Wilderness (1996)

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Dumping both the comedy of "An American Werewolf in London" and the surrealism of "The Company of Wolves," this made-for-television film starts with the basics: Alice thinks she is a werewolf.

Set in London, Alice (Amanda Ooms) has a nice safe job at the university library, and nice safe one night stands with strangers. Once a month, she locks herself in her basement and turns into a trapped wolf, or maybe not. Alice is seeing psychoanalyst Luther (Michael Kitchen), who is trying to help her without knowing her real concern about turning into a bloodthirsty predator. Alice begins opening her life up to others, and regretting it. Dan (Owen Teale), a penguin researcher, asks her on a date, and the two hit it off. Alice confesses her monthly nocturnal habits to Luther, who immediately dismisses them. Alice takes a chance on a night with a full moon and sleeps with Dan, but wakes up naked in her front yard and hears later that a security guard was killed, and a large dog spotted near the scene. Alice tells Luther that she has been turning into a wolf since she was thirteen and almost assaulted by a local farmhand, who was the wolf's first victim. At this point, the viewer might just agree with Luther- it's all in her head, so what's the point? From there, the film juggles a number of plotlines, all successfully.

For a television miniseries, the video version was trimmed of almost an hour, but the cuts are not noticeable. Ooms is a good actress, never playing Alice as a victim or idiot. Owen Teale's Dan is one of the most normal guys you will ever see in the movies. The film makers wisely did not make him an expert on werewolves (penguins?!), and Teale plays all the confusion you would feel, if your girlfriend came out as a werewolf, to the hilt. While Kitchen goes a little bonkers too quickly, he also does very well with a very interesting character. His final scenes are the only light moments in the film, his shrub trimming in the garden is a riot. Even the smaller role of Jane is done well by Gemma Jones, who is more concerned for the wolf than anyone but Alice. An attraction to Alice hastens the friendship between the two. While these characters are wonderful, the special effects are lacking. They consist of the mid-1990's morph technique, and never work well. Also, the climax is sad but protracted, a cut here or there may have tightened it up. Good stuff.

Stats:
(1996) 174 min. (* * * *) out of five stars
-Directed by Ben Bolt
-Written by Andrew Davies, Bernadette Davis, based on the novel by Dennis Danvers
-Cast: Amanda Ooms, Michael Kitchen, Gemma Jones, Owen Teale, Catherine Russell, Rupert Vansittart, Catherine Russell, Rosalind March, Mary Healey, Philip McGough, Brigitte Kahn, Mark Caven, Val Lehman
(R)