Tag Archives: Mystery

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

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I really love that if producers were planning on engaging us in an anthology of horror films that they’d include elements from the holiday to incorporate in to a movie. I think with enough out of the box thinking, there could have been at least six movies about the horrors of Halloween or Samhain. But then this was the eighties. Audiences didn’t want out of the box. They liked it all boxed up and easy to consume. “Halloween” had a Halloween masked killer stalking babysitters during Halloween night. And here’s “Halloween III” about the idea of sacrifices and samhain all thanks to an… evil Halloween mask maker. And his army of robots.

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Howling VI: The Freaks (1991)

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howlingfreaks“The Howling” seems to go for broke this time, choosing instead to channel Tod Browning’s “Freaks” mixed with a tacked on werewolf vs. vampire battle, than actually trying to delve in to the werewolf mythos like the former movies. Like the previous films, “The Freaks” really has no relevance to future storylines, and no references to the previous plot points. There are no werewolf communities, or satanic cults. It’s just another Gothic romance drama posing as a horror film, yet again.

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Howling V: The Rebirth (1989)

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You could basically replace the werewolf in “The Rebirth” with anything you wanted, and nothing would change. Ghosts, demons, a slasher out for revenge. Like the former sequels, “The Rebirth” builds up this illusion that it’s a werewolf film and a further progression of “The Howling” storyline, when in reality it’s just another dull horror film. And one that avoids showing actual werewolves for a duration of the story. I use the term “story” very loosely.

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Howling: New Moon Rising (1995)

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Asking anyone to watch “The Howling: New Moon Rising” should be punishable by jail time and some kind of psychological examination. “New Moon Rising” is so bad it’s inhuman. It’s so bad it makes the former “The Howling” entries seem watchable in comparison. There is no reason why “New Moon Rising” should exist. Near as I can figure, someone took a tourist board video for a small Western town, injected imagery depicting a view through the eyes of a werewolf stalking animals, spliced in footage from the past “The Howling” movies and called it a day.

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Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985)

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When Dracula tells you there’s trouble afoot, you should probably listen. “Howling 2” is a sequel to the Joe Dante film because, I guess it has something resembling werewolves in it somewhere. There’s Sybil Danning boiling the screen with her sexiness, and a legion of werewolves, there’s Sybil Danning completely re-defining the term skin tight, and the theme song. I have to say, as a kid who grew up with horror movies that mostly ranged from the eighties, the theme song by Stephen W. Parsons is haunting, and has been burned in to my brain since I was in the single digits age range.

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Howling III – The Marsupials (1987)

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It’s really tough to make sense of “The Marsupials,” but much like the second film, it has a good idea but a terrible execution. It wants to be a psychological thriller, a horror romance, a satire of horror movies, and a werewolf picture all in one and fails to deliver on these aspects two fold. “The Marsupials” garners too much of a narrative for one picture, and should have been spread out in to another film, altogether. One thing is for certain: The connection to the Joe Dante film stops at the fact that it has werewolves in it.

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Fright Night (1985)

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If you’re going to be a derivative movie, don’t hide it. Flaunt it, own it, and be able to take the premise you’re deriving from and twist in to something excellent. “Fright Night” does the very thing. What if, instead of a murderer, the next door neighbor was a vampire? And what if, instead of a disabled man, we featured a young high school boy with a bad habit for snooping? And what if, instead of a photographer, this character was a horror fan whose imagination may or may not be playing tricks on him?

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