Howling: New Moon Rising

If the wooden acting doesn't churn your stomach, the insipid country music will. TRUST ME, this movie goes beyond stupid, into entirely NEW realms of awfulness. Clive Turner, who had roles in Howlings 4 and 5 takes over as Director, Producer, and the lead role of "Ted". Ted is - guess what - a werewolf, who is Australian(??) and likes George Jones. The only decent performance in this crapfest is Jack Huff as Father John, a werewolf hunting priest. The movie makes a half-hearted attempt to connect with previous Howlings, but there is really no plot to speak of. Halfway through, the movie actually degrades to the point of making farting jokes. The ending (if you can make it that far) is the rotten icing on the top of this putrid cake. Do not watch this movie even if you are offered money. I'm sorry I did.

This movie once held a prominent position in the Bottom 100. How it ever got off the list is one of the great mysteries of the universe. Howling: New Moon Rising single-handedly redefines bad low-budget horror movies, and has all the requirements for being the worst horror sequel ever made:

1. No werewolf.

2. Old-school barroom jokes served up as original humor.

3. Small-town inhabitants playing themselves.

4. No werewolf.

5. Hopelessly outdated, overlong, and plot-halting line dance sequences.

6. Pappy sings.

7. Still no werewolf.

8. The most ridiculous 'plot twist' in the history of cinema.

9. Police chief: "Can we continue this tomorrow? This is all just too much information for me to take in all at once."

10. Red-tinted POV shots that's supposed to be a werewolf.

11. Written by, directed by, produced by, and starring Clive Turner.

12. "Hey Pappy - there's dirt in your chili!"

13. A two-line program command that produces the final CGI 'transformation' into the fakest-looking werewolf I've ever seen.

This movie was so painful to watch. No wonder they didn't make any more Howling sequels after this one. 1/10

When movie fans discuss the most influential directors of all time, the name Clive Turner is usually at the top of the list. Like some sort of bizarre love child of Lynch and Tarantino, Turner exploded onto the scene with his masterpiece, Howling VII, and with that one film, defined post-modern primativism. In the limited space I have available, I will discuss my interpertation and views of Mr. Turner's awe-inspiring vision.

First, the character of the inspector. Just as Eastwood destroyed the myth of the remorseless gunfighter in Unforgiven, Turner destroys the myth of the police investigator. Turner's inspector isn't glamourous, he doesn't drive an expensive car, he doesn't solve crimes with only a few clues he carefully pieces together. Turner's inspector is so world-weary, so jaded, that he cannot even listen to a simple werewolf-on-the-loose story without taking a break to absorb all the information, because his mind is so haunted by his past cases, he simply cannot stop thinking about all the pain he has witnessed.

Turner even manages to reduce the werewolf, probably the most primative of monsters, into a simpler form. No CGI effects here, no elaborate camera tricks,. Just a very simplistic, very primative revealing of the monster hiding inside all of us.

One of the biggest complaints I have read about this film is Turner's use of "ordinary townpeople" rather that real "actors" in his film (this in a time when reality TV is considered the height of human achievement) This unique casting decision again shows Turner's devotion to post-modern primativism. No other director would dare to take a chance like this. "Real" actors could never have delivered the raw, primal emotions the performers in this movie demonstrate. I know I am not the only audience member to "Stand Up and Testify!" when Pappy (Turner's brilliant play on the authority-figure archtype) commands, nor am I the only one to recoil in horror at the sad, brutal reality of alcoholism and drug abuse as demonstrated in the song "Sit here and drink my good Christian beer."

The final point I would like to discuss is the line dancing, probably Turner's most powerful statement about our sad modern world. Notice how unhappy and robotic all the line dancers look. Turner is forcing us to confront our MTV controlled culture. No matter how unhappy or robotic we feel, we must follow and worship whatever MTV tells us is "cool." Don't like rap? Don't like boy-bands? Too bad, MTV says you must like it, and it is your duty as a good consumer to roboticly follow.

Howling VII, much like Rebel Without a Cause, Saturday Night Fever, and Pulp Fiction is a movie that defines a generation and causes us to re-examine the world we live in. Mr. Turner is trying to warn us: Stand up, testify, absorb the world around you, before you wake up one morning and discover there is dirt in YOUR chili.

You know how veterans respond when you ask them what the war was like, and they respond "I don't want to talk about it." Well, that's the best I can come up with for describing this movie. "I don't want to talk about this movie." I hate this movie. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I have watched some of the WORST movies known to mankind, and this one comes in second place. I have seen a movie called Robo C.H.I.C. I have seen The Cars that Ate Paris, I have seen Hobgoblins, I have seen Ghoulies IV, I have seen Trolls II (ouch, that one was bad) but only Hobgoblins actually compares to the pain I felt watching this movie. I don't... I don't want to talk about this any more. Please... leave me alone to throw up in peace. Watch this movie if you want, but be warned, I didn't encourage you, and don't bother renting it in Greensboro, N.C. because the tape is not coming back in proper working order. It's coming back in pieces. Many many pieces.

I recommend this to bad movie fanatics, with a word of caution: this movie is painfully dull just as often as it is funny. Parts of it are very slow, and the director/writer had to know this was bad (whereas there is something far more sacred about bad movies being born of genuine ambition).

Now and then somebody gets killed by a werewolf. There are lots of filler scenes of people sitting in a country-western bar, singing and telling the occasional dumb joke. It's all so loosely constructed that many of the extras were likely unaware that this was supposed to be about a werewolf. None of the actors are trying, except for the bearded priest. His acting is not good, but he takes his role seriously. Why? Perhaps he's just a total non-conformist. I don't know.

These are not real actors, most of them use their real names for the characters. It was all filmed in one or two towns. Since all the "actors" know each other, it's safe to assume that there are plenty of inside jokes in the script. For example, there is a farting scene where several guys run out of the bar, hands waving in front of noses. They are followed by a big guy smiling and eating a plate of chili. I'm sure it's no accident that this particular individual was chosen to play the farter. He must have a real life reputation for gas and therefore people in the neighborhood will find this more amusing than outsiders would. So if I knew these people I'm sure my familiarity with everybody would add more charm to the movie, bumping my vote up from a 1 to a 3.

As others have mentioned, it is stunning that New Line Cinemas is associated with this. Almost makes you wonder if somebody blackmailed top execs into supporting it. In short, a very bad film. Worth checking out once, but use the buddy system- don't watch it alone.