Robert Bridgestone (Kerwin Mathews) and his son Richie (Scott Sealey) have gone to a cabin in the mountains to do some fishing. Since Robert and his wife Sandy (Elaine Devry) were divorced things have been a little hard on Richie so a little guy time seemed the perfect solution. After they unpack the car, they take a little walk in the woods to work up an appetite. From out of nowhere they are attacked by a werewolf (Paul Baxley). Robert ends up bitten by the creature. During the struggle the werewolf goes over a cliff and becomes impaled on a tree branch. When Robert looks over the ridge, he sees a man. Richie, on the other hand, knows that what attacked them was a werewolf. When the sheriff (Robert Wilke) shows up, Richie insists it was a werewolf. The sheriff disregards Richie chalking it up to a scared kid’s imagination.
Since the divorce Richie has been seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Marderosian (George Gaynes). Sandy insists that Robert talk to him about Richie’s werewolf story. The doctor suggests that Robert and Richie go back to the cabin to show Richie that everything there is fine and that there are no werewolves. When they return to the cabin there is a full moon out. While Richie heads down to the stream to fish, Robert turns into a werewolf. Robert chases after Richie, who seeks help from a couple camping in a trailer. He tells the couple about the werewolf and of course they don’t believe him.
In the meantime, Robert is running around the forest and causing accidents and ripping people to shreds. Seeing the devastation, the sheriff believes that a wild animal is loose in the forest. Richie maintains his werewolf story and now everyone is losing patience with him, including his father. When Robert turns into a werewolf again the next night, he goes to the camper and kills the young couple. He returns to the cabin with the man’s head and begins to bury it in the dirt floor of the shed. By now Richie has come to believe that his father is now a werewolf himself. Richie becomes afraid of his father.
Sandy decides to go with them the next time they go to the cabin. That night Richie goes out to the shed to dig up what was buried. Robert, now going through the first stages of changing into a werewolf, begins to believe he is one. He tells Richie to lock him into the shed. When Robert begins to break down the shed door Sandy grabs Richie and they take off in the car. Still believing it is a wild animal, the sheriff organizes a posse, and the locals head out into the woods to kill the creature that has been mutilating the campers in the forest. The creature that Richie now knows is his father.
“The Boy Who Cried Werewolf” was released in 1973 and was directed by Nathan H. Juran. It is an American horror movie with children’s fantasy elements. The movie waffles between PG horror, where most of the kills are off screen, and ridiculous, when the hippie commune holy rollers are on screen. Bob Homel, as Brother Christopher, an over-the-top Moses wanna be, is more silly than prophetic. When he is on screen the camp factor hits the roof. Homel also wrote the screenplay so…
The werewolf make-up is actually decent. Not enough to scare children but more reminiscent of the fifties style of werewolf image. It’s not exactly my kind of movie but it is a decent film for children.
Director Nathan Juran is an old hand at horror movie making. He also directed such cult favorites as “The Deadly Mantis” 1957, “20 Million Miles to Earth” 1957, “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” 1958, “First Men in the Moon” 1964, and 13 episodes of the television show “Lost in Space”. Juran also directed Kerwin Mathews in “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” 1958 and “Jack the Giant Killer” 1962. He came out of retirement to direct Mathews one last time. This was Juran’s last film.