Howling II: ... Your Sister is a Werewolf - 1985

We're gettin' towards the moment in this blog where I'll review The Howling.  The Howling, as explained in my review of The Manitou, was on a VHS I had as a child.  I'm going to say age 10 or so I first saw these two films.  It may have conceivably been as early as age 7 though.  I know cause I lived in the house where I saw it from age 7-14.  Until now, it was the longest I'd ever lived in one house.

The Howling was a film that terrified the shit out of me when I was that age.  I loved the mashup of extreme dark horror, bizarre dark and trippy sequences, some known actors and some unknown, nudity (as I got a bit older) and the dark, twisted way the movie ends.  When I do review the first film, major spoiler warning for my review, it's gettin' fuckin' 5 stars.

But wtf happened to the series?  I knew from relatively early on that the film had sequels, and I don't think I ever saw them when I was younger.  Way back in the early days of the blog here I reviewed Howling 3:  The Marsupials.  I wasn't rating movies at this point, but in retrospect, especially if you look at Howling 2 vs Howling 3, Marsupials was way better at capturing the bizarre and trippy feeling of the first one.  Though not nearly as dark, Marsupials had a bizarre, alternate feeling to it, and I give it a 4 star rating in retrospect.

Howling 2, I mean what the FUCK happened here?  I get the plot.  The plot makes sense, sort of.  (Major spoilers ahead) In the end of The Howling, Dee Wallace's character Karen turns into a werewolf.  In this, it's revealed she was then killed.  In Howling 2,  her brother Ben is investigating her death after Christopher Lee approaches him and tells him "Your sister is a werewolf."  This investigation leads him to a bizarre town infested by tons of werewolves that're celebrating the birthday of werewolf mega-queen Stirba.

But they really turned up the cheese-ometer a lot in this film, including having scenes at a night club where they force veteran actor and all around respected icon Christopher Lee to wear dumbass 80's glasses, they surround him with extras in bad costumes, and pump out 80's jams.

Christopher Lee later apologized to Joe Dante, who directed the first Howling, for ever being in this film.  (no, like, he actually did, for real)

The plot idea is fine, bu the execution of this movie is just super wtf weird.  I think the most surprising part of it all, it's the same director as The Howling 3, Phillipe Mora.  This movie feels more like the sort of one-off director who had no clue, and possibly a history directing MTV music videos.  It's really, just bad.  

In the end, this movie is for sure so bad it's good, and it is not one you're going to want to turn off.  Constant nudity, wacky hijinks, terrible acting from some of the lead cast (I'm looking at you, Reb Brown of MST3K fame) and thoroughly ridiculous, laughable concepts.  During the end credits, they replay some stupid scenes from the movie as credits role.  They replay a scene where the werewolf queen exposes her breasts at least 5 times.  And that gives this 3 stars.