This is a presidential film with teeth. While traveling in Hungary, Jack Whittier, soon to be a member of the White House press office, is attacked by a wolf. The wolf, it turns out, wasn't a was it was a were. Back at a Pennsylvania Avenue party, Jack (played with full bemusement by Dean Stockwell) transforms into a fangèd werewolf, taking the chatty wife of a Supreme Court nominee as his first victim. Unable to control his hirsute bloodlust, Jack continues his nighttime howls, writing the president's speeches by day. Slightly deranged himself, the president (Biff Maguire) won't accept Jack's resignation: a secret hellhound is just the thing to have around the Oval Office. Ginsberg's tale plays the conventions of the horror film off the everyday opportunism of political life. Any amount of lycanthrophic carnage can be tolerated if it serves this high office. Set in a post-Watergate White House, The Werewolf of Washington says much about the nature of covert operations.-Steve Seid