I've long been fascinated by werewolves. There's tons of movies and books about vampires walking around in broad daylight and passing themselves off as humans, but how realistic is that? The fangs would be the easiest things to hide, honestly. The cold, pale skin and overall appearance of being dead would be sure giveaways, if you ask me. But werewolves? They ARE human. Much like socio- or psychopaths, as the old saying goes, they look just like us. There's no way to tell who's human and who's a werewolf. Aside from really bad makeup effects, apparently, and a tendency to be absent during a full moon.
So While Netflix doesn't have the original Howling, or even Howling II: Your sister is a werewolf, it did have Howling 4. The howling movies were a pretty big hit back in the 80's, at least as far as I am concerned. Bad prosthetic makeup, lots of blood and gore, heavy metal music and boobs? What's not to like? Howling was an excellent story with Dee Wallace as the unfortunate heroine who gets infected with lycanthropy, but the supporting cast starred the likes of Noble Willingham, John Carradine, Patrick Macnee, Kevin Mcarthy, Slim Pickens and even Dick Miller working a bookstore under the name Walter Paisley. That's one crapload of old-timey stars in one horror movie. Then you got the sequel, Howling 2: Stirba, Werewolf Bitch (the original title) with the likes of Christopher Lee. Frankly, I liked Howling 2 (they renamed the title Howling 2: Your sister is a werewolf) better than the first howling, and it even continued the story somewhat, linking the death of Dee Wallace's character from the first movie with her brother coming in to investigate her death. Unfortunately, Howling 3 completely went off the reservation, ending up in Australia with a bunch of marsupial werewolves. Enough said about that. And now we're on to Howling 4.
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare isn't very original, unfortunately. Basically, a writer starts to get visions of some kind. Where the visions come from was never really explained, and I think it's more of an excuse to get her out into the woods so a werewolf can howl and scare the bejeesus out of her. I'm going to give you the whole plot of Howling 4 right now, because frankly, it wasn't that good. So this writer can't seem to put out for her husband because she's nervous, which gives him an excuse to bang the local shopkeeper, who is of course, a werewolf. It seems the entire town is full of werewolves, but instead of just killing the writer and her husband, they seem to humor her, and are nice to her more than it would seem prudent. Most of the movie is really about the story of a nun who came to visit her parents there about a month before the beginning of the movie, and an ex-nun who travels to the town around the same time as the writer is there to try and figure out what happened to her nun friend. So while the hubby is off banging the local werewolfian shopkeeper, the writer and the ex-nun are running around town trying to track down the seemingly daily disappearances of hikers, campers, visitors and cabin-renters. The writer is convinced everything is in her head, and she's imagined the whole thing, until finally, her husband is bitten by a werewolf. It happens late in the movie, and you pretty much knew it was going to happen anyway, so I'm not spoiling much of anything. I won't tell you the end because frankly, what's the point of writing a review if I'm just going to tell you the entire movie? That stops being a review at that point and becomes a retelling of the same tale.
So, what's to like about this movie. There's a couple boobs. A lot of building of tension as the writer and ex-nun try to find out what the hell is going on. For some reason, the constant nightly howling does NOT clue the writer in to werewolves until very late. I guess she's not that bright. The ex-nun actually figures it out before she does. Odd. There's a transformation scene towards the end of the movie that is a sort of melting kind of thing where he slimes down into a puddle and reforms into a wolf. I was reading one of the reviews on netflix and one of the reviewers states something to the effect that "a lot of people make fun of the transformation scene in this movie, but I have seen a REAL werewolf transformation, and I can tell you, it's JUST like that!" I honestly couldn't tell you if that person was serious or laughing his/her ass off while they typed that, but it cracked me up something fierce. Best laugh I had all day. There's one scene where a hiker wades through a river to get away from a werewolf and her dress gets all see-through. Not sure how many people go hiking in a dress, but she had a nice arse from what I could tell. That was pretty much one of the film's few highlights.
Oh well. It had werewolves, there were boobs, and a bit of blood and gore. I can think of worse ways to spend one's time. Like, I don't know, slaving away at a desk answering tech support calls. Ahem. I'll take horror movies any day. Even bad ones.
That's it for tonight! Maybe I can get through Howling 5 and 6 tomorrow and review both of those in one for you. No promises. Tomorrow might get busy. See you then!
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