Taking detours through horror, action, sci-fi, cult, and exploitation films, with pitstops along the way for classics, foreign gems, low budget obscurities, B-movies, and other overlooked and underseen cinematic roadside attractions.
When I started The Howling Series Retrospective Review project back in 2013 I didn't imagine
a). that it would take this long to complete
and
b). that there was an 8th and more recent Howling film. I thought the series died with the dreadful part 7, New Moon Rising, but turns out that was not the case (and wishful thinking).
This has not been a good series of movies (only part of the reason why this project has taken so long to complete) but in the very least I can say that all of the films either contain some memorable moments or something strange/weird/interesting. However this modern Howling movie is. . . .something else entirely.
I'm not actually sure what to say about The Howling: Reborn (2011). The movie is kind of a blank. It happened, I heard and saw something, but it had no effect. I wasn't appalled by it, or interested. It's the kind of bad and bland that is common with modern DTV low budget horror movies: Visually uninteresting, the camera moves around too much, zero atmosphere, sterile lighting, terrible voiceover narration, weak characterization, crummy CGI, etc. I watched it less than a week ago and I can barely recall what the movie is even about.
Let's see....
There's a pregnant artist lady who is killed by something, some sort of unseen attacker, but the baby survives and 18 years later grows into this sullen dork who meets the rebellious love of his life and also his mom (who never actually died) comes back to make him a badass werewolf, just like she is, and if not she'll kill him. Or something. Like I said, I barely recall.
It's real basic, generic stuff. The real question is, how are the werewolves?
Well, they kind of look okay, they're these tall bipedal creatures but it seems as if they come in two styles. One has the regular werewolf snout face and is furrier:
This is how mom-wolf and eventually (spoiler?) her son and his girlfriend look, and it looks fine! It looks like a werewolf. Mom-wolf also has these minion wolves and these dudes, for some reason, look quite a bit different. I'd say they resemble an orc wearing furry chaps:
That darker first image is actually the first full werewolf you see in the movie, which is both hilarious and alarming, as he's all slick up top and kinda hairy on his legs and arms. It was a small relief later when mom turns into a regular looking werewolf. Makes me wonder why they didn't just stick with a snout-face similar to mom-wolf? Weird design choice guys.
You get a real good look at the better werewolf design late in the movie, after a big shaky cam werewolf battle between mom and son, (spoiler) girlfriend-wolf shows up and she looks like this:
Not too shabby of a monster suit (could be hairier); there's definitely worse in the Howling franchise itself.
Unfortunately, there's very little blood and not really any gore or cool special effects, although there is one funny kill scene where a kid is thrown/falls down a stairwell shaft. (obvious dummy)
Jeez, other than that let's see...what else to say about this movie?
-At one point one of the bro-wolf minions serves our protagonist a finger hot dog. I guess it's in an effort to get him to open up to his werewolf lineage, or whatever. It qualifies as a weird moment but only as a moment that feels like it belongs in a different movie.
-The music and soundtrack is pretty lame, full of bro-rock songs, but they do manage to squeeze "Killing Moon" by Echo & The Bunnymen in there, so good job there I guess (even if it is a cost-saving non-album version of the track).
-In the opening, after mom is "killed," the unborn baby's hand bursts through her stomach. That sounds a lot cooler than it actually is in the movie.
-Mom-wolf Ivana Milicevic puts in the best performance here, vamping it up and, seemingly, having some fun. She can also be seen in Casino Royale (2006), Running Scared (2006) and Vanilla Sky (2001) and is also familiar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans as Riley Finn's wife, Sam, who showed up in that one episode.
-In the opening credits the film is said to be based on The Howling II written by Gary Brandner, but the finished movie has no resemblance to his novel.
-The girlfriend character is enigmatic and intense for no other reason than to cast suspicion on her for potentially being a werewolf early in the movie (which she's not, at least until the finale). As written, I find her to be equally unbelievable as a wild girl as she is a dream girl.
-There's a best friend character who knows a lot about werewolves because of movies. That really sums up what kind of movie this is. It goes for the obvious every time.
Let's be real: this is the kind of lazy movie designed to fill space on a video store shelf or to fulfill some sort of contractual obligation or maybe retain the rights to the material or something. It was obviously made to try to cash in with the Twilight crowd, which, whatever, good for them, but I'm not sure why they had to drag the good(?) name of The Howling series into all of this... hmmpf, let's end this and just go to the wrap-up.
First check out the trailer if you want:
-------------The Howling Series Retrospective Review Wrap-Up-------------
Well okay, here we are at the end and it seems like I should have learned a lesson or come to a conclusion or something. Well, if I did, it is that the Howling movies are not very good. They have to be, overall, on the lower end of quality when it comes to horror franchises, somewhere above stuff like Puppet Master and Witchcraft but below, say, the Hellraiser films (which manages at least two great movies). This is not to say that some of the individual movies don't have their merits and/or interesting moments. Some of them offer gore and neat werewolf effects, while others have weird half-baked ideas and odd quirks.
This is how I would personally rank the films, from most to least watchable:
-The Howling
-Howling II
-Howling III
-Howling VI
-Howling IV
-Howling New Moon Rising
-Howling V
-Howling Reborn
So yeah, I find NMR to be more watchable than two other Howling films, even though I think it is quite possibly one of the worst movies ever made. I guess that's why I find it watchable, the uniqueness of such a train wreck.
While I wouldn't recommend this series of movies to most horror fans, I guess I might say the first two sequels are maybe worth checking out, if just for the weirdness factor of both. Full Disclosure: I actually kinda like part II, I think it's a fun bad movie. In general though, you can just watch the original Howling and leave it at that. I'm still not a big fan of the OG Howling, but I can appreciate it more now, if only because Joe Dante was able to pull off a halfway decent werewolf movie, which seems to be a rarity for the subgenre.
You can get The Howling and Howling II on Blu-ray from the fine folks at Scream Factory and you can find the rest of the movies on DVD in dollar bins and resale shops nationwide.
So, okay. Full disclosure: One of the main reasons I started this project of watching and reviewing all the Howling films was because I wanted to write about this particular sequel. Why? Well, I have fond memories attached to this one, of watching it with friends and laughing at its terribleness, and for a brief time this was one of my favorite bad movies. When I started the HSRR this was actually the only Howling sequel I had seen and, in a way, this entire project has been leading to this point. . .
Which is a bummer because The Howling: New Moon Rising (1995) is such a bad movie.
Like, really bad. So bad that it only barely qualifies as a movie at all. Inept is the word that covers most of the qualities of the filmmaking. This isn't a horror movie, it's more like the local community group made a commercial for a small desert town saloon and a flimsy werewolf story was grafted onto it. The movie is full of local color, and while it is interesting to an extent, there is nothing particularly exciting, oddball, or weird going on here. The only truly interesting thing about The Howling: New Moon Rising is that it exists at all.
The plot: Basically a redheaded Australian motorcycle cowboy (Clive Turner) rides into this small town somewhere outside of Barstow where the residents like to line dance and hang out at the local bar, Pappy and Harriet's Pioneer Town Palace. There are some werewolf killings, the town gets suspicious of the redheaded stranger, but in reality he is on the trail of the werewolf himself..
The story, as it is, is augmented by the cast's attempts at jokes and comedy and also with all the line dancing and musical performances (of which there are many). The werewolf stuff in this movie is practically non-existent and that which does exist is mostly footage from previous Howling sequels. . . man this movie is bad...
Let's just cut to the chase. Here's the 7 Things You Need to Know about The Howling: New Moon Rising:
1. The badness of this movie cannot be understated. Not only is this thing not scary and barely a horror anything, not only is it overstuffed with montages and cheap, lame humor and endless line dancing by its non-actor cast, but it is so poorly put together from top to bottom that its cheapness becomes fascinating. It's a slow motion car wreck with a country-western soundtrack.
2. I'd say close to 30% of this movie is made up of footage from Howlings IV, V, and VI. In the business they call this "padding." This movie is so padded it could fall off a building and be fine. All of this exposition and backstory is told first to a detective by a priest, who partially recounts the events of Part V and VI.
Then later, Marie (Romy Windsor) from Howling IV returns to the series and tells the priest about the events from that film. They wisely use the footage of Richard's gooey transformation scene, which is the best thing in Part IV.
The first glimpse of a werewolf in New Moon Rising doesn't come until about 30 minutes into the movie and it's footage from Howling V. In fact, the only original werewolf scenes in this movie are unbelievably terrible.
3. The CGI transformation. Oh shit. This is just, so damn awful. Up until this point the werewolf in this movie has been represented by red lensed POV camera shots, running around the desert and stalking people.
During the finale, when it is revealed that. . whoever is the werewolf (Cheryl?), she transforms onscreen but it is done with a sub-shitty '90s morphing CGI effect which is quite simply the worst werewolf transformation of all time.
After the morph job, the werewolf busts through a door and the entire town shoots the creature down. It immediately cuts to the band playing in the bar as the credits roll. It's an abrupt and yet merciful end to such a movie. It struggled with everything else. Why stick the landing?
4. Line Dancing Purgatory.
I've mentioned all the line dancing. It is often shown in cutaways during bar scenes and montages. What isn't quite clear is exactly where these fun loving people are in relation to the band that is playing. It looks like some dark empty barn but I think it's obviously some sort of country-western purgatory for lost souls.
5. Most of the humor and jokes in the film are real corny or lowbrow type stuff, but there is one that I do like for some reason: the "dirt in the chili" scene.
This attempt at humor has Pappy making chili outside in a pot hanging over a fire. One guy looks in and says, "there's dirt in the chili, Pappy." Pappy takes off his apron and replies "I need a drink!"
Cut to inside and Pappy gets his drink. This is also a running joke, as Pappy is supposed to have quit drinking on the orders of Mrs. Pappy. So when she walks into the bar and Pappy hurriedly hides his whiskey, she instead says to him "Pappy, do you know there's dirt in the chili?"
"I know it! I know it," he shouts. Classic Pappy!
6. Clive Tuner: producer, writer, editor, director, star. I believe it is safe to say that he is the responsible party for what we have here.
Turner also co-wrote, co-produced, and co-starred in Howling IV and V. He is apparently supposed to be the same character from Part V here in New Moon Rising, even though that guy clearly died during that movie.
That aside, it could be considered interesting that Turner tried to connect the events of four different Howling sequels, four movies that really have nothing to do with one another. The only other sequel that tries to connect with a previous film is Part II, which, while doing a bad job at that, is an infinitely better and more entertaining film than New Moon Rising.
Too bad, Turner. Your attempt at a shared universe was an abject failure.
7. This movie has never been given a proper DVD release in America; it can only be legitimately found on VHS. It can be found on foreign bootlegs and whatnot. . or you can check it out on YouTube. I don't normally advocate watching movies on that site, but in this crappy case, and also since there is no movie trailer to be found on the internet, I've made an exception.
Final Thought: Don't see this movie, but if you do, just don't.
When I started this project I was unaware that there was an eighth and more recent Howling film. Crap. I got one more of these to do! I'm in Howling purgatory!!
Step right up, folks! It's the sixth installment of my ongoing and important Howling Series Retrospective Review! That of course means we're looking at Howling VI: The Freaks, so let's get right to it!
Howling VI: The Freaks (1991) is very much in the tradition of all the Howling sequels, being that it isn't very good and is only intermittently interesting, the latter of which really hinges on your personal tolerance for crummy direct-to-video werewolf movies. I will say that partVI is an upswing in quality over the previous two installments, but only slightly.
The plot is still fairly generic, as is some of the acting, which ranges from serviceable to questionable. The special effects are the main attraction and are the best they've been since part III. There is even a transformation scene! Sure, the quality of the final product may be debatable, but after the near-non-existent amount of werewolf action in part V, the makers of part VI at least had the good sense to bring some monsters into their monster movie.
The story beats of Howling VI basically involve a weird loner drifting into a small town, getting hooked up with a job, a place to live, and a love interest (all in one stop, mind you), before it's revealed that he's got the curse of the werewolf which leads to him being captured and put on display by Mr. Harker at his traveling freakshow, Harker's World of Wonders. Mr. Harker, of course, is hiding his own monstrous secret...
It might seem like some of the finer points are being glossed over, but no, that's really about the gist of it. Besides, it's the little details that are interesting, not the movie's run-of-the-mill plot lines.
Ian Richards (Brendan Hughes, Return to Horror High [1987]) is our drifter hero who is very concerned about the upcoming full moon. In the classic tradition he is a sympathetic werewolf character, the kind that worries about his change cycle and is aware of the dangers it brings. He keeps his distance from others and I would imagine this is part of why he's a drifter. Also, he's British.
When he arrives in town he's harassed by the local sheriff (Gary Carlos Cervantes), told to move along (standard issue movie stuff), before he gets a job offer to help restore a local church with this guy Dewey (Jered Barclay). There is a longer-than-necessary montage scene of them restoring the church and they do a ton of work. The way it's cut together makes it seem like it's all in one day, but it was most likely a week or something.
When they're done some of the locals admire and compliment their work, including the sheriff, who tells Ian he did a good job. So that's a good tip: if you drift into a small town and you want to endear yourself to the local law enforcement, do some refurbishing work on a church, possibly during a montage.
The movie really takes its time getting to the werewolves and freaks, but once it does things really start to pick up. The first highlight in the film is Ian's transformation scene. It starts with Ian waking up in a hilarious fashion and screaming "OH, CHRIST!"
After that you got the standard stretching and changing of the hands, feet, back, and face transformation special effects stuff, they're all fairly decent. However, once fully transformed, Ian the werewolf looks like this:
Definitely more of a man-wolf. Watch the whole thing here:
President Obama welcomes you!
I said that the transformation scene was the first highlight of the movie, but actually before that happens Harker's World of Wonders rolls into town.
Harker's is one of those traveling carnival freakshow things, which has a vibe that is sort of a cross between Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) and The Funhouse (1981). It has all the standard carnival stuff, games, jugglers, snake charmers, clowns, and mimes, but the main attraction is the World of Wonders (aka: the freakshow).
When Ian takes Elizabeth (Michele Matheson), Dewey's daughter, on a date to Harker's, they get a personal tour of the freakshow by Mr. Harker (Bruce Payne) himself, who seems to have an interest in Ian (it is implied that the two of them share some sort of history).
Mr. Toones (Deep Roy) is one of the first stops on the tour. He's a little person who sits at a table playing cards. Not a big deal really, but then it is revealed that he has a third arm underneath his right armpit.
The bummer thing about this third arm gag is that it never comes into play the rest of the movie, as it's a weird little detail that is forgotten. I would've loved it if Mr. Toones fired a gun with his hidden third arm or something, but alas, this movie delivers no such thing.
After Mr. Toones plays a few hands, the next attraction is the half man, half woman Carl/Carlotta (Christopher Morley), who sings a song. This is really the tamest of all the freaks but Morley really gives Carl(otta) some layers, playing the character as kind of a jerk with a bad attitude, not to mention a possible relationship with Mr. Toones.
Apparently Morley was an actor and female impersonator known for cross-dressing roles, most famously the transvestite who gets roughed-up in Freebie and the Bean (1974). Morley also had a reoccurring role on General Hospital, was She-Tim in Bachelor Party (1984), and played a drag queen Marilyn Monroe in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991). A very kind YouTube user has complied all of Morley's scenes from Howling VI into this clip:
Another one of the acts is Mr. Bellamey (Antonio Fargas) and he's a weird clown-jester who bites the head off a chicken.
Not much of a freak per-se, but uh, okay, whatever.
Antonio Fargas is one of the bigger names in the cast. He of course played Huggy Bear on TV's Starsky and Hutch and was also in a ton of movies, including Across 110th Street (1972), Cleopatra Jones (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), Car Wash (1975), and a bunch of other stuff (he's still working to this day). So it is really weird to see him bite the head off a chicken.
Alligator Boy (Sean Sullivan) is a real-deal freak, the kind with scaly skin and all that stuff, and while he acts ferocious he is actually a big softie. His name is Winston and even better, he has a pet cat that is named Winston II. Alligator Boy gets a little bit of a subplot and even helps Ian out later in the film. He's basically the secondary protagonist.
After Ian is captured by Harker and put on display at the freakshow, Harker throws werewolf-Ian Winston II and wants him to eat it for a gathered crowd.
That cat is not happy during this scene. And no, Ian doesn't eat the cat, much to the crowd's disappointment.
Also, this scene has an appearance by actress Elizabeth Shé in a non-speaking cameo as her character Mary Lou from the previous sequel, Howling V: The Rebirth (1989). I guess she shows up in the next film as well, which I've seen (years ago) but don't remember her specifically. I think they try to tie these films together, but I'm not sure. I'll talk more about that when I watch and review Howling: New Moon Rising (1995).
Harker is the kind of villain with an aristocratic aloofness to him, practically sneering all of his lines. He also has that vague European threatening quality about him which serves the character well (similar to Philip Davis' character Count Istvan in the previous Howling movie).
I've read this in more than one review, so this isn't an original thought, but Harker (and actor Bruce Payne) definitely gives off a vibe that is comparable to actor Julian Sands. So if you know Sands' work, than you know what kind of villain this movie is giving you.
Now time for the SLIGHT SPOILER: Late in the movie it is revealed that Harker is a vampire. This happens in a scene where he pops out of his coffin which is disguised as a couch in his RV and biting and throwing a guy (the snooping mayor) through the roof of his trailer:
Monster Harker is a Nosferatu-style vampire that sort of resembles a purple version of the Salem's Lot (1979) creature, although with a rufflier shirt:
In the end when (AGAIN SPOILER) Harker is killed by staking and by sunlight, there is a disintegration scene that looks like it was accomplished by using time-lapse and an air cannon. It reminds me of a combination of the finales to The Evil Dead (1981) and Gremlins (1984).
One more thing I have to bring up about this movie: Boom mics. They're all over the place! For those of you who don't know, boom microphones are used to record sound during movies and they are these microphones on long poles that are supposed to hover above the actors during filming. Sometimes (especially in low budget movies) it will dip into frame. It happens at least three times during Howling VI.
They shoulda hired a boom operator with greater arm strength.
Let's talk cast & crew:
Director Hope Perello worked as a production coordinator on some Cannon Films, most notably Stuart Gordon's From Beyond (1986) and Dolls (1987), and also as a producer on Catacombs (1988) and Puppetmaster (1989). She would go on to direct Piper Laurie in comedy/drama St. Patrick's Day (1997), which was her last film credit. She is now the director of the Pasadena Space Arts Center.
Novelist Gary Brandner once again gets "based on" credit for his books, even though nothing (once again) was used from his series.
Screenwriter Kevin Rock also wrote the sequels Warlock: The Armageddon (1993) and The Philadelphia Experiment II (1993). His real claim to fame is writing the screenplay for the ill-fated Fantastic Four (1994) film, a Roger Corman production of legendary terribleness, never intended for release (it has still to this day never seen a legit release).
Michele Matheson played Rebecca, Randy Quaid's Amish girlfriend in Kingpin (1996).
Sean Sullivan was Phil, the guy trying not to spew in Wayne's World (1992) and he was also a member of Buford Tannen's gang in Back to the Future III (1990).
Deep Roy is of course a famous little person actor, appearing in Flash Gordon (1980), The NeverEnding Story (1984), seven episodes of Doctor Who, and more recently he was all the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and he has a small (haha) reoccurring character in the new Star Trek films.
I mentioned Bruce Payne earlier being a Julian Sands-type. This is now confirmed since I look at his filmography and see that he took over for Sands in the titular role in the Warlock series with the third film, Warlock III: The End of Innocence (1999). Payne also gets some good roulette advice from Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57 (1992):
Closing Thoughts: Howling VI: The Freaks isn't so bad that you want to claw your eyes out; it's watchable. That's my pull quote, but I'll go on to say that it is not a very good movie, as its low budget, direct-to-video qualities are too readily apparent, but it does offer some monster action and somewhat enjoyable special effects, so it at least does that right. Also, there are some well staged and shot scenes in the film, with some good uses of lighting, which are the kinds of things that keep this from being unwatchably bad.
This is a unique entry in the Howling series, as it gives the werewolf another monster to fight against, and there's more action in this one than parts IV and V combined. All in all, I'd say if you picked a random Howling sequel to watch, without having watched any of the others, this actually wouldn't be a bad one to choose. It's still a bad movie, but you could have fun and enjoy it. If interested, it's available on Netflix Instant NOW.
