Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jim Cummings
Starring: Jim Cummings, Robert Forster, Riki Lindhome, Jimmy Tatro, Chloe East
One of my favourite screenwriters is Lane Slate, who over the course of the
1970s developed a distinctive formula that marked his scripts as coming from
the Slate typewriter. His movies usually took place in a small town in the
American West and revolved around a Sheriff (played by the likes of Alan
Alda, James Garner, James Brolin and several times, Andy Griffith in the
role of Sheriff Abel Marsh) whose humdrum career is ignited by a series of
mysterious killings, the sort of terror that just doesn't belong in his
otherwise peaceful hamlet. If you haven't seen them already, I highly
recommend Isn't it Shocking?, The Girl in the Empty Grave and The Car.
I've often wondered what it might be like if Slate had applied this formula
to the sort of monster movies that were being made for TV at the time -
movies like Snowbeast, Scream of the Wolf and Moon of the Wolf. Well, with The Wolf of Snow Hollow, his second feature as writer/director, actor turned filmmaker
Jim Cummings has delivered something close to an answer.
Cummings' impressive debut feature,
Thunder Road, saw him cast himself in the role of a small town cop undergoing a nervous
breakdown brought on by the death of his mother. The film was very much a
character drama centred entirely on its protagonist's increasingly fractured
psyche. The Wolf of Snow Hollow sees Cummings essaying a very
similar character, this time the beleaguered deputy Sheriff of the titular
snow blanketed town. John Marshall is a recovering alcoholic who attends AA
meetings in the basement of his precinct house and is plagued by anger
issues. He's permanently stressed out by the refusal of his aging father (Robert Forster
in his final role) to retire from the position of Sheriff, despite his
doctor's advice to do so, and by trying to raise his teenage daughter (Chloe East). As if that wasn't enough to contend with, the women of his town are
being murdered in brutal fashion by what appears to be a large wolf.
Cummings might be accused of plagiarising himself here, such are the
similarities to his debut feature, but dropping such a volatile protagonist
into what appears a straightforward genre cinema scenario results in
something we haven't really seen before. Sure, we've all seen the alcoholic
cop who still manages to nail the bad guys while sneaking sups from the
flask he keeps in his dashboard, but they're always cartoon characters.
Cummings' John Marshall copes with his situation the way any real person
would, i.e. very badly and in a highly unprofessional manner. Marshall is
constantly wound up, speaking in a rapid fire manner that would make Preston
Sturges and Howard Hawks ask him to tone it down. As a director, Cummings
helps convey Marshall's psychological state through non-linear editing that
chops up timelines, as though Marshall is constantly trying to both think
ahead to anticipate his killer's next move while reflecting on events that
have already occurred.
What makes Marshall all the more interesting is how far from likeable he
is. He seems to believe he's the only one with problems, and spends most of
the movie behaving like a bratty child. Like Kurt Russell in
Big Trouble in Little China, he mistakenly believes he's the hero of his story, but it's actually his
put upon fellow officer Julia Robson (Riki Lindhome) who does most of
the real work, keeping a cool head while her colleague repeatedly blows his
top. You get the sense that the only thing stopping those around Marshall
from punching his lights out is the fact that he's the Sheriff's boy.
In recent years we've seen the emergence of what's becoming annoyingly
known as "elevated horror," horror movies which go out of their way to
present us with something new. They're often a drag, making subtext text and
adopting a lecturing tone while losing sight of the basic elements that make
horror work. The Wolf of Snow Hollow is refreshing because it's happy to
outwardly present us with a scenario we've seen multiple times before, but
hooks us in with a unique protagonist (in this way it owes as much to the
western genre as to horror). The location and the villain are very familiar,
but it's the anti-hero that sets it apart from the crowd, while Cummings
understands that familiarity with a genre can be as cosy as a raging fire in
a log cabin. Should you wish to look for it, there's a subtext here about
male narcissism and entitlement, but it never gets in the way of a good old
werewolf yarn.
