THE HOWLING 2: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF

US, 1985, 91 minutes, Colour.
Christopher Lee, Annie Mc Enroe, Reb Brown, Marsha A. Hunt, Sybil Danning, Ferdie Maine.
Directed by Philippe Mora.

The Howling 2 has some tenuous links with the original. The original was an ironic tour-de-force about werewolves and a tribute to the B-grade horror films of the past.

This film focuses on the Christopher Lee kind of horror story. He intones a text solemnly at the beginning, warns the hero and heroine about the newspaper reporter turned werewolf and the forthcoming full moon when the Werewolf of Ages will materialise and draws all her minions to herself. He leads them in the fight against Stirba, revealed to be her brother and eventually destroying her. The film offers a typical Christopher Lee performance.

However, the make-up and special effects are poor compared with other werewolf films. There is also an emphasis on ugly gore.

The film was also rather crass in its treatment of human beings – and uses a lot of suggestive exploitation to pad out the plot and make it provocative. This is especially the case with Sybil Danning as Stirba – a most glamorous werewolf. There are some crass scenes of sexuality and a touch of the orgy.

Reb Brown and Annie Mc Enroe make a passable hero and heroine who have to accept their sister’s death to go to combat the werewolves in Transylvania. There is some location photography – but the film seems on safer ground in Los Angeles.

The film offers very little variation on the werewolf scenes – and the plot is, in fact, quite thin.

What makes the film of some interest is that it was directed by Australian Philippe Mora whose films include excellent documentaries like Swastika and Brother, Can’t You Spare a Dime as well as the bushranger-Aboriginal film, Mad Dog Morgan. Mora also directed the spoof, The Return of Captain Invincible with Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee, the horror film, The Beast Within, as well as the story of the Leonski murders in Melbourne 1942, Death of a Soldier, with James Coburn and an excellent performance by Reb Brown.

Mora complained of producer interference in The Howling 2 and decided to make a third film with his own control. It was filmed in Sydney in 1986, had an Australian setting with Aboriginal reference: Howling 3 – The Marsupials.