Wolfen

Wolfen is a 1981 American crime horror film directed by Michael Wadleigh, based on Whitley Strieber's 1978 novel The Wolfen. It stars Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Gregory Hines and Edward James Olmos. The film follows a city cop who has been assigned to uncover what is behind a series of vicious murders. Originally, it is believed the murders are animal attacks until the cop discovers an indigenous legend about wolf spirits. Plot Former NYPD Captain Dewey Wilson is brought back to the force and assigned to solve a bizarre string of violent murders after high-profile magnate Christopher Van der Veer, his wife, and his bodyguard are slain in Battery Park. Executive Security, the private firm employed by Van der Veer, blames the murders on a group of left-wing terrorists, but knowing that the victim's bodyguard was a 300-pound Haitian with voodoo ties leads Wilson to doubt this theory because the bodyguard was torn apart with ruthless efficiency (the terrorists are mostly whiny bomb makers, not violent assassins). With pressure to solve the case coming from both the Police Commissioner and the Mayor, Wilson is partnered with criminal psychologist Rebecca Neff. Elsewhere, in the South Bronx, a homeless man explores an abandoned church that is scheduled to be demolished by Van der Veer's development company. He is killed by an unseen monstrous being. Wilson and Neff investigate his murder. At the church, the apparent sounds of a baby crying lure Neff up to the bell tower. Wilson follows her, but does not hear the crying; once Neff is separated from him, he hears a wolf howl. He goes up after Neff and drags her to safety. Later that night, a bridge worker is apparently murdered by the same creature. Coroner Whittington discovers non-human hairs on several victims and consults a zoologist named Ferguson, who identifies the hairs as belonging to an unknown subspecies of Canis lupus. Ferguson compares wolves to Native Americans in how they were both hunted to near extinction by colonizing imports. Inspired, Wilson finds Eddie Holt, a militant Native activist he arrested some years previously, working in construction. While Wilson interrogates Holt on top of the Manhattan Bridge, Holt claims to be a shapeshifter, which implicates him as the killer. Wilson opts to leave Holt alone and tail him that night.