It’s no secret that in the 1980s, Michael J. Fox was a busy man. Not only was he starring on the hit sitcom Family Ties, but he was also in two mega-hit movies, Back to the Future and Teen Wolf, the latter of which is set to stream for free very soon.
The coming-of-age fantasy film, Teen Wolf, which, like Back to the Future, was released in 1985, is headed to Tubi on Nov. 1. However, unlike Fox’s time-traveling adventure franchise, the actor said that making Teen Wolf was a less-than-stellar experience. The movie, which has a “rotten” critic score of 46% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 52% rating from fans on the review aggregator, earned just $80 million globally against its $4 million budget.
Fox stars as Scott Howard, a teenager who discovers that being a werewolf is something that runs in his family. The nerdy Scott uses his new wolf-like strength to become an unlikely hero and basketball star at his school. Per Entertainment Weekly, in Fox’s new memoir, Future Boy, the Emmy-winning actor touched on Teen Wolf, saying that working on the movie made him “feel like a whore.”
“It was already obvious to me that Teen Wolf, filmed a few months prior, was not my magnum opus,” Fox wrote. He continued, ”One day on the set of that film, the prop guy made me take a few photos holding a chocolate bar so they could show the confectioner who supplied the candy that we had actually used their product in the movie. Covered in yak hair, I told him that I felt like a whore doing this. The prop guy said, ‘Well, you are a whore.’”
Fox Previously Complained About Teen Wolf
Scott freaks out during his first werewolf transformation in Teen Wolf.Image via Atlantic Releasing Corporation.
Fox also talked about the struggles of working on the movie in his first book, Lucky Man. In it, he wrote of Teen Wolf, “Looking back, I have no idea what I was thinking. (It worked for Michael Landon?) … Several layers of form-fitted rubber foam, studded with yak hair affixed to my face with airplane glue, made it impossible to eat properly… I begged my friends for reassurance that this choice of role wasn’t a surefire career killer, and with kind hearts and straight faces, they lied, “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be great.” … Oh well, even if Teen Wolf wound up destroying my feature film career before it even started, I still had Family Ties.”
Despite Fox being less-than-thrilled with his experience making Teen Wolf, the studio thought it was a good idea to make a sequel film. However, Fox did not return for 1987’s Teen Wolf Too. The sequel starred Jason Bateman as Todd Howard, the cousin of Fox’s Scott Howard. The second movie turned out to be a huge flop and earned just $7.9 million worldwide. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is a dismal 8% from critics and 17% from the audience.
Teen Wolf Too, along with Teen Wolf, will stream for free on Tubi beginning Nov. 1.
Release Date
August 23, 1985
Runtime
91 minutes
Director
Rod Daniel
Writers
Jeph Loeb, Matthew Weisman
Michael J. Fox
Scott Howard
James Hampton
Harold Howard
Susan Ursitti
Lisa Boof Marconi
Jerry Levine
Rupert Stiles Stilinski