Happy All-Hallow’s Month! In anticipation of Halloween — which, let’s face it, we’ve been anticipating since last Halloween — Daily Grindhouse will again be offering daily celebrations of horror movies here on our site. This October’s theme is horror sequels — the good, the bad, the really bad, and the unfairly unappreciated. We’re calling it SCREAMQUELS!
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I came to werewolves rather late in life, not until my mid-20s. I grew up afraid yet thrilled by Bela Lugosi’s piercing stare as Dracula in many film books, despite not having seen the titular 1931 movie, which germinated a lifelong obsession with vampires in literature and film. Werewolves were an afterthought to me until I discovered THE HOWLING. The DVD boom of the ‘00s allowed me to finally see it and I fell in love with its sly satire on psychotherapy and New Age mysticism and thoughtful, cheeky casting (Slim Pickens as an “aw shucks werewolf” is simply genius). I prefer Dante’s effort to John Landis’ AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (it’s nearly a photo finish), but I started to devour (sorry) any werewolf movie I could find, good or bad. In the case of HOWLING II (AKA HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF AKA HOWLING II: STIRBA—WEREWOLF BITCH), it’s definitely the latter. Philippe Mora, an Aussie filmmaker of some note, having directed the 1982 horror bladderfest THE BEAST WITHIN, is saddled with a cast of inept actors, poor special effects (especially after Rob Bottin’s wonderfully gruesome work in the original), and an incoherent plot. However, it’s a lot of fun, especially whenever Sybil Danning is onscreen as werewolf matriarch, Stirba (regardless of the producers’ unsavory practice of looping her brief topless scene repeatedly during the end credits). So why write about a film that’s considered objectively bad by many a cinephile or horror aficionado? Despite the film’s many flaws, a lot of fun can be derived while watching Christopher Lee sleepwalk through a role he should have turned down, in quiet dignity perfected by the older generation of British stage actors. Whenever I watch HOWLING II, I always think of the late, great film critic Pauline Kael and her assertion that bad movies can still be enjoyed, and I smile at the unintentional humor on display.
Horror sequels seldom live up to their progenitors, but in the case of HOWLING II, it doesn’t even have the same DNA as the original 1981 werewolf classic—it’s a different, uh, beast altogether. Nobody expects horror sequels to be stunning works of art (though they often can be), but the reverence for Joe Dante’s film is non-existent. When Europeans try to mimic distinctly American styles of filmmaking, the result is HOWLING II: Everything feels off kilter, from the Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia locales substituting for Los Angeles (badly), to the lack of reliable English-speaking actors to convince the audience that much of the lycanthropic shenanigans occurs in the US of A. At least Italian genre filmmakers understand the need for some authenticity, whether shooting in American locales, or hiring competent English-language actors for whom YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE is not at the top of their CVs. Dante was able to cast a memorable group of actors on a limited budget, but Mora has two mediocre leads in Reb Brown, the aforementioned Yor, as Ben White, brother of Dee Wallace-Stone’s Karen White from THE HOWLING, and Annie McEnroe as Jenny, one of Karen White’s co-workers. The two American leads are stiff, particularly Brown, who makes Dolph Lundgren seem like a Stratford Festival stage veteran by comparison, and there is no chemistry between these two amateur detectives who stumble into what appears to be a plot to have the werewolves rule the world; I say “appears” because no matter how many times I watch it, I really have no idea what’s going on. In one unintentionally hilarious scene, Ben and Jenny decide to have clumsy, awkward sex, accompanied by ‘80s sax, in a Transylvanian hotel while plays that happens to be run by werewolves. Even in the eternal battle against lycanthropes, there’s always time for a quick tryst before bloodshed.
HOWLING II demonstrates how disrespectful a group of craven filmmakers can treat a beloved movie in their quest to make a quick buck. Nowhere is that more obvious in the scene in which Christopher Lee plays a tape of Karen White’s on-air “death”: Although they had the sequel rights, the producers recreate the iconic scene from THE HOWLING with a different actress playing White and it’s embarrassingly bad. Clearly missing Rob Bottin’s craftsmanship, poor Karen transforms into something more like Zira from PLANET OF THE APES than a werewolf. The producers continue to desecrate Dante’s film by insisting that Karen wasn’t executed on air as suggested and requires a silver knife to the heart after her funeral. I squirm in irritation during these scenes and it’s a miracle that I can still find enjoyment in a piece of schlock that tramples the joys of the original from which its spawned. In the film’s IMDb trivia page, it states that when Christopher Lee met Joe Dante on the set of GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, he apologized for appearing in HOWLING II. I don’t know if the story is apocryphal or not, but I can understand the need for contrition after watching these scenes.
The werewolves depicted in HOWLING II are inconsistent—sometimes they resemble mutant dogs, sometimes they look like apes, sometimes they look like vampires with their extended fangs and the continuity issue is either frustrating or amusing, depending how you approach the film. (Watching the film sober is not recommended.) In a film that highlights a lengthy lycanthropic threesome between Sybil Danning’s Stirba and two of her minions, getting angry over werewolf designs seems futile, especially when Mora blends a lot of werewolf mysticism with vampire lore, witchcraft, and generic occultism. At least Sybil Danning is magnificently clad in a leather and gold metal suit and outsized sunglasses that is as garish as it is stunning; even a centuries-old werewolf queen needs to make a bold fashion statement. Not to be outdone, Christopher Lee infiltrates an LA werewolf hotspot masterfully with his own mid-‘80s new wave sunglasses, brown leather jacket, and comfortable dad jeans. In their final battle, Lee is impeccably dressed in a black suit and mock turtleneck, while Stirba is still wearing her gold-and-black aerobics battle suit, ready to rumble in a special effects-laden light show that seems to have been lifted from an old Star Trek episode. Every expense is spared in this cheap production, but it adds to the film’s charms.
HOWLING II is a ridiculous, poorly-made movie, but if you give in to its inept delights, you’ll have a good time. It’s a very ‘80s interpretation of a werewolf movie filtered through a European nightclub aesthetic with silly, crude makeup effects, but I love it. It’s an example of what happens when greedy people who care more for commerce than art make movies, but rather than rage against the Hollywood machine, I smile and enjoy its inanities. I dare you to watch the film and not get New Wave band Babel’s song “The Howling” stuck in your head. (It’s played repeatedly throughout the film, squeezing every last penny out of the song commission!) If you enjoy gory, incoherent horror movies that recreate sunny southern California in Eastern Europe, HOWLING II is an excellent choice to spend a lazy, mind-altered evening. I haven’t seen any of the other sequels (of which there are many, including the second sequel, HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS, also directed by Mora), but I can’t imagine any of them match the sheer audaciousness of HOWLING II. Maybe we should be condemning Philippe Mora and crew for creating a sacrilegious sequel to a bonafide horror classic, but I’m in a forgiving mood—after all, a movie with a New Wave Christopher Lee can’t easily be forgotten.
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