‘FAITH: The Unholy Trinity’ Horror Movie Adaptation in the Works [Exclusive]

“Within every man there are two men. One who learns to be civilized by day. One who longs to be savage by night.”

So begins the theatrical teaser for Mike Nichols’ Wolf (1994). I remember seeing it for the first time on the “Coming Soon” section of a freshly bought VHS tape brought home by my mom (it might have been Bram Stoker’s Dracula or maybe Jurassic Park) and at the time it scared the hell out of me. The sight of a beastly Jack Nicholson, heaving with barely repressed lust and violence over the prone body of Michelle Pfeiffer, was spooky to me in a way movies can only be when you’re eight years old and the possibility of monsters being around every corner is still very viable to you.

That trailer now feels like a fading snapshot of a Hollywood that used to be able to get butts in seats simply by having the right star’s name on a movie poster. Over the course of 98 seconds, it offers us a simple promise: that we will see Jack Nicholson turn into a motherfucking werewolf. It ultimately delivered that promise though in a way most audiences and critics weren’t expecting. Which is why, 30 years after its release, Wolf continues to be a fascinating oddity of the subgenre and decade it belongs to.

The film follows Will Randell (Nicholson), a mild-mannered book editor who finds himself slowly transforming into a monster after being bitten by a wolf. At first the new animalistic additions to his personality are welcomed, giving Randell the exuberance and drive of a man half his age. First, he manages to get the upper hand over his young protégé (James Spader) who’s been secretly vying for Randell’s job and sleeping with his wife (Kate Nelligan). Then he strikes up a relationship with Laura Alden (Pfeiffer), the daughter of a ruthless billionaire (Christopher Plummer) who’s in the middle of buying the publisher Randell works for. However, as intoxicating as this new lease on life is, Will can’t help but feel unsettled by the darkness bubbling up from within and the nightmares that now plague him…dreams of slaughtered prey bleeding in the light of the moon…

Wolf’s birth was a long one and it did not go smoothly, though at first things seemed promising.

The story was originally the brainchild of award-winning novelist and poet Jim Harrison. After recounting his idea to producer Douglas Wick (The Craft, Hollow Man), the two decided to bring it to life on the big screen. Jack Nicholson, a friend of Harrison’s, was given wind of the project and agreed to star in it under one condition: there were five directors he was willing to work with and they had to land one of them. Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski, and Mike Nichols were some of the names that appeared on that list and, as luck would have it, Wick had ties to Nichols, having produced Working Girl years before. The director was apprehensive at first as horror was a genre he had little experience with. However, Nicholson’s involvement (the two had worked together on Carnal Knowledge, The Fortune, and Heartburn) was enough to persuade him to take the project.

Then the problems began.

Harrison and Nichols had drastically different opinions in terms of the direction the film should go. In an article that appeared in a 1994 issue of Newsweek, the grounds for the problem was summed up as being philosophical. “For Harrison, who believes that civilization breaks men’s spirits, the werewolf story was a tale of liberation,” it reads. “Nichols was not comfortable with this back-to-nature piety; to him it smacked of sentimentality and trendiness.” This battle of viewpoints raged on until, after revising the script five times, a frustrated Harrison jumped ship and left Hollywood forever. Wesley Strick, hot off the heels of Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear, was brought in to rework Harrison’s efforts. He hemmed in the author’s original, more unruly narrative and transformed Randell from a lawyer to a book editor.

Despite these refinements, Nichols was still having a difficult time connecting with the material he was supposed to direct. So, deciding to break out the Big Guns, he contacted his friend and collaborator Elaine May. A celebrated comedian, writer, and filmmaker, she had gained a reputation around Hollywood of being something of a script-fixer. She would come into a project, use her keen eye to rework its material into something useable, get paid, and leave, rejecting a writing credit in the process. Her contributions to Wolf’s script were sizeable, fleshing out Pfeiffer’s character into a more three-dimensional individual and providing more substantial scenes for Spader and Plummer.

Script issues somewhat resolved, filming eventually began. Unfortunately, the process of shooting Wolf was an equally stressful experience. As biographer Mark Harris describes it in Mike Nichols: A Life, the director was dismayed to find his friend Jack Nicholson to be a different beast than the man he had worked with in the past. The actor was in the middle of a messy breakup with his girlfriend Rebecca Broussard, and the unhappiness from the split had bled into his personality on set. Nicholson seemed constantly distracted and agitated, adding to an already tense atmosphere. At the same time, there was interference from Columbia Pictures, the film’s distributors, culminating in reshoots that stretched the production by months.

Wolf would finally be released on June 17th, 1994. While not necessarily a flop, its financial performance was below average. The film made under $17 million during its opening weekend and came away with a total gross of $65 million, $5 million short of its estimated budget. Still, it managed to land amongst the top 20 films at the domestic box office for that year, sandwiched between Star Trek: Generations and Pulp Fiction.

Critical responses to the film are also interesting to look back on. While it certainly received a few scathing critiques (“[it is a] sheer visceral outrage that a film as stupid as Wolf should be inflicted on the public,” declared The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann) many notices were fair-to-positive. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars, deeming it “steadfastly smart and literate;” Brian D. Johnson of MacLean’s magazine praised Wolf, calling it “deliciously rich entertainment—with elements of a scary thriller, a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ romance, a corporate satire, and a witty inquiry into the nature of disease and sexual aggression;” and The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson went so far as to consider it the “most enjoyable film of the summer.” It was even an honorable mention in a few year-end “best of” lists.

Ultimately, Wolf is a mess, but a damn entertaining one (and not in a schadenfreude kind of way). The calibre of the talent behind film is undeniable and that’s the main reason why the picture is so fun despite its flaws. Its supporting cast is stacked and (for the most part) locked in, with Spader in particular giving a delightfully greasy performance. And while Nicholson might have been struggling on set, the work he did for Wolf is some of the most interesting of his career. Sure, we get the usual unhinged moments we’ve come to expect from him, but we also see a softspoken vulnerability that lends an endearing quality to Randell while also showcasing Jack’s range as an actor.

In addition to the quality of its players, we haven’t even mentioned the fact that Rick Baker and Ennio Morricone also lent their substantial skills to Wolf. The former’s work (particularly near the end of the film when Nicholson has his final throwdown with Spader) is fantastic, ranking amongst this writer’s favorite werewolf makeup effects to appear in the horror subgenre. And the latter’s score is gorgeous, balancing themes of dread, loneliness, and romance in a way only The Maestro could. If Nichols and company were preoccupied with insuring Wolf didn’t swerve into B-movie territory, they made a wise choice by bringing Morricone on. His music gives the film a sonic sheen that instantly makes the picture a classy affair.

And of course, there’s Mike Nichols. It’s obvious that horror was not in the renowned director’s wheelhouse, or even in the realm of his cinematic interests in general. But there are scenes in Wolf when that lack of knowledge regarding the genre’s particular rhythms and conventions becomes a strength rather than a hindrance. It breathes a freshness and unpredictability to the story that’s a byproduct of having an artist working in a sandbox that is completely new to him. Coupled with this is Nichols’ droll sense of humour which gives the movie some of its most memorable moments. Say what you will about the fluctuating tones of Wolf, but the infamous bathroom scene (and Nicholson’s delivery of the line “asparagus”) is some truly funny shit.

So where does Wolf land in the hierarchy of cinematic lycanthropy? There are more than a few lists on the internet that include it amongst the worst the subgenre has to offer, and I think that’s a little unfair. It’s true that the picture pales in comparison to classics like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, but it also doesn’t deserve to be thrown into the garbage fire that An American Werewolf in Paris and DarkWolf call home. It’s far too watchable to be written off like that. If anything, the film occupies its own territory, both enhanced and hindered by the very things that make it so unique.

For better or worse, Wolf is its own beast.

SOURCES:

Ansen, David. “Jack Cries Wolf.” Newsweek, vol. 123, no. 25, pp. 58–61.

Ebert, Roger. “Wolf.” Chicago Sun-Times. June 17, 1994.

Harris, Mark. Mike Nichols: A Life. Penguin Books, 2022.

Hinson, Hal “‘Wolf’ (R).” The Washington Post. June 17, 1994.

Johnson, Brian D. “Beastly Beatitudes — Wolf Directed by Mike Nichols and Starring Jack Nicholson.” Maclean’s, vol. 107, no. 27, p. 61.

Kauffmann, Stanley. “Horrors – Wolf Directed by Mike Nichols and Starring Jack Nicolson.” The New Republic, vol. 211, no. 2, p. 26.