Howling

A well known female journalist takes a needed break out in the Californian countryside along with her husband(?) but there are mysterious things going on, the locals aren't very friendly and at night she can hear howling! More of a remake than a sequel. We don't get to see a werewolf proper until after an hour into the film, but prior to that there is horror in the form of psychological tension & ghostly happenings. Now I can understand many viewers feeling cheated by this but for me personally I felt that it worked fine. However, last half hour provides enough werewolf action to make the wait worthwhile. The best transformation scene sees a man literally MELT into a werewolf. There's a fair smattering of gore plus one inevitable sex scene. I'm not sure if the film was dubbed but sometimes the speech & mouth actions don't match, but just a minor moan. Obviously I'm in the minority here but like I said I found it reasonably entertaining & trust me, there are far worse werewolf movies out there!

Okay here's a great premise -- what would The Howling have been like if it was made by somebody without the talent or good sense of Joe Dante? Well, thanks to the fourth of the dire sequels, now we know. It would have sucked.

There are two good things I can say about this movie. First, it serves as a lesson about how not to adapt a book to the screen. Second, it shows how much of a great film The Howling is, simply by comparison. As it's another version of the same novel, you already pretty much know the plot ... a disturbed woman goes to a retreat of some kind in order to set her mind straight, and decides to investigate a mysterious howling in the woods. The only positive thing I'll say about the adaptation is that it retains the strong religious element from the book, which was neglected in the Joe Dante version. This movie is apparently a lot closer to Gary Brandner's novel, but it lacks any of the flavour, metaphor or subtext.

First off, you don't care about the characters. Secondly, it just isn't scary. Director John Hough may manage to stay faithful to the book like some kind of a literary parrot, but apparently he hasn't heard of those things we call mood or pace or style ... in no way does this feel like a horror movie (it features the most un-frightening ghosts I've ever seen in a film). It's not even a particularly well-made film, and I noticed several errors in continuity. The acting isn't great, as all of the cast seem to belong on a soap opera, but by no means is that the worst thing about the movie. Also, for some odd reason all the dialogue is dubbed. Badly. And there's no excuse for it ... it just distracts you from the rest of the scene (or perhaps that was the intention). The special effects are actually very good, but unfortunately you don't see any of them until the last ten minutes of the movie when they're all thrown together in a hectic mish-mash.

Why do we need this movie? It sure beats me. There's absolutely no reason to watch it, unless you're curious about the original novel but can't be bothered to read it. Joe Dante's The Howling is superior in every single way.

The writing makes it painfully obvious what characters are good, evil, or just naive. You would have to be pretty thick to be surprised by any of the plot twists thrown your way. All the canned dialogue comes from the worst movies we've groaned at in the past. Special FX kick in towards the end, but end all too abruptly as does the film.

If we've got to have a Howling movie so similar (plot-wise) to the first one, could we at least have it improve on the original in just one way? Apparently not.

Marie Adams (Romy Windsor) is a successful author who suffers what appears to be a nervous breakdown after seeing visions of a nun and a wolf like creature. Told by her doctor it may be stressed related, Marie and her husband Richard (Michael T. Weiss) travel from the din of L. A. to the isolated town of Drago where Richard has secured a cottage. While initially the secluded hideaway seems perfect for some rest and relaxation, repeated nights of a mysterious howling coupled with strange events lead Marie to believe her visions may not be the product of an overactive imagination.

After the success of the Howling III, rights holder and producer Steven Lane was approached by producer Harry Alan Towers (best known for his hand in various Fu Manchu films) about producing a Howling sequel in Africa as part of a tax shelter. Unlike the smooth production of Howling III, Howling IV experienced issues from the very beginning with Towers allegedly disappearing upon the crew's arrival, providing only part of what he had promised, and the crew were shocked to learn they were to produce the film in South Africa rather than a neighboring country. Despite a bevy of production issues (many of which Lane and effects artist Steve Johnson laid at the feet of director John Hough), Howling IV: The Original Nightmare continued the success of Howling III ensuring that additional sequels would be produced. Unlike the fascinating trainwreck of Howling II or the swing for the fences insanity of Howling III, Howling IV looks and feels like a stereotypical direct-to-video film with a paper thin plot stretched to the nth degree past tolerance.

I'll start off by saying the best things in this movie are the Justin Hayward performed theme song "Something Evil, Something Dangerous" and Steve Johnson's effects work in the climax of the movie. While the movie past the opening credits with that song are a tedious bore before the outlandish display of effects work at the last 10 minutes, at least the movie begins and ends on a good (sometimes literal) note. Unfortunately for us there's an entire movie sandwiched between those two highpoints, and it's filled with the most tedious running in circles narrative one can have. While having a married couple come to a secluded community only to slowly find out something's wrong as tension builds between them is a rich setup (it's basically a copy of the first Howling film with The Colony), Romy Windsor and Michael T. Weiss don't come off as compelling leads and fail to replicate the chemistry The Howling gave us. Both actors come off as overly reserved and stiff and with John Hough's slack direction with a story that's not that interesting, it only serves to remind you of how little actually happens in the movie. By my most generous memory, I don't believe we actually see a werewolf until about the 70 minute mark as the hour leading up to the reveal is just a bunch of would be scare sequences built around Marie's waking dreams that only become annoying because they have no consequences and the audiences know there's no consequences. We eventually get to a decent climax involving the wolves (and several dogs standing in for wolves) that has some decent transformation work (like a "melting" man animatronic) and a decent sequence involving a bell tower, but the movie leading up to it has been such a "nothing" experience you really don't care like you should.

I'm not naive when it comes to watching a movie like Howling IV, I know this movie doesn't have the means or resources to compete with its iconic original or bigger studio werewolf movies but it should at least play to some level of trashy, exploitative, or ironic level of enjoyment and it doesn't. It doesn't have the weird disjointed feel of Howling II that made that film's failures so fascinating, it doesn't have the far out insanity of Howling III done with its surprising level of earnestness, and instead it's just a dull retread of the setup of the first film only without the good performances or passion.

Gary Brandner wrote The Howling trilogy. Seven The Howling

movies were made from these books. Even though this movie

may seem like a remake of the original, it is actually the one movie

closest to the first book. When seen from this perspective it's a

pretty good movie. Plus you get to see Michael T. Weiss (of TV's

Pretender fame) with a mullet! What more can you ask for from a horror movie with the number 4

after it?