Howling II (1985)

Philippe Mora’s Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (also known by the much more obvious title Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch) is a memorable slice of 80s horror trash. It is obviously a sequel to The Howling.

While attending his sister’s funeral Ben (Reb Brown) is angered and disturbed when a mysterious old gentleman named Stefan (Christopher Lee) informs him that his deceased sister was a werewolf.

Reporter Jenny (Annie McEnroe) smells a good story here.

Stefan finally manages to persuade Ben and Jenny that they really are up against werewolves. Not just werewolves, but particularly dangerous werewolves led by the most dangerous of them all, Stirba (Sybil Danning). The three of them set off to Transylvania to confront the powers of darkness.

You know that the werewolves will be found in an old castle, you know the heroine will be captured by the werewolves (to be threatened by a number of fates worse than death), you know there’ll be a showdown in the castle.

This is a pretty conventional werewolf movie but with an 80s sensibility.

It adheres closely to the werewolf lore with which we’re all familiar from earlier werewolf movies, with quite a bit of traditional vampire lore thrown in. There’s a token attempt to make things seem more up-to-date - silver bullets aren’t enough, sometimes only titanium will do the job. But the werewolf hunters make use of garlic, holy water, religious amulets, all the usual stuff. Since this is the 80s they also use guns a lot.

There’s an attempt to add a punk rock vibe, with music by a bad called Babel. Unfortunately the band only seems to have had one song and we hear it over and over again and it becomes incredibly irritating. It’s not a bad song, it’s just over-used.

There’s plenty of gore. The makeup effects are sometimes very effective, sometimes less so, but at least the werewolves look genuinely monstrous rather than looking like cuddly furry teddy bears (which is alas the case in a lot of earlier werewolf movies). At least the makeup effects look better than CGI.

The problem with the werewolf masks is that they were the same ones used in the Planet of the Apes movies. So of course they make people look like were-apes rather than werewolves. Apparently Christopher Lee suggested the solution to this problem. His idea was that when someone is transformed into a wolf they first go through an ape stage. It’s a kind of weird evolution-in-reverse thing which Lee explains in a prologue. This ability to come up with a workable solution to an unsolvable problem is that low-budget film-making is all about and Philippe Mora decided it would add an extra level of craziness.

The supporting cast is OK but this movie has two major assets. The first is Christopher Lee. He brings to the rôle of Stefan that portentousness that he had used to such wonderful effect in Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out. He takes things seriously and the movie needed a central character with some gravitas.

The other major asset is Sybil Danning. She makes a terrific sexy werewolf. I love the costume she wears, which looks like a combination of a suit of armour and bondage gear. And yes, she has some topless scenes.

The movie has a rather sleazy vibe to it, which is fine.

This movie is of course total trash. But it revels in its trashiness. It gets down and wallows in its own trashiness. I like that.

It’s not an overly scary movie. Philippe Mora was aiming for fun rather than trying to make a serious horror movie. There’s plenty of humour, and the humour is intentional.

Mora also wanted to make this a sexy werewolf movie. That’s one of the things that critics hated about it at the time. Hollywood has never been comfortable with sex. Blowing people’s heads off is good clean fun but the sight of boobs is nasty and might traumatise teenagers.

The movie was shot largely on location in Czechoslovakia and those locations look terrific. The room made of human bones is a highlight. It’s also beautifully photographed.

Mora didn’t bother seeing the original movie in the franchise because he didn’t want to make a sequel, he wanted to make his own movie his own way. That was of course the right decision but at the time it upset some fans of the original movie.

This movie is a total romp. Don’t make the mistake of taking it seriously. It’s fast-moving and it has boundless energy.

Howling II is highly recommended.