Is Michael Landon To Blame for Michael J. Fox Starring in ‘Teen Wolf’? He Thinks So
In 1985, Michael J. Fox was on top of the world. As the breakout star of the hit sitcom Family Ties, he also managed to dominate the big screen with two #1 movies. The first was Robert Zemeckis‘ genre-bending, time-traveling classic Back to the Future, which catapulted him from TV favorite to full-fledged A-lister. And the other was Teen Wolf.
Now that 40 years have passed, Teen Wolf can be looked upon with kindness tinged with nostalgia, but in truth, the film was not what one would consider great cinema. Though it did well in theaters — grossing an estimated $80 million against its $4 million budget — critics and fans were a bit lukewarm on the premise. Currently holding a 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, the Hollywood Reporter called it “dramatic dribble” while the Washington Post called it “bland and unoriginal.”
©MGM/courtesy Everett Collection
Teen Wolf follows Scott Howard (Fox), an ordinary high school student who discovers he’s a werewolf and suddenly becomes the most popular kid in town. And he can breakdance. But as his fame grows, Scott learns that embracing his true self means more than “wolfing out” to win basketball games and get girls.
In Fox’s new memoir, Future Boy, the actor is honest when it comes to his part in Teen Wolf. “It was already obvious to me that Teen Wolf, filmed a few months prior, was not my magnum opus,” said Fox.
So why did Fox agree to star in Teen Wolf in the first place?
MGM/courtesy Everett Collection
Family Ties was on hiatus due to Meredith Baxter‘s pregnancy, so his agent “seized the moment and sent me the script for a quick, low-budget movie called Teen Wolf. They were ready to start filming, and the five-week shoot could easily slide into the production hiatus at Family Ties.”
The film would have been Fox’s leading role in a feature film, but he also states that becoming a teenage werewolf had worked for one of his role models, so why wouldn’t it work for him? According to Fox, “the wolf thing had worked for Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf.”
1957’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf stars a young Landon as a troubled teen who undergoes hypnosis therapy and is transformed into a savage werewolf, turning his teenage angst into literal horror. Made on a budget of just $150,000, it became a surprise hit, earning over $2 million at the box office and cementing its place as one of the most successful teen horror films of the 1950s.
Teen Wolf, although a hit at the box office, was never destined to become an instant classic when it was released. In fact, the only reason people look back on it with fondness today is because of Fox’s involvement. Always charismatic on-screen, the boy-next-door quality he brought to the role shone through, making his first leading role a memorable one, “albeit a hackneyed one that required me to wear twenty-five pounds of yak hair.”
Remind