Saylesmanship

By RICHARD CORLISS

THE HOWLING

Directed by Joe Dante

Screenplay by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless

ALLIGATOR

Directed by Lewis Teague

Screenplay by John Sayles

Such is the cultural currency of Hollywood that anyone who can read his mail is called a man of letters, and the person who knows that filet de sole isn't a French disco group joins the intellectual elite. By these standards--and some higher--John Sayles is a Renaissance man. At 25, an O. Henry short-story award; at 28, a National Book Award nomination; at 29, critical praise and a measure of commercial success for Return of the Secaucus Seven, a $60,000 film he wrote, produced, directed, edited and acted in. Lately, on weekends when he has nothing else to do, he has been writing or rewriting, for the fun and the money, Hollywood exploitation films. Two of Sayles' thrillers--The Howling and Alligator--are now stalking the drive-ins and inner-city showcases. They offer a chance to see what this prodigy of narrative elegance and dialogue nuance does when he thinks nobody special is looking.

The Howling, a good-looking, modern-day werewolf picture, boasts not only the writer's pedigree but a young lifetime of B-movie lore devoured and disgorged by Director Joe Dante, with whom Sayles worked three years ago on an engaging Jaws rip-off called Piranha. Their new film drops latent or blatant references to a dozen low-budget horror movies; characters are named after some of the more mediocre talents ever to win a Directors Guild card (Lew Landers, Roy William Neill, Erle C. Kenton); Roger Corman, godfather to many young directors, makes a cameo appearance, as do Forrest Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and Sayles himself. Trouble is The Howling is too insistent on parading its enshocklopedic knowledge to raise Hackle One on any moviegoer's neck. Rob Bottin's special makeup effects may deserve extended study, but the movie shouldn't stop dead in its lycanthropic tracks while a man turns oh-so-slowly into a werewolf--twice. Though The Howling is doing big business with the women-in-jeopardy crowd, it will add no luster to its makers' reputations. Mark this one off as a Sayles slip.

What interests me," Sayles has said, "is taking something totally fantastic and sticking it in a realistic setting. I try to say, 'O.K., what would really happen if you walked outside, and there's this giant alligator there?' " What happens is the basis for a scary, sensible movie with a skewed sense of humor. Alligator is a robust mutant of Them! and other '50s horror movies that took a no-nonsense approach to the threat of atomic apocalypse. Civilians run from the deadly menace; policemen walk toward The Thing because that's their job. Alligator provides a terse manual on the care, feeding and ultimate annihilation of 2,000-lb., 36-ft.-long reptiles--and on the art of making a grind-house movie with care and wit. Good Cop David Madison (Robert Forster, in an authoritatively low-key performance) is forever being reminded of his thinning hair; and, when he learns that the alligator has grown to monster proportions by ingesting hormones, Madison grunts hopefully, "Maybe he'll die of cancer."

Lewis Teague directed Sayles' finest B-movie script, The Lady in Red (1979)--a tart, taut evocation of the '30s working-class underworld--and here he plays camera tricks on the audience without ever cheating. The screenplay takes Madison's point of view, the camera takes the alligator's, and for most of the film they fight each other to a crafty standoff. Aided by Teague's expert direction, Sayles has created a reptilian specter for urban paranoia--alligator as allegory. The beast may not be plausible, but the fear it engenders is. And if the movie doesn't by itself justify claims for Sayles as Hollywood's Renaissance man, it at least suggests that he can help bring genre movies to an Age of Restoration. --By Richard Corliss

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