Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 8:3	Budget Medium

Exactly who's sister is a werewolf? Ken's sis is a werewolf but so is Lee's. Shouldn't the sub-title be Your Sisters are Werewolves?

This sequel picks up right where the first movie ends by opening with Karen White's funeral and introducing us to her brother, Ken, (Reb Brown "Yor, Hunter from the Future", "The Sword and The Sorcerer") and a co-worker Jenny (Anne McEnroe "Battletruck", "Bettlejuice"). Seems that despite Karen being killed on live TV, no one noticed. And the tape disappeared. And the cops don't know who killed her. Karen's brother Ken is a policeman from Wyoming with a gun that never runs out of bullets (and silver bullets at that). Your first clue that things are going to be difficult is when you see the video of the killing. In Howling Karen is blonde and when she turns to a werewolf, she looks rather like one of those little white lap dogs. In Howling 2, she turns rather brown and seems to be sitting behind an office desk in front of a rather plain wall. It doesn't look like the Karen we know and we would not know that this was a news room unless we were told about it.

Despite the fact that Karen had only recently been turned into a werewolf and she had arranged her own death to warn the world about the dangers of werewolves, one of Queen Stirba's new confidants shows up at the funeral. As does Stefan (Christopher Lee "Brides of Fu Manchu") who seems to be a Van Helsing kind of character. Stefan insists that Karen needs to have a stake driven through her heart (hmm, someone has been acting in too many vampire films) so that her soul may rest in peace. Again we start to worry here. Being killed with a silver bullet has always been enough in other films. Of course there is a brief flash of life from Karen just before she gets staked for a final time. One second she is a perfectly normal human corpse and the next a full fledged werewolf. No transition stage, just normal/not normal. As I have mentioned before, straying from the accepted lore is a chancy thing to do. If you want to make the audience a little tense, it can be a good way to keep them off guard. However, if you just do it randomly without any real reason, it just looks sloppy. Werewolves, vampires, what's the difference? If it looks like the filmmaker doesn't know, it sets us on edge but not in a good way. Especially as Karen is the only werewolf who receives this treatment; all the others are shot and ignored. Okay, so there is one exception. One of the werewolves who is seen escorting Mariana (Marsha Hunt "Dracula AD 1972" and mother of one of Mick Jagger's many offspring) is shot but does not die immediately. Instead Stefan threatens him with eternal damnation for his sins unless he reveals the whereabouts of Stirba. Which he does and Stefan promptly stabs him with a silver knitting needle. Yeah, they call it a stake but it really just looks like a knitting needle. At any rate, here is a guy who seemed pretty happy to be a werewolf and should have had a pretty good understanding that his lifestyle is probably going to keep him out of heaven and he made no effort to change this until he is offered a deathbed reprieve. Then, boom, a quick "She's in Transylvania" and salvation. I personally subscribe to no religion, but I got to think that this is a pretty big loophole here. Ignore the rules, conspire with evil, kill innocent people and go to heaven anyway? Then exactly what is the purpose of leading a virtuous life? At some time during a confession, shouldn't there be a point where the priest just says "Dude, you are so fucked"? Okay so maybe not those words exactly but you know what I mean. If there is hell, there is unforgivable sin and I would think being a remorseless werewolf would qualify. But because the filmmaker is playing on the original "not my fault" werewolf theme and because he needs to move the plot along, we get the redemption scene. (In the first werewolf movies the werewolf was deeply saddened by his actions while he was a wolf and did everything in his power to keep the damage down. When he was a werewolf he was not in control of his actions, and so his possible redemption was logical.)

Anyway, after a bit of disbelieve and arguing everyone heads off to Transylvania to take on the Queen of the Werewolves. We also start to really get to spend time with Jenny. Again, this is not a good idea. She is not really a likeable heroine. It could just be the voice or the overly worried look on her face or perhaps her lack of screen presence. The screenwriters have really given her nothing to do except to get captured by the werewolves and chained up for a while. When she seduces Ken we have to wonder why. Sure, under stress people tend to cling together but this is just too thrown in. It really describes the main problem with the whole movie. We have tons of ideas that are just haphazardly tossed together. The leads should have a love story. The eerie, mystic good guy should have a dark secret. The bad guys should be really bad. The villagers should be scary and potentially deadly. The castle should be dark and foreboding. All of these things are here but put together with no finesse. Typical of this lack of cohesiveness is the scene where we are introduced to Queen Stirba (Sybil Danning "The Long Swift Sword of Seigfried", "Battle Beyond the Stars"). An old lady is brought to an alter where a young woman is being readied for a ritual sacrifice. After the usual ceremonial antics, the life essence of the sacrifice is transferred to the old lady who morphs into Sybil Danning who then proceed to show off her chest. Again, when did werewolves learn how to do this? There is something vaguely vampirish about this but normally they just drink blood to rejuvenate themselves. Maybe they learned it from some mummy movies? At any rate once Stirba is made young again, the retainers start to have an orgy while Stirba heads off for a threesome where all three of the participants change into some lightly furred, marginally changed wolves. You'd think this would be a pretty hot scene, but that's what you get for thinking. Rather than get hot and heavy, the trio just pantomime growling and pawing at each other. It is not sexy and not actually really funny either. The scene really brings up memories of Ed Wood's more confused directing. They have not turned completely into werewolves and thus they are quite recognizable as their characters. The most obvious reason for that would be to show off a little kinky but not too kinky sex. Instead we wonder if they are even having sex. And, yet again, werewolves not having sex doggy style.

Despite the fact that the author, Gary Brandner, who wrote the original novel "The Howling" is listed as one of the writers of the screenplay and it is implied that the plot is taken from his second "Howling" novel, the film does not follow the plot of the book at all. To be fair, neither does the original movie and its novel. The difference here is that while John Sayles did the rewrite for "The Howling", Robert Sarno did the rewrite for "Howling 2". This would be Sarno's first screenplay and it would be ten years before he was given a second and final chance with a movie called "Decoy". Listing the inconsistencies in the movie would be time consuming and pointless. We always accept a few WTF moments in a movie, but when they reach a critical mass it just become silly. First it's a silver stake through the heart to give the werewolf eternal peace, then it is off to Transylvania to take on the queen of the werewolves, then it is finding out that Stefan has operatives that are long-term residents in the town where Stirba lives. And it is not like she is keeping a low profile, so how did he not know where she was? We barely notice that while Stefan is only visiting the town where Karen is being buried, he seems to be staying a properly decorated mansion. When we do reach Transylvania, the villagers are morally ambiguous at best. If they are not in liege with Stirba they are certainly turning a blind eye to her activities. And exactly why does one of the villagers sniff the air and start fondling one of the local gals when Ken and Jenny start having sex? Really by the time we get to the point where Stefan starts explaining that silver is not enough to do Stirba in, to kill her you need a titanium blade, we are simply too stupefied to care.

There are a couple of potentially great scenes in Howling 2, the most notable being the puppet show. I am guessing that the credit for this goes to the director Philippe Mora, but I do not know for sure. We are initially shown some children laughing, then we are shown that they are watching a puppet show. An initial view of a female puppet in motion is exactly mimicked by Jenny. We silently cut back and forth a couple of times between the puppets, some bad studio shots of the puppets and Jenny. The show features a wolf in sheep's clothing though it seems the story ends differently than the Aesop's Fable version. The wolf throws off his disguise and attacks the female puppet much to the delight of the children watching. No one comes to rescue the girl. This is a rather well done and we understand why Jenny is anxious to get away from the stage. But then the movie slips right back into its old habits.

Somehow Lee's character has been trying to track down Stirba for years without much success only to finally find her in a town where he seems to have multiple cronies. Also, he finds her just in time to avert some kind of once in a thousand years event. Once Stefan assembles a team and starts off toward the castle (at night, of course) we have some very unconvincing firefights and surprisingly easily killed wolves. Eventually it comes down to just him and Stirba and it is revealed that they are brother and sister who have been at odds for thousands of years. We know how Stirba has been keeping young, but what about Stefan? Still we forget about these quibbles when the siblings start shooting multicolored lightening from their fingertips. To which our only response can be, WTF?!? Possibly there could be some reason behind this. If they were godlings, one good and one bad, with different plans for mankind that could explain something. Stirba could be "blessing" her followers with the ability to become werewolves. But we are not given anything to explain this last surprise. The room goes up in flames and the movie just kind of ends. But not before we are treated to yet another shot of the band that has been cropping up constantly in the movie. We see them at the bar where Mariana picks up some victims, at the Stirba's castle, and again as the movie credits roll. Annoyingly they are referred to in the credits as a punk band. They sound a lot more like New Wave wanna bees copying Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

It is a little sad that Howling has begotten such a pathetic series of sequels. We really don't want to start in on the marsupial version now, do we? Still Howling had Joe Dante and John Sayles with cameos and special thanks to Paul Bartel, Forrest J. Ackerman and Roger Corman. Corman has often struck gold with such combinations only to see the sequels fall into the hands of companies only interested in turning a profit. For example see Piranha 2. Yikes. It is kind of odd to think of people ripping off Corman movies. We tend to think of Corman as a rip off artist and yet looking back at his resume it is obvious that he has at least a passing interest in making good movies. Not all of his movies were great, but when they were, they were classics.

I guess I am considering this movie not worth seeing. Probably because it is not enjoyably bad. It just seems like the people involved weren't really interested in what they were doing. So many of the scenes are there just because. They have a great castle and a bunch of extras who don't mind wearing little leather outfits, so there is an orgy scene after the satanic ritual. (Don't get your hopes up, this is a very short scene.) Why have an orgy? Because. The principles don't even seem to notice the extras. I think at some point Stirba sends them off after the Stefan, but they may as well be flowers for all the attention she pays them. And what happens to the two dozen werewolves she sends after 5 old men? Yup, Stefan's group kills them all. If the movie was this bad because of lack of skill but put together by people who wanted to make movies, it might be a mindless way to spend an hour and a half. But really it looks like somebody trying to make a buck with no concern about whether or not they were making a good movie. Unfortunately, I can't get past that on this movie and watching it just annoys the hell out of me.

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