261 Days of Horror, Day 45: Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf

[yendi]

Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf. 1985. Directed by Philippe Mora. Written by Robert Sarno and Gary Brandner. Released by MGM.

If Bride of Frankenstein is the best horror sequel ever, Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf* is the worst. It's got to be one of the worst movies of all time, no matter what criteria you use.

That said, it's got enough awful stuff in it that it's actually almost good, if you have enough alcohol or drugs in your system.

I won't bother with the plot -- which is the typical werewolf cliche involving the discovery of werewolves, the search for their leader, and the climactic fight. Instead, I'll just mention the highlights and lowlights** of the movie:

1. Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee is good in any movie. Alas, he's wasted here, as the werewolf hunter who is there solely to dole out advice and eventually get killed.

2. Sybil Danning. As the occasionally-titular Stirba, she goes topless for a good portion of the movie. And bad as she is here, she really is one of the great B-movie stars of her day.

3. Werewolves who can only be killed by titanium. Yes, the lupines cannot be harmed by silver or by normal means, but a good shot of a metal that wasn't discovered until the late 18th Century can kill them. Must've sucked to be a werewolf hunter in the old days.

4. The worst music video credits ever to close out a movie. See, there's a crappy bar band in the opening scene of the movie who presumably all slept with the director or something, so they get their awful song played again over the closing credits. And the video features Danning tearing open her shirt and revealing her breasts. Over and over. It's like some crazed film editor sat there with a Tivo, and kept hitting the "back eight seconds" button to see Sybil's breasts one more time. Eventually, i just figured they'd freeze-frame on the breasts and be done with it.

5. The Song From Hell. See, the werewolves can chant evilly, and this makes people's eyes melt. The only way around this is to use sacred earplugs. Made from melted-down sacred candles. Pete Townsend could have avoided tinnitus if he'd only used these.

6. Werewolf sex. A werewolf threesome, actually. Complete with mid-coitus transformations. I need to melt some sacred candles on my brain to make me forget this.

7. Speaking of sex, I certainly don't doubt that there are some movies that could make good use out of letting us know that werewolves can smell humans rutting. But this one isn't one of them.

8. A small inn in a haunted village featuring room 666. It's like they're not even trying here.

9. Flaming werewolves. No, I'm not talking about the threesome. I'm referring to the finale, in which Christopher Lee (who turns out to be a werewolf gone good) and his evil sister burst into flames after being stabbed.

10. The "killer in the backseat" cliche, with the hidden killer turning out to be a werewolf. Yeah, like anyone wouldn't see (or smell) one of those in their car.

And those are the big things. Don't get me started on the acting quality, the script, the effects, the revisions to the ending of the first movie, or the random mysterious rituals.

The Howling series (minus the first movie) is a big heaping pile of derivative suck. But Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf and also a She-Bitch Named Stirba takes "suck" to a whole new level. It's an awful film, but a great one to MST3K.

*Also released under the title Howling 2: Stirba, the Werewolf Bitch. Which is a weaker title? You decide!

**Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

Comments

[calliopes_pen]

I had been pondering whether or not to download or rent this movie for years. And I always wondered if it was worth watching whenever it aired on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Christopher Lee is good in any movie...

Christopher Lee would have been my only reason for even considering watching it. After reading this review, I really doubt that I'll make myself sit through this movie.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

hell, i didn't even really like the first one.
the whole 'my god, we need the marlboro man more than ever because america is being destroyed by vaginas and homos!' bit never really sat that well with me.
plus, the awful poodle werewolf thing at the end... just... ugh.
(although, that one is light years ahead of the one reviewed here. and the one with the marsupial werewolves in australia.)

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

Christopher Lee is good in any movie...

Christopher Lee even managed to be the only good thing about the unbelievably inept Starship Invasions.

I saw Howling II many years ago, and had totally forgotten the plot, but I still remember the way the end credits sequence juxtaposed shots of Sybil Danning revealing her breasts with other characters' facial expressions - including exploding eyeballs!

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

One hopes that we will eventually see reviews of Ginger Snaps and/or Dog Soldiers?

[yendi]

Both are amongst my favorite flicks, and will definitly be reviewed here.

[yendi]

I think that, like many folks, I like the first movie better now because of how bad the later ones got. But even my then-preteen tastes looked at the later movies and realized how inferior they were (no matter how many breasts they showed).

Howling 3: The Marsupials was pretty bad (although, in fairness, it's been years since I've seen it), but Howling 5: The Rebirth was truly lame, using an f/x budget of about six dollars.

[yendi]

I'm still not sure to this day if the directors of the music video were going for the erotic or the camp.

A suggestion, and an offering

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

You know I've been enjoying "261 Days of Horror." Thanks for doing it.

I was thnking, it might be a good idea to have an updated reference link-list of the films you've reviewed, the way slipjig does on 100videos. The Tag feature isn't the best for quick reference, as it reprints each entry exactly as it appears on your front page and you're going without LJ cuts for them, so maybe there'd be a post-dated entry on your LJ, behind a cut, with the list.

Here's what I'm offering, because it's easy for me to suggest and I want to do more than just suggest: I can compile the list of the films you've reviewed so far and post it to my LJ. I'm guessing if you want to use it, you could copy it and paste it in Rich Text Mode onto an entry of your own. I could even keep going with the compiling if you'd like. I'd like to be helpful, and it keeps you from having to do too much more (you do already do plenty to make this feature happen).

I'd suggest putting each month's reviews behind a different LJ cut, to keep the entry from looking too huge.

How about it?

Re: A suggestion, and an offering

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Oh, and to be ultra-clear (vodka-clear!), I'd include the links, which would be the most helpful feature of this feature.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

It's like some crazed film editor sat there with a Tivo, and kept hitting the "back eight seconds" button to see Sybil's breasts one more time.

Wow. Sounds like Sherilyn Fenn and Meridian (which I want to like much more than I do).

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

*d'oh*

This is Spooky. Who needs more coffee, apparently. 0_o

Re: A suggestion, and an offering

[yendi]

Dude, if you're psychotic enough to really want to do that, I'd be delighted! And yeah, once you did it, if you're okay with it, I'd be happy to maintain it going forward in my own post (it's just a daunting task to compile).

Re: A suggestion, and an offering

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

*returns from an experiment to ensure this will actually work*

Excellent. Certainly I'll compile what's been done so far.

Here's what I'll do: from now through Friday, I'll compile the links to what you've done so far in a Private post on my LJ. Going through Friday will give me this whole week's worth of reviews, which will round it off nicely, and helps me pace out the compiling. Then I'll change the entry to Friends-Locked so you can see it (or maybe it'll make more sense for it to be public; I'll see). You can copy the contents and paste them into a Rich Text update screen, preserving the links. (That's what I just experimented with doing.) The links might not open new windows as yours are set to do, because that's not how I've set up my LJ, so I want to give you that heads-up.

But yeah, I'm on it.

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

Sir Christopher hopes you dont see this movie...

he's identifed this movie as the absolute single worst thing he's ever been associated with..

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

I sadly must admit I have a fondness for Stirba the Werewolf Bitch as a title despite the utter crapiness of this movie...

I do hope one day to see someone successfully attempt that fetishy outfit Sybil Danning wore in it though...

Update! (Re: A suggestion, and an offering)

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

It's mostly compiled; I'm waiting for tonight's review to add its link. (50: nice round number...) I'll then change it to a friends-locked entry, and also e-mail you the link. I'll post it without an lj cut, to cut down on the coding in it, so it's not yet divided by month as I suggested. You might want to do that, you might not. I'm not the boss of you now.

I also linked to the first day's administrative posts, plus the extra discussion entry from Feb. 20th ("Bad, Schlocky, Camp, Etc.?"). Have you done any other extra entries related to this project? If so, I'll link to those, too.