Horror

The first Howling is a classic and the second one, is well, not so much a classic but it is still entertaining. The brother of the main character from the first one is trying to figure out what happened to his sister. He teams up with her colleague and a werewolf hunter played by horror legend Christopher Lee.

They go to Transylvania to go after the most powerful werewolf, Stirba (Sybil Danning) and craziness ensues. There is a new wave band, gratuitous werewolf nudity and dwarves. One of the main problems for me is the recreation of the broadcast from the end of the first movie. It looks like someone wearing a cheap mask and the outfit isn't even the same if I remember correctly. I'm sure they didn't have the rights to use the clip from the original but they could have made it a little better in my opinion. Overall, The Howling 2 is decent enough to watch as long as you don't take it too seriously or expect it to be as good as the first film.

This is a pretty bad movie. But not so bad as it's reputation suggests. The production values aren't too bad and there is the odd effective scene. And it does have an 80's cheezoid veneer that means that it is always kind of fun. Watch out, too, for Jimmy Nail's brief appearance - his attempt at an American accent is so astoundingly rubbish it's fantastic. Fantastic too are Sybil Danning's breasts - they make a brief appearance in the movie but the scene is repeated umpteen times in the end credits in what can only be described as the 12" remix of Sybil Danning's boobs. Has to be seen to be believed. As a horror movie it isn't scary, the effects are silly and Christopher Lee turns up to sleepwalk through his performance. I guess he was buying a new house and needed some cash for the deposit. The two central characters - the man and the woman - were so negligible that I have forgotten almost everything about them and I just watched this movie earlier tonight. The werewolves are noticeably less impressive than in the original movie, in fact, bizarrely, they sometimes look more like badly burned apes. The eastern European setting is quite good and the music provided by the new wave band Babel, while being pretty terrible, does at least give the film some added cheese.

Overall? Good for a laugh. Not good quality but did you seriously expect it to be? And, at the very least, you've always got Sybil's knockers.

I think perhaps the most apt comment should go to Christopher Lee himself who has often described HOWLING II as his own "personal embarrassment!" Since we have the film in our own library (in BETA format of course) we are probably the only family world-wide has seen it upwards of 20 times over the last 17 years....never fails to give us a laugh...I would almost "miss" it now! We all just watched it again tonight!

El cheapo film-making any which way you want to look at it...script, acting, direction, editing, production values, fx...love the early shot of the "werewolf" where they have only given the poor guy a "furry arm" the rest is normal! But hey...this is a fun movie....how many other films do you get to see a girl rip her bra off seventeen times during the closing credits. Sybil Danning should have received a "special Oscar" for this alone!

Tries to link itself to the original with the most pathetic re-shot footage of Dee Wallace Stone's demise in the original that looks absolutely nothing like her, not to mention the "body" in the coffin. Still ya gotta love the theme "In the pale pale night of the moon above"....

Hell, give it a break!

I watched two Christopher Lee movies this weekend, Horror Hotel (Lee at his best) and Howling II (Lee at his worst). This is definitely the low point of the man's career. You can tell he did not want to be here and I feel so sorry for him. The "film" is pretty bad...but it's funny at the same time. I almost peed in my pants when Reb Brown (Captain America himself) ran into the room and screamed "BOO!!" The man is a comic genius and it's laugh out loud funny. Equally funny are the exploding dwarf, the drunken werewolf orgy, and the use of the eighties swipe (that device used to cut from scene to scene). We get some of the corniest swipes ever; a fan, diamond, swirl, and just the classic swipe are all used. Perhaps the funniest thing comes in the credits. The scene where Sybil Danning strips her clothes off is shown 10, count em, 10 times again over the credits. This does not compensate for the crappiness of the movie though. The most unbearable quality about the flick is the lighting. You can't see anything. If there is any werewolf action going on here, you can't see it! It's so dark and sometimes very painful to watch. Howling II is worth watching only if you're a Reb Brown fan or if you want to see Christopher Lee wearing some ridiculously cool eighties sunglasses, or maybe to see some Frankie Goes To Hollywood-lookin' band sing a song about "the pale, pale light of the moonglow."

"The Howling" was a horror movie that had horror in it, Howling II is a horror movie that's hilarious!! It almost makes fun of itself!! Christopher Lee was so funny, he should of won an Oscar! And as for the rest of the cast, they make "Airplane" look like a drama. You'd think they picked these guys off the streets. And as for "Stirba- the Werewolf Whatever", her character was SOOOOOOOOO funny, she made the film a comedy!! I mean, "Stirba". Every time they mentioned her name I had to stop the tape and run into the next room, crying with laughter. Yes, I own this film. Of course, I bought it because I'm a collector and to pass the time by! Usually, you wouldn't find the content of this film funny, as my father found out the hard way, but it's presented in such style that... well, it's very hard to explain. Howling II is so bad, it's funny!! And that's all there is to it!!