The Day of the Wolves (1971)

Touches You

Pretty Good

Powerful

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I couldn't help thinking that with a better script, bigger budget and a celebrity cast, the story in "The Day of the Wolves" has some potential as a modern day blockbuster. You know, somewhere on the order of the 'Ocean' films (they used numbers too). Instead, you have a quickie flick from Balut Productions made on the cheap, as in less than two hundred grand. So with all that, it's not a bad little programmer that surprisingly holds your interest even as Jan Murray puts together a gang of criminals with the worst set of fake beards in movie history.You know, I remember Jan Murray from watching TV as a kid and recall seeing him many times, yet when I check his credits here on the IMDb, most of his appearances in the Fifties and Sixties were as TV guest spots, so something doesn't compute. As a comedian he seemed to have been all over the place, so maybe it was on a bunch of game shows and variety hours. I don't think I ever saw him as a clown.In an earlier time, I think a group of criminals using this modus operandi might have actually gotten away with it. A few of them in the picture actually did, which kind of surprised me, but this was after the Production Code lost influence. When it clicked with Number #4 (Rick Jason) in his hospital bed that Uncle Willie was Number #1, I almost thought the picture would smoke out the rest of the outlaws. However the picture was already hitting the ninety minute mark and I knew this shoestring budget could only go so far.Here's a suggestion for the folks at Mill Creek Entertainment - take this one out of your Westerns box set and trade it out for "Drums in the Deep South" that's found in the Mystery/Crime compilation. Both moves would make a lot more sense.

It's sad that The Day Of The Wolves was not done by a major studio with some decent scripting and editing as part of the package. Had it been the film could have been a classic. It had the makings.It's a combination of High Noon and the Phil Karlson noir classic Kansas City Confidential. Richard Egan as the local chief of police busts one of the kids of a city councilman and for his pains loses his job. He takes it philosophically.At the same time Jan Murray as Preston Foster did in Kansas City Confidential recruits six professional criminals all unknown to each other and all use numbers when addressing each other and him. They also wear gloves at all times so no fingerprints can be detected.Murray has an audacious military style operation planned to hit several locations in a small town on a pay day at the main employer which is a lumberyard. These heist commandos are trained down to perfection.But when the operation goes down it's the former sheriff Egan who springs into action, purely from reflex. What happens after that is for you to see. Martha Hyer plays Mrs. Egan and she reacts the same way to his involvement the same way Grace Kelly did.Shot completely on location in Arizona, The Day Of The Wolves shows many cheap touches, obviously because the film didn't have the budget. One thing that was terribly wrong. Egan has only a shotgun when he deals with the seven criminal commandos. No way in the world he was able to do what he did with only a shotgun which could not have been fired for distance the way it was. Maybe a bigger studio's writing and editing staff would have realized that.Still it's not a bad TV film and it really could have been a lot better.

Quentin Tarantino may have seen ALSO this one : the gang boss does not want his men can identify themselves, and he wants them to choose (or he chooses for them : memory is not sure about that) names of numbers or colors or anything else. Remind you something ? It is clearly one source of one of the good ideas of Tarantino in RESERVOIR DOGS. Tarantino has seen many movies : he makes homage to the famous first dialogue line of DEATH TRAP / EATEN ALIVE / STARLIGHT SLAUGTHER (USA 1976) directed by Tobe Hooper in KILL BILL, and to many others movies he has seen in his own movies. He liked what we liked in the 60's & the 70's. And because of his "history of movies" memories, we can even re-discover such movies as this quite funny DAY OF THE WOLVES ! As Latin proverb says : NIHIL NOVI SUB SOLE (Nothing new under the sun) !

I first saw this as a kid- and have longed to see it again/own it/etc. It is a 10+ as far as plot goes, and although the production is as bad as any B-horror movie you'll ever see it almost adds to the mood of the film. Great action w/cool music, costumes, etc. And a twist of an ending rarely matched in modern screen-writing. A must-see for every movie fan.