‘Screwball werewolf horror-comedy’ set to film in Petaluma this summer

Petaluma filmmaker Daedalus Howell, whose short films have appeared on Showtime, MTV, IFC, HBO and BiteTV, has announced a fur-and-fangs followup to his locally-filmed 2019 “artsploitation” flick “Pill Head.”

That one was weird. This one could even be weirder.

Titled “Wolftone,” the project will once again be filmed in Petaluma, which Howell likes to call his “hometown back lot.” “Pill Head” (now streamable on Amazon Prime) was described in the Argus-Courier last year as “possibly the most bizarre film ever made in Petaluma.” Not easy to summarize, the film is a wacky, black-and-white, science-fiction camp-fest about addiction, brainwashing and the members of an underground multiverse-survivor support group.

The new one, again written and to be directed Howell, is scheduled for production in July. It is being produced by Kary Hess (who’s married to Howell), with some of the actors from “Pill Head” returning to frolick in Howell’s demented cinematic playground.

Oh, and yes, "Wolftone“ is about werewolves.

In a recently issued news release, the film promises to explore what happens when a burnt-out college professor accidentally becomes a werewolf, ultimately embracing the primal change in order to stop an evil occultist plot, possibly saving his marriage in the process while trying not to eat too many of college’s faculty or students.

“Werewolfism is an unusually pliant metaphor that underscores the dualities of human nature, as well as the fact that I’m pushing 50 and I suddenly have hair growing everywhere except where I need it,” Howell, who plans to star in the film, is quoted in the release.

Further descriptions of the project suggest that “Wolftone” will be “leaning into lycanthropy” while giving audiences “a knowing nod to screwball romantic comedies and the expressionistic horror films of the mid-20th century.”