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September 1978 - September 1980, ABC
Ruby-Spears Productions
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ometimes, having a werewolf for a
friend can come in handy, especially for a group of teen sleuths
who find themselves in constant danger. Biff, Kim, Puggsy and
Sherman were four friends who traveled around in an orange
convertible they dubbed the “Wolf Buggy,” fighting crime and
solving mysteries. Their adventures normally had them
confronting supernatural beings of some sort; from aliens and
mummies, to lost creatures of legend and man-made monsters,
usually with a backdrop of mad-scientist types who were intent
on exploiting the situation for their own nefarious gains.
Biff was leader of the gang and
along with Kim provided the brains of the bunch, formulating
plans to net themselves the bad guys. Puggsy was best friends
with Sherman, but it could be difficult to tell because
Sherman’s befuddled temperament often led to Puggsy getting
annoyed with him and telling Sherman to, “eh, shut up!” Puggsy
might have been best served to work on his own education,
because his vocabulary was atrocious. He constantly made up and
used words like ‘helichopper, straptified and evaporize’ in
place of actual words. Sherman Fangsworth was a complete coward,
but as it turned out he played the most important part in the
group.
Every four hundred years a
werewolf was born into the Fangsworth family, and Sherman’s
birth happened to coincide with the four hundred year mark.
Thus, whenever he saw a full moon he transformed into a
werewolf, who was better known to his friends as “Fangface.”
Fangface possessed super werewolf senses and strength, but the
condition didn’t improve his intelligence. Neither Sherman nor
Fangface were endowed with an overabundance of common sense.
Sherman – nicknamed “Fangs” by his friends – never retained any
memories of his time as a werewolf, and subsequently never knew
that he was one. Inevitably, whenever he transformed back to
human form he was confused as to how he ended up wherever he
was.
When
the gang ran into trouble they knew they could rely on their
“secret weapon” to save the day. The moon is needed to enact
the change from a person into a werewolf, but they found
that a photograph of the moon worked just as well as the
real thing, so whenever they needed the assistance of
Fangface they simply showed Sherman a picture of the moon.
Normally the sun is needed to change a person back, but they
found that a photograph worked just as well to reverse the
process. Curiously, despite his being a werewolf, strangers
were unaffected by the presence of Fangface. They were never
taken aback or even commented on his presence, and acted
like it was perfectly normal to see a werewolf hanging out
with teens.
Unlike Sherman, Fangface was
fearless and had little trouble handling whatever menace the
group faced, but the transformation did come with a few hiccups.
Upon his transformation, Fangface’s first overwhelming urge was
to go after Puggs (his nickname for Puggsy), either to rough him
up or to put him in his mouth with the intent to eat him. Only
by rubbing Fangface’s foot could Biff and Kim calm Fangface
enough to come to his senses and let Puggsy out. Whenever the
teens split up into pairs Biff and Kim always formed one team
and Puggsy and Fangface the other. Puggsy had to be careful
though, because the sight of food or any mention of food made
Fangface lose control and try to eat Puggsy. It’s logical to
think that these brushes with death would make Puggsy a little
cautious around Fangface, but no – he never curtailed his desire
to tell Fangface to shut up or to call him “pinhead,” the same
as he did with Sherman.
Another potential problem the
group needed to avoid was letting Fangface look into a mirror.
Whenever Fangface saw his reflection he went into a berserker
fit and lost all rational thought, which usually resulted in
ruining their plan. As if that weren’t enough, seeing an image
of the sun (on items such as a poster, food container or suntan
lotion bottle) often reverted Fangface to Sherman at the worst
possible moment, leaving a confused Sherman face-to-face with
some bad guy or creature Fangface was just about to confront.
In the show’s second season
episodes were trimmed from twenty-one minutes to eleven minutes
in length, and became one of several segments on the two-hour
long Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show. Another change was the
addition of a new cast member to the group – Baby Fangs, Sherman Fangsworth’s toddler cousin. The obvious question is, why would
four teens choose to bring a small child with them, exposing him
to all sorts of danger. It could have been for the additional
firepower, because Baby Fangs was afflicted with the same
lycanthrope condition as Sherman which, it could be argued,
rendered the possibility of him getting harmed negligible. To
the group the toddler werewolf was called “Fangpuss.” Baby Fangs
appeared in all but a few of the second season episodes, but the
show’s mystery solving formula otherwise stayed the same.
Baby Fangs/Fangpuss always stuck
close to Sherman/Fangface and the same conditions applied to his
transformation from human to werewolf and back again. For the
unfortunate Puggsy, the addition of another werewolf put him in
twice the danger, because the miniature werewolf was every bit
as intent on accosting Puggsy as his older cousin immediately
after transforming into a werewolf.
A point of
interest: the existence of two werewolves in the same generation
seems at odds with the opening narrative which implies that one
werewolf is born into the Fangsworth family every four hundred
years. However, the narrative does not say the curse is limited
to a single person, so it could be assumed that every four
hundred years the curse strikes the family, and that at least
one newborn is afflicted with the curse, with the possibility of
more. |