Entertainment

BAD HAIR DAY …BUT FREAK SHOW GETS ‘WOLF’ WHISTLE

“Wolf Girl”

Tonight at 9 on USA

IF the last thing you think you want to do is watch anything called “Wolf Girl,” you should think again.

This very strange, really odd movie is also strangely and oddly very good. It combines the look and feel of the 1941 “Wolf Man” (the one with Lon Chaney as Larry Talbot, a guy who just can’t help himself), with the modern angst of “Buffy.”

The director, Thom Fitzgerald, has figured out how to make the old stuff from “Wolf Man” work now.

For example, one of the things I love most about the old black-and-white “Wolf Man” is the gypsy caravan – with its wooden caravans and Maria Ouspenskaya as the wizened gypsy who knows that despite it all, Larry doesn’t have a shot of not becoming a werewolf when the moon is full.

In “Wolf Girl,” Tara the Wolf Girl (Victoria Sanchez) also travels in an old wooden caravan although the period seems very much to be the present, making the look of the thing very cool.

Tara, it seems, came to be living in the freak show because she was born with a condition called hypertrichosis (very hairy), which wasn’t very safe for a baby in Romania.

Tara knows no other life. Instead of a wizened old gypsy to talk to, Wolf Girl has Athena the Fat Lady, (Darlene Cates). Cates isn’t padded. She weighs 600 pounds in real life. There is even a hint that the Fat Lady is a lesbian, but who knows.

Anyway, when the show hits one small American town, the rotten teenagers do things to poor Wolf Girl, like throw dog doo on her beard.

Into the mix comes nerdy Ryan Klein, (Dov Tiefenbach), whose mom (Leslie Ann Warren) is a cosmetics researcher who just happens to be researching the creation of a permanent depilatory. Hey – you over there – sit down! I told you this was weird!

Ryan and Tara become friends – you know two outcasts and all that – against the rotten kids. Ryan slips Tara some of this mother’s experimental stuff, and she begins to shed. Problem is there is a side effect. Once you shed, you also become a wolf. I tell you, it takes pains to be beautiful, my friend. And really, I’ve heard of worse side effects in the fight against unwanted facial hair.

However, before Tara starts shedding (yes, there’s a shower scene), she becomes moody, nasty, and erratic. Warning: If this happens to your rotten teenagers do not immediately think they are turning wolf – it’s more likely than not they are just being 15, which is, at times, worse than turning wolf.

As luck would have it, the town’s rotten kids, particularly Beau (Shawn Ashmore), and Krystal (Shelby Fenner) – who may be a lesbian also – won’t leave Wolf Girl alone, although Beau is hiding a deep (and I do mean that sincerely) disfiguration of his own.

This crazy movie works on all kinds of levels. It’s well-written, it’s well acted (Sanchez and Tim Curry, as freak show ringmaster Harley Dune) are especially on target) and it’s shot beautifully. Grace Jones has a tiny part as a half man/half woman, (good typecasting!) and there are very real people born with deformities that are just great in their parts – particulary Jordan Prentice as Fingers Finnegan, the chief wrangler and a dwarf.

Now you’d think seeing this would be very upsetting, but it’s not, because the side show entertainers, we understand, are their own family, and watch each other’s backs.

I know, I’m beginning to sound like a weirdo myself. But just remember the famous advice given to Larry Talbot in 1941, boys and girls: Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms. And the autumn moon is bright.

And lest we forget it is autumn, after all.