Hurlements V: la re-naissance

The Howling series doesn't have much of a great reputation, each one being different in style and tone with no real connection to each other. Although the second film does touch upon the original in some sort plot tie. I never been a huge fan of the original and the sequels that I've seen (2, 3 and 4) are simply inferior. So I went into the filth venture (another straight-to-video fare) expecting less, but actually came away mildly enjoying it. In some regards I enjoyed it more than the original… that's not to say it's better than that film. But I was pleasantly surprised by it.

A group of strangers selected from around the world are invited by an aristocratic count to the re-opening of a castle in Budapest that hasn't seen light for over 500 years due to its terrible past. Unknowingly to them everyone in the group bears an identical birthmark that links them to the castle's terrible past.

The low-budget, but sturdy "The Howling V: The Re-Birth" plays around with the ten little Indians murder mystery formula, but the killer is no ordinary being but actually a werewolf. The revelation might not come as a surprise, as there are certain clues scattered about pointing to the one in question, but it still remains cleverly penned (it elaborately plotted) and unpredictable in what order the guests become fresh meat. The performances are down-to-earth by the likes of Stephanie Faulkner, Mark Sivertsen and William Shockley, as there is an odd assortment of characters where a lot of time can be spent on trivial dialogue exchanges. However it stays gripping, crowned with mystery and danger where the remote Gothic castle setting (modern day Budapest) is dark and dank. The ominously gloomy and taut atmosphere works, as they keep to what its budget allows it and this means making sure the beast mostly stays in the shadows. Lurking or stalking its prey. Director Neal Sundstrom favours suggestively brooding handling. We don't get much of a real look, as there's plenty of rapid moving POV shots, minor flashes and off-screen attacks. What we did see of it didn't look the greatest, but it's acceptable. Moments do strike up some eerie spells and suspenseful build-ups before it deliver the shocks. It's helped by competently sweeping camera-work and a foreboding music score.

Entertaining superstitious whodunit b-grade hokum

The general consensus with this movie seems to be not that great but better than the first three sequels and I'm happy to go along with that. It is probably, and this says a lot about the quality of the series, the best of the sequels. Only the first was much good and it wasn't a masterpiece. Oh, for some more decent werewolf movies.

This installment is basically a variation on the Ten Little Indians (Or N*ggers to use the somewhat un-PC word that was the original title of the Agatha Christie novel) with the killer amongst the group being a secret werewolf. A group of varied characters arrive at the opening of castle (Kind of like the opening of a supermarket but classier I guess) near Budapest and are snowed in by a blizzard. How these exact people, a seemingly disparate group, end up in the castle for its opening is actually a plot point, and a rather flimsy one at that, which comes into play later in the movie.

The characters are you standard varied bunch- airheaded would be starlet, playboy tennis pro, down to earth Aussie, snooty rich dude and so on. Had this been a teen oriented movie you know it would be the jock, the bitch, the nerd etc. The acting isn't the greatest but it isn't the worst, most of the actors at least being able to put some personality into there characters, even if they don't exactly deliver their lines very well and when the scripts lets them down. For the most part nobody is annoyingly bad and fortunately the worst actors seem to be killed of earlier on, such as the Australian professor, or are given less to do. I don't know if this intentional but it works in the movies favour.

Naturally as the characters are killed off it becomes a whodunit. This aspect isn't too badly handled and it isn't too badly handled unless you apply some simple logic to work out who the killer must be at one point halfway through the movie. Basically ala the movie Clue, the characters split up into four pairs (There was one group of three IRC) to go searching for some of the other missing characters in the labyrinth beneath the castle. Two of the pairs get split up at around the same time and one of those four ends up dead. Surely it would be logical for the others to deduce that it must be of these three who was the killer when they decide it is indeed one of their own number which is doing the killing rather than an outside party, as everyone else has an alibi so to speak. The other two people should at least be able to work out it is one of the other two who was on their own at the time. However nobody on screen seems to put that much thought into despite being supposedly intelligent people. To add insult to injury the victim at this point actually is killed by the person he was paired up with but nobody actually makes the obvious connection (The point was made in a humorous fashion in the similar section of Clue that if any one of them dies whilst searching the house they'll know they will at least know the other half of the pair is the killer but that was a much more intelligent movie with a stronger plot despite having three possible endings and being a farcical comedy). For the viewer at home it is made even easier to work out who is guilty since we are shown one of the three possibly suspects shooting at the werewolf after the kill, proving their innocence. Of the remaining two one of them is set up so heavily to look guilty that it is obvious that the other must be the culprit unless the makers were actually being sneaky. That said, it isn't blatantly telegraphed who the killer is earlier on in any other way as it so often is these kind of stories.

The plot beyond the whodunit aspect, specifically as to why particular people are in the castle makes very little sense. Without going into detail it involves an elaborate plan to get these particular people into the castle so the werewolf can be trapped and killed, except those behind this elaborate plan put absolutely no thought into killing the werewolf once this improbable scheme is pulled off and everybody is massacred. The makers would have been better off leaving out this whole aspect of the plot and just making a straightforward trapped in a closed off location with a nasty flick.

The dumbness of the plot aside Howling V is not that bad a watch if you like cheesy horror flicks. The castle setting is cheap and kind of fake looking but strangely enough it works and the movie has a nice enclosed atmosphere to it. It is well paced and does a lot of things right despite its shortcomings- for example characters are not killed off in exactly the order you would expect them to be, when normally in these kind of movies you can work it out exactly. Gorehounds and monster fans might disappointed by the fact there is very little gore, other than some after the fact claw marks and a later in the picture decapitation and that we only really get glimpses of the werewolf and it don't look that impressive from what we see of it so that is probably a good thing. To me the single most endearing aspect of the movie is what it does instead of showing the gory deaths. Every time, with one exception, someone is killed by the werewolf the movie cuts away from the killing and there is short burst of bombastic Omenesque music. I don't know why, but I loved it. The one time it didn't happen I felt cheated.

I first saw this in the early 90s on a vhs.

Revisited it recently.

We dont get to see a single werewolf in the entire movie and all the kills are offscreen except for a lousy decapitation.

This one is more like a whodunnit without any suspense, tension or engrossing story.

Finally someone has the cajones to put werewolves in a castle and initiate murder mystery slasher mode. My god, how did it take till 1989 to kick this into gear? And what fun we have here!

At least in terms of a C-movie eclectic character cast and some cool castle cinematography. This is a murder mystery where you don't really care about the reveal, and you know it's a werewolf anyway so the why isn't important. It's also a slasher where there's not much bloodletting or fun. It lies somewhere flatly in-between these two genres that share so much in common and yet can't meet a happy middle ground.

With this one, I've finally watched all the HOWLING sequels. I can see why people actually like this 5th installment, as it does try to do something else with the werewolf concept. It plays out like a whodunit-slasher, set on one imaginative location (a Hungarian castle setting). Yet still, when you have to judge it on its own terms and nature, it falls short at the end of the ride. There's too little of the mystery-plot to enjoy (not enough red herrings, no twists worth mentioning and the killer/werewolf could just be anybody really - it's no fun to think along with the plot as there is not much to think about and no real puzzles to be solved). All the actual kills sadly happen off-screen (only ripped throats are shown after the events). We don't get to see much of the werewolf (only some brief glimpses during the attacks) and the film does not feature a transformation-scene (which I was so hoping for to happen during the conclusion). It's even lacking a decent climax of sorts.

The acting is strictly so-so, provided by a cast compiled out of unfamiliar names (at least to me they were). The small bits of humor injected into some of the dialogues, didn't really pay off. Fortunately they weren't too distracting. As far as cinematography goes, I only found the special effect shots, of the exterior of the castle during a snow storm, to be enjoyable. The interior sets of the castle chambers, dungeons and corridors looked a little cheap. But that can be forgiven, due to the movie's low budget.

It's an amusing watch and certainly not the worst or most idiotic HOWLING sequel, yes, but nothing more. HOWLING V might have drawn a lot of influences from that other 'guess the werewolf'-film THE BEAST MUST DIE (1974, starring Peter Cushing). Slightly more ridiculous but also a lot more fun, that film's at least worth checking out. I'm not too sure about HOWLING V, though. I probably should be flunking this film, but I'll be forgiving in my final rating. If only for the fact that HOWLING V: THE REBIRTH is infinitely better than the series final installment, (Part 7) NEW MOON RISING. Part 7 tries to tie up loose ends between part 4 (THE ORIGINAL NIGHTMARE) and part 5 (THE REBIRTH), but writer/director/producer/actor Clive Turner turned it into an insufferable mess of a movie.