The Howling: Reborn

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.

Read on, but first, links to previous installments:
The Howling
Howling II...your sister is a werewolf!
Marsupials: Howling III
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare
Howling V: The Rebirth
Howling VI: The Freaks
The Howling: New Moon Rising

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.

Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood

Released in 1988, Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood has a premise that involves a girl with psychic powers going up against the recently returned Voorhees (new blood, indeed).  It is often summarized by fans as being "Carrie vs. Jason," but that summary isn't really accurate, as the "VS" part of the movie is relegated to the final 10 minutes or so.  The rest of it is standard Friday fare, with a group of young people just looking to have a good time but instead getting murdered in various ways.

Until this week I had only seen Part VII of the Friday the 13th saga once, back about 20 years ago when I was watching the series for the first time.  In general I am much more familiar with the front half of the Friday franchise than with the back half, so this was fun revisiting a movie I hadn't seen since I was a teenager.  Unfortunately, this turns out to be my least favorite of the first seven Friday films.


The movie opens with a recap of Jason's history and a summary of the events of Part VI.  Basically it all serves to remind the viewer why Jason is chained to a big rock in the middle of Crystal Lake.  Notable in this opening is two things; the voiceover narration is provided by Walt Gorney, better known as Crazy Ralph from Friday Parts 1 and 2, and the recap montage uses footage from the Friday Part VI teaser trailer, specifically the shot of the graveyard and the tombstone exploding.

After the refresher and the credits roll, we get a scene set in the past, where a young girl named Tina witnesses her parents having an argument that leads to physical abuse.  This probably isn't something new to the family, as little Tina, upset and afraid, runs toward the lake and paddles out in a boat, her father running after her.

While on the water, and with her father standing on the dock, Tina's psychic telekinetic powers manifest and cause the dock to collapse into the lake, taking her father with it.  Little Tina is very sad and traumatized.


Flash forward 10 years later, much of which she spent in psychiatric care, and Tina (Lar Park-Lincoln) is now returning to that lake house, along with her mother (Susan Blu) and her psychiatrist Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser) for further treatment.

Her recovery has come along nicely, but Tina foolishly goes down to the lake and accidentally raises Jason out of his watery prison (she does this psychically, trying to raise her father up for some reason).

Jason then goes on his mandatory murder spree (as is his wont) before Tina, in the finale, confronts him and does battle with Jason WITH HER MIND!

Note about the timeline:  The events with young Tina happened in 1989, with the rest of the movie taking place 10 years later (1999).  So at this point, Jason has been in the lake for a couple years, as the events from Friday Part VI took place in 1997.
Note about the note:  I know and realize that the filmmakers behind these films gave little to no thought towards the continuity between films, but I find it really interesting that most of the sequels take place in the future relative to the year each film was released.  For example, Friday Part VII was released in 1988 but, when following the timeline established, the events must take place in 1999.  Weird, right?

Anyway, Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood is not a great movie, but I do appreciate that it was trying something different with the franchise.  I think there should've been more focus on Tina and her abilities and I would've liked to see her do more battle with Jason.  The very end of the movie feels rushed and a bit like an anti-climax, which is unfortunate.

What really sinks this one is the multiple cuts and trimmed scenes that the MPAA ratings board demanded be removed from the film to secure an R rating.  These extra gore scenes are available in a really rough form on the DVD/Blu releases and a couple of them are really fantastic and would've really improved the film and made it more exciting and interesting.  As it is though, unfortunately, I have to say, even though it has the intrinsic "funness" associated with Friday the 13th movies, Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood is one of the weaker entries in the series.  However, I don't think I'll wait another 20 years before watching it again.

It's a birthday bash.

Notes:

Playing Jason for the first of what would be a record four times is stuntman/actor Kane Hodder.  This is perfect casting, seeing as how being underwater all those years really made Jason swell up to a Kane Hodder-like size.  It works!

Seriously though, Hodder puts in a solid performance as Jason, giving him a real hulking presence while remaining light on his feet (see: the part where he jumps through a window).  He also has this great scene where he's set on fire and at the time it was the longest onscreen burn ever done by an actor.  Very impressive.

Best kill in the movie is easily the sleeping bag kill.  In the version that was cut out, Jason gives her about six good wallops against that tree, which is great, but what we see in the final movie is just one good whack that kills her instantly.  It's less ridiculously brutal, but in its own way it still packs a punch.  It's one of the most iconic kills in the entire franchise.

As for the other kills in the movie, most of them are pretty standard stuff, which, once again, is a shame because some of the cut footage is really amazing, particularly this spectacular head crushing scene and the death of Dr. Crews, who gets a tree trimmer to the torso and his guts go everywhere.  These things are fine and all as they are in the finished movie, but they could've been so much more!

Also, there is a kill in the lake with a naked girl that is filmed partly beneath the water that is an obvious homage to the opening of Jaws.  I got nothing else to say about it; just something I noticed.

Jason's new look includes him wearing a chain, which is part punk rock, part hip-hop, and very chic.

During the finale when Tina is using her psychic powers against Jason she picks up a potted plant and throws it at him.  By itself this is uninteresting.  What does make it interesting/hilarious is that resting in the potted plant is the decapitated head of one of her friends.  Ha!

Tina's mom in this movie, Mrs. Shepard, played by Susan Blu, has some absolutely out of control 80s hair.  It's fantastic!  There are some really great mullets and things like that throughout the cast, but mom's hair is seriously the greatest thing.

Speaking of Mrs. Blu, her appearance here in Friday Part VII marks one of her rare onscreen roles, as she is mainly a voiceover actress, providing voices on Transformers, Jem, DuckTales and a slew of other things over the years.

Director John Carl Buechler is a special effects expert, having provided work for many Charles Band productions, like TerrorVision (1986), Dolls (1987), and Prison (1987), which is where he met Kane Hodder.  Buechler got the job because of his work on Troll (1986), which is strange if you've actually seen Troll.

Buechler also did some effects work on Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, which came out the same year as his Friday Part VII, a few months later actually, and did more than twice as well at the box office.

This marks the first time that Harry Manfredini was not the sole composer on a Friday movie.  Fred Mollin would provide most of the score and would go on to be the composer for Friday Part VIII and the Friday the 13th television series as well.

Lar Park -Lincoln was in House II: The Second Story in 1987 and she also had a reoccurring role on Knots Landing starting around the same time.  I think she makes for a really interesting final girl and to her credit she does attempt to do something a little different with her portrayal of psychic abilities (she's not just ripping off Sissy Spacek in Carrie).

Kevin Spirtas (credited as Kevin Blair) is Nick, the secondary protagonist and love interest to Tina.  He's likable enough but doesn't really do much in the movie.  Spirtas was also in the wonderfully cheap and cheesy The Hills Have Eyes 2 (1984) along with Kane Hodder and would go on to star in a couple Subspecies movies and would have a long 10 year stint on Days of our Lives.

Terry Kiser, who plays the jerk Dr. Crews, would go on to play the titular character in Weekend at Bernie's (1989) and it's 1993 sequel, which is fairly awesome and there is nothing else to say about it.

Final Thought:  Not terrible and not great.  I can say this about it though:  How many Part VII's of movie franchises are there out there?  Not many.  And Friday the 13th Part VII is one of them.

This poster from Ghana is freaking CRAZY!!

Read the rest of my Friday reviews:
Friday the 13th
Friday Part II
Friday Part III
The Final Chapter
A New Beginning
Jason Lives

Happy Friday the 13th!