To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Joe Dante’s horror classic The Howling, StudioCanal has announced a brand new 4K restoration of the 1981 contemporary tale of timeless horror. Available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-Ray, DVD and Steelbook editions from the 25th October 2021, The Howling stars Dee Wallace (E.T.), Patrick MacNee (The Avengers) and Dennis Duggan (Parenthood), Christopher Stone (Cujo), Belinda Balaski (Gremlins), Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), John Carrdine (The Grapes of Wrath) and Slim Pickens (Blazing Saddles). There are also cameos from cult actor Dick Miller, Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest J. Ackerman, and directors Roger Corman, Mick Garris and Jonathan Kaplan.

Karen West narrowly escapes death at a rendez-vous she has deliberately accepted with a murderer whose name is Eddie. He is shot by the police. After this, the young woman begins to have nightmares and goes to a therapy centre with her husband Roy. But instead of getting better, she gets worse and her relationship with her husband deteriorates. When Roy is attacked by an unidentified animal, his personality and behaviour begin to change...

With The Howling, director Joe Dante (Gremlins, Innerspace) and screenwriter John Sayles (Lone Star, Passion Fish) – who also has a cameo – created a unique horror shocker loosely based on part one of author Gary Brandner's trilogy of novels.  The film took the genre of werewolf horror to a whole new level, with its dark atmosphere, pointed irony and elaborately modelled special effects and make-up by Rob Bottin (Robocop, The Thing).  The film received a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film in 1980.

Commenting on the restoration, director Joe Dante said: “I can honestly say this 4K restoration is the best. The Howling has looked since it came out of the lab in 1980 – maybe better. I'm happy to have it back in circulation at last.”

The 4K UHD Limited SteelBook Edition and the 4K UHD Collector’s Edition are released with exclusive new artworks, offering bonus material including a new featurette about Joe Dante’s extensive career in Hollywood and the documentary Welcome to Werewolfland including interviews and commentaries with cast and crew.

SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:

• NEW Featurette: Inside the Career of Joe Dante
• Documentary: Welcome to Werewolfland
• Deleted Scenes
• Outtakes

$K UHD COLLECTOR'S EDITION INCLUDES:

• 3 discs, Poster, Booklet & art cards

4K UHD STEELBOOK INCLUDES:

• 4K UHD disc & 1 Blu-ray disc

BLU-RAY INCLUDES:

• 1 Blu-ray disc

DVD INCLUDES:

• 1 DVD disc

ABOUT THE RESTORATION

The Howling was restored in 2021 by StudioCanal with the VDM lab, under the supervision of Joe Dante. This restoration project was conducted from start to finish in 4K with a 16-bit color depth bringing all the details from the original negative to life. The 4K 16-bit scan was made from the original 35mm negative. The image from the 1.20 negative was then cropped to 1.85 in order to respect the original format of the film projection.

The film was calibrated in the P3-D65-ST2084 color space, with a 1000 nits screen. The calibration was based on the reference of 35mm positive copies of the period as well as, for the video part, on the basis of existing reference masters.

The restoration took a few hundred hours of meticulously filtering in order to correct the defects related to the age of the film and to the wear of time.