were in Manchester, Liverpool and a very wet Wales. It's true what they say about it being grim, although the people are friendlier...