There’s something uniquely tragic about a movie that has the gall to take itself seriously while dressing up like The Brady Bunch Goes Lycanthropic. The Boy Who Cried Werewolf is a horror film in the same way a school play about fire safety is an action thriller — earnest, amateurish, and full of people trying very hard to look scared when nothing’s actually happening.
Daddy’s Got Hairy Problems (But No Bite)
Kerwin Mathews — once the heroic Sinbad of Ray Harryhausen fame — shuffles through this as a freshly divorced dad whose weekend plans are ruined by a werewolf bite. He spends most of the movie morphing into a beast, murdering innocent campers and hippies, and still somehow being a less convincing monster than your average middle-aged dad yelling at a Little League umpire.
His young son Richie is the only one who realizes what’s happening — which, in classic horror fashion, means no one listens to him. Richie spends the film doing what all horror children must do: scream, pout, and run dramatically through forests while adults pat him on the head and dismiss his warnings like he’s complaining about bedtime.
Not So Much Scary as Hairy
The transformation scenes are laughably slow — you get the sense the makeup department only had enough budget for one pair of hairy gloves and maybe a half-price Halloween mask. There’s no suspense, no terror, no dread. Just a guy turning fuzzy and snarling like someone with a bad nicotine craving and a Halloween wig glued to his face.
Every full moon brings another round of werewolf mayhem, and yet the sheriff’s main theory seems to be “random bear attacks, probably.” For a town apparently overrun by mysterious deaths, these people are shockingly unfazed. “Oh, someone else was torn limb from limb? Must’ve been a wild dog or a particularly angry raccoon.”
Therapists, Hippies, and the World’s Most Patient Ex-Wife
Elaine Devry plays Sandy, the mother/ex-wife, who deserves some kind of medal for her level of calm. Told her son believes Dad is a werewolf, she nods thoughtfully and suggests another family weekend. The family counselor, played by Police Academy’s George Gaynes (yes, really), delivers psychobabble about trauma-induced fantasies right before he gets murdered by Dad mid-transformation. Honestly, that’s the most exciting thing that happens.
There’s even a pit stop at a hippie commune where a man named Brother Christopher (who looks like he runs a food co-op in Topanga Canyon) tells Robert he’s possessed. When the film’s most grounded, logical moment comes from a barefoot commune doing interpretive dance in a meadow, you know you’re not watching high cinema.
The Title Tells You Everything — and That’s the Problem
The plot — stretched thin like an old rubber band — plays out exactly as you’d expect: no one believes the kid, people get mauled, and eventually the werewolf meets a predictably pointy end. The film even tosses in a late-game “bitten child” twist as a weak setup for a sequel that, mercifully, never happened.
The real horror is how long this movie takes to get anywhere. It’s padded with long walks in the woods, repetitive conversations about “Richie’s imagination,” and transformation sequences that look like a guy struggling to pass a kidney stone.
Where Werewolves Go to Die
Director Nathan Juran came out of retirement to make this. We can only assume it was as a favor, or perhaps the result of a lost bet. This is a far cry from the thrills of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. It’s like watching a retired prizefighter try to win a slap fight — tragic and a little embarrassing.
Even by early ‘70s TV horror standards, this film is slow, toothless, and oddly smug about its simplistic concept. The tone swings between bland family drama and unintentional comedy, and not in a fun way. The Boy Who Cried Werewolf wants to tug at your heartstrings while gnawing your leg off — it fails at both.
Final Word: If you’ve ever wanted to see a child psychologically tortured by his werewolf father, a hippie commune treated as a serious plot device, and a cast doing their best to pretend werewolf attacks are just part of rustic living — congratulations, you’re one of five people this movie was made for. The rest of us will pass.
