Cummings is a bright new film talent with a quirky sense of humor and reality.
The Wolf of Snow Hollow
Grade: B
Director: Jim Cummings (Thunder Road)
Screenplay: Cummings
Cast: Cummings, Robert Forster (Jackie Brown)
Runtime: 1h 23m
Rating: R
By: John DeSando
“You want people to stop talking s**t about the police? Do better police work.” John Marshall (Jim Cummings)
Jim Cummings had an inspired thing about the working class and harried cops in Thunder Road, and now in The Wolf of Snow Hollow he ramps up to small-town cop, John Marshall, facing a rogue werewolf appearing at full moon time in a mountainous place that seems to imprison everyone not in jail.
What Cummings as writer, director, and actor has is a sense of the absurd (think Twin Peaks and Super Troopers) and the laughs it brings while commenting on the precarious situation of single parents and questionable authority like police. In both cases, Cummings has characters act foolishly (missing the point with a teenage daughter or falling off the wagon while on duty, for instance). Jaundiced attitudes toward authority are justified.
Although the investigation of murders by some entity Marshall believes can’t be a werewolf is progressing not much, Cummings is mostly interested in exposing the dull wit of a small town whose soul is tied up in a lost tradition of romantic small-town life. That paradise-lost syndrome is best exemplified in Marshall’s ailing dad, Sheriff Hadley (the late Robert Forster), who must give over the duties to his son but who fights the loss of his place of importance: “I may look old, but I can handle it.”
Cummings has done the nearly impossible of lampooning the horror formula while commenting on societal attitudes toward authority and the precarious place police have in the populace’s psyche.
The Wolf of Snow Hollow doesn’t have to be viewed by horror devotees, just by those who like a few laughs while they think of small-town life and national mental health. The ambivalence of culture toward authority like police and parents is expressed in Marshall’s cluelessness about their disrespect: “Who would wanna throw a beer bottle at a cop car?”
A mild spoof couched in a formulaic awareness of societal silliness. Keep an eye on Cummings—he has a way with fragile blue collar and societal imperfection.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
