Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985) Hemdale/Horror RT: 91 minutes Rated R (graphic violence, nudity, sexual content, language) Director: Phillipe Mora Screenplay: Robert Sarno and Gary Brandner Music: Stephen W. Parsons Cinematography: Geoffrey Stephenson Release date: December 1985 (US, limited) Cast: Christopher Lee, Annie McEnroe, Reb Brown, Marsha A. Hunt, Sybil Danning, Judd Omen, Ferdinand Mayne, Patrick Field, Jimmy Nail, Jiri Krytinar. Box Office: N/A
Rating: *** ½
I never take notes while watching movies for two reasons. First, it’s too distracting. Second, I’m afraid I might miss something important. Of course, every rule is subject to a little bending now and then. I completely broke it while watching Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, a howler of a sequel to the 1981 movie. I didn’t want to forget anything. Here’s what I wrote down:
– There’s a subset of moviegoers that wait for the moment when a character says the title of the movie. It’s more likely to happen in some movies than others. It’s easier to work in something like Three Amigos than The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The writers manage to work in “Your sister is a werewolf.” not once but twice. Now that’s great writing!
– I am convinced Phillipe Mora looked to Edward D. Wood Jr. for inspiration. The movie opens with a portentous monologue by star Christopher Lee. It’s something to do with a prophecy about “the great mother of harlots” riding a “hairy beast” holding forth a “golden chalice full of the filthiness of fornications”. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Criswell’s intro to Plan 9 from Outer Space. I also thought of Bela Lugosi’s rambling monologues in Glen or Glenda. The difference is Lee’s dialogue makes slightly more sense.
– Babel, the punk rock band featured in the movie, must have great representation. Their agent gets them gigs all over the world. We see them play at an underground nightclub in L.A. and at a werewolf orgy in a Transylvanian castle. Did they stop in Peoria too?
– The number of the hotel room given to the heroes in Transylvania is 666. How can they NOT know this is a bad omen? Come on, the place doesn’t even have a sixth floor.
– The shot of sexy star Sybil Danning baring her breasts is repeated 17 times in the closing credits. They’re intercut with other shots from the movie made to look like reaction shots. It says a lot for her “assets” that even an owl looks impressed.
– As bad as it is, I find Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf far more entertaining than ANY of the Underworld movies. The cheesy FX involving latex, rubber monsters and stage blood look more convincing than any amount of CGI.
– I guess the budget didn’t allow for transformation scenes as there aren’t any. Isn’t this the high point of werewolf movies?
– How can you NOT enjoy a movie featuring a blonde werewolf?
I don’t know. Maybe love is too strong a word for how I feel about Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf. I certainly didn’t love or like it when I first laid eyes on it in early ’86. Quite the opposite, I hated it. I rented it from the Video Den with high hopes. I liked the first movie as well as the two Howling novels from screenwriter Gary Brandner. I was dismayed to see it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the book. I turned it off about 40 minutes in and didn’t bother watching the rest of it until years later. That time, I got a kick out of it. I realized I was looking at it all wrong. It’s not so much a lame horror sequel as it is a laughably bad movie. On that level, it’s GREAT!
Director Mora (The Beast Within) picks up shortly after the events of the first movie. Reporter-turned-werewolf Karen White is being eulogized after her on-air death by silver bullets. In attendance are her brother Ben (Brown, star of the 1983 camp classic Yor, the Hunter from the Future) and colleague Jenny (McEnroe, The Hand). There’s also a mysterious interloper on hand, occult expert Stefan Crosscoe (Lee, The Man with the Golden Gun). He’s the one that tells Ben his sister is a werewolf. Naturally, he doesn’t believe him at first. He doesn’t even believe it when he’s shown a videotape of Karen’s final broadcast. He changes his tune after encountering werewolves in the cemetery where his sister isn’t resting in peace. She won’t until 10,000YO werewolf queen Stirba (Danning, Chained Heat) is destroyed before the rise of the new full moon when all lycanthropes will make their existence known to mankind. To do this, they have to go to “The Dark Country” aka Transylvania.
Ben, Jenny and Stefan arrive in the Balkan village during their annual festival celebrating the new full moon. They hook up with a group of townspeople who also lost loved ones to werewolves. One of them is a dwarf (Krytinar) well-versed in the art of knife-throwing. Meanwhile, thanks to her powers of witchcraft, Stirba is aware that they’re coming for her. She and her hairy, fanged minions prepare for the final bloody battle.
I seriously considered putting Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (man, I LOVE that title!) in the comedy section, but decided against it. It hardly seems fair to lump in it with intentionally funny movies that really aren’t that funny. It attains that special level of goofiness only achieved by the best of the worst. Its wonkiness is in the details. It goes off the rails early when Stefan explains that werewolves born of Stirba’s lineage are impervious to silver; they must be killed with titanium. So it is that he drives a titanium stake through their hearts. WHOA! Hold the phone! A stake through the heart? It sounds like somebody got their folklore mixed up. Don’t even get me started on the garlic wreath Jenny pulls from her suitcase.
Plot details like this distract the viewer from trying to follow the nonsensical story that also involves a lusty lady werewolf (Hunt, Dracula A.D. 1972) that feeds on punk rockers. Ah, yes! This brings me to another goofy scene. In it, Lee goes undercover in a punk club to spy on her. Question, who’s NOT going to notice a 63YO man in such a place? He doesn’t exactly blend in despite the duds and shades he dons for the job. HA, HA, HA!
I’m sure many of you are asking why a distinguished actor like Lee agreed to appear in Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf. According to IMDb, the Hammer horror vet took the job because he never starred in a werewolf picture before. He clearly regretted it because he apologized to Howling director Joe Dante his first day on the set of Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Nonetheless, he brings a measure of dignity to the undignified material. I give him a lot of credit for managing to keep a straight face the whole time. Most actors would burst out laughing at dopey dialogue like “Your sister is a werewolf.” Brown and McEnroe are simply terrible, but I have a suspicion that’s intentional. They had to know they were making garbage. Still, you’ll be wondering why Reb didn’t win an Oscar for his brilliant performance as Yor after watching him in this. Of course, a romance develops between the two leads. It’s not at all believable, but he has to have some incentive to rescue her from Stirba’s clutches. The prospect of getting laid after the dust dies down is as good as any. Danning is FREAKING HOT! She has nice boobs too. Nothing else needs to be said.
Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf is the only Howling sequel (there are seven) that has anything to do with the original. I haven’t seen any of the others, so I can’t speak to their quality. I can say that this first sequel is NUTSO! It also has a few decent splatter scenes although I would have liked to more of the red stuff. The werewolf suits aren’t at all convincing, but there’s a reason for that. The studio accidentally sent monkey suits to the set in Czechoslovakia and Mora had to make do with what he had due to budget constraints. Thankfully, Lee came up with a unique solution to the dilemma with this line of dialogue: “The process of evolution is reversed.” Man > monkey > wolf, get it? Excuse me while I deal with this sudden fit of laughter.
So do I recommend Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf? Oddly enough, yes. It’s one of my favorite werewolf movies albeit for all the wrong reasons. When I say it bites, I mean it as a compliment. If you like bad movies, I say go for it. It helps if you have a sense of humor. It’s an awesome awesomely bad movie. If you’re not a bad movie connoisseur, STAY AWAY! You won’t get the joke.
