Villian(s)  Werewolf

Actor(s):  Dean Stockwell, Biff McGuire, Clifton James, Michael Dunn

Brief Description  The Werewolf of Washington (1973) is a low-budget horror-comedy and political satire written, directed, and edited by Milton Moses Ginsberg. The film stars Dean Stockwell as a White House press aide who turns into a werewolf, directly spoofing the paranoia, corruption, and absurdity of the Richard Nixon administration during the height of the Watergate scandal.

Plot:
Jack Whittier (Dean Stockwell) is a rising star in the Washington press corps. He is sent away on an assignment to Budapest, Hungary, officially to break off a scandalous affair he has been having with Marion (Jane House), the daughter of the President of the United States. While in Europe, his girlfriend Giselle gives him a cane with a silver wolf-head handle. Shortly after, their car is run off the road into a tree. While seeking help near a Gypsy camp, Jack hears Giselle scream. He finds her under attack by a wolf and kills the animal with his silver cane, but is severely bitten on the chest during the struggle. Local police refuse to investigate the attack, prompting a paranoid Jack to wonder if a White House cover-up is at play.

An old Gypsy woman (Despo Diamantidou) approaches Jack, explaining that he actually killed her son—who was a lycanthrope—and that Jack is now cursed with the "mark of the beast". She mentions a pentagram. Jack initially confuses "pentagram" with the "Pentagon," assuming it is a military-communist conspiracy. Though skeptical, he accepts a protective amulet from her. The unnamed U.S. President (Biff McGuire) misinterprets Jack’s reassignment to Hungary as a sign of fierce pro-administration loyalty and rewards him by hiring him as the Assistant White House Press Secretary. Back in D.C., Jack flushes the Gypsy amulet down the toilet during a cocktail party. Soon after, the full moon rises, and Jack undergoes a painful, hairy physical transformation into a werewolf.

As a werewolf, Jack rampages through Washington, brutally murdering various politicians, journalists, and enemies of the administration. Instead of investigating the supernatural reality, the White House uses the murders to fuel their own political agendas. The incompetent, arrogant Attorney General (Clifton James) aggressively spins the gruesome murders to the media, falsely blaming them on the Black Panthers and radical anarchists to justify a harsh law-and-order crackdown. Jack begins to experience immense guilt and realizes he is the monster. He charts out the locations of the murders and discovers they perfectly form a giant pentagram over the map of Washington D.C..

He begs his superior, Commander Salmon (Beeson Carroll), to lock him up and film his transformation as proof. Salmon complies, restraining him in an apartment. However, the President urgently needs Jack to assist with a high-stakes, televised interview with a visiting Chinese Prime Minister. Brought to the White House, Jack cannot fight the full moon. He transforms mid-meeting and savagely attacks the President, biting him in front of the horrified Chinese dignitary. Jack breaks loose and runs to Marion, who is forced to shoot and kill him with a silver bullet. Over his dead body, White House officials immediately orchestrate a massive political cover-up, falsely telling the press that Jack died a hero by leaping into the line of fire to save the President.

As the credits roll, the President addresses the nation via radio to restore calm, but mid-speech, his voice distorts into an eerie, bloodthirsty werewolf howl—revealing that the lycanthropic corruption has infected the highest office in the land. Written and produced just as the real Watergate revelations were coming to light, the film serves as an overt metaphor for political corruption. The joke of the movie is that a literal, bloodthirsty monster in the White House is actually less corrupt than the administration surrounding him. The movie heavily satirizes how the executive branch manipulates the press corps. Even when a rabid beast is loose in the capital, the press office’s primary concern is controlling the narrative and smearing political opponents.