There is one shot in The Howling 5: Rebirth I will never forget. This is a werewolf movie with less than five minutes of on screen hominid animal attacks. Whenever we do see the beast, the director places the camera on distinct parts its body. The first time this happens, we see its jaws open. The screen is entirely dark. Out of the mouth of badness comes an awful, irrelevant sequel.
This is actually a slasher pic with fur. Read the setup. A diverse group of adults is trapped in a Hungarian castle and is stalked individually by a werewolf. Change the words in italics to teenagers, house, and crazy person for your usual genre effort. The movie came out in 1989 near the end of the slasher craze, and being the cash grab that it is, doesn't distinguish itself in any way. This is an improvement over part 4 barely. At least it rips off a sub-genre and not another film in its own series.
At least, unlike the last movie, we get some cool scenery to enjoy. This movie takes place in Europe and looks like it was filmed in an old building. I spent a lot of time looking around at the sets or snow-covered ground in between boring segments. The movie is self-aware of its awfulness and provides a musical jolt whenever a werewolf attack is coming. Some refrain from a song by some group called The Factory plays every single time. An extended version plays over the opening credits. I can't determine if the director chose to do this because he deluded himself into thinking it would be scary or if The Factory got a lot of free advertising. The song is stylistically similar to a Beethoven opera and contrasts nicely with the phony "attack" sequences where people are touched by the wolf.
A group of international tourists have won a visit to a castle where in 1489 a wealthy family committed mass suicide. A child was smuggled out, and the tourists are its descendants. The family was cursed with lycanthropy and attempted to save the world by preventing its proliferation. If only they could have saved us from watching this play out.
That smuggled kid was a werewolf who passed his genes onto the rest of the world or at least the twenty or so people in this movie. Only one of them is actually a werewolf whose powers are unleashed when in the castle. There's a bit of mystery as to who the villain is at first. The guy with the heavy Eastern European accent just HAS to be the antagonist. We are stupefied, of course, until one of the characters disappears whenever the group goes actively looking for the werewolf in a darkened basement twice. Only one of the tourists, by the name of Ray, escapes.
The movie is too pedestrian to recommend even to genre fans. People are willing to overlook its dearth of creativity under the strange idea that its slight variation of slasher staples is OK. There is a nice twist to the ending where two men argue over which one of them is the werewolf while ignoring a young girl who is rarely seen on screen. I just wish we saw the werewolf get them. The girl, Mary Lou, makes a cameo in the much-better follow up to this film: The Howling 6: The Freaks. She is also the central antagonist of part 7.
Not Recommended
This is actually a slasher pic with fur. Read the setup. A diverse group of adults is trapped in a Hungarian castle and is stalked individually by a werewolf. Change the words in italics to teenagers, house, and crazy person for your usual genre effort. The movie came out in 1989 near the end of the slasher craze, and being the cash grab that it is, doesn't distinguish itself in any way. This is an improvement over part 4 barely. At least it rips off a sub-genre and not another film in its own series.
At least, unlike the last movie, we get some cool scenery to enjoy. This movie takes place in Europe and looks like it was filmed in an old building. I spent a lot of time looking around at the sets or snow-covered ground in between boring segments. The movie is self-aware of its awfulness and provides a musical jolt whenever a werewolf attack is coming. Some refrain from a song by some group called The Factory plays every single time. An extended version plays over the opening credits. I can't determine if the director chose to do this because he deluded himself into thinking it would be scary or if The Factory got a lot of free advertising. The song is stylistically similar to a Beethoven opera and contrasts nicely with the phony "attack" sequences where people are touched by the wolf.
A group of international tourists have won a visit to a castle where in 1489 a wealthy family committed mass suicide. A child was smuggled out, and the tourists are its descendants. The family was cursed with lycanthropy and attempted to save the world by preventing its proliferation. If only they could have saved us from watching this play out.
That smuggled kid was a werewolf who passed his genes onto the rest of the world or at least the twenty or so people in this movie. Only one of them is actually a werewolf whose powers are unleashed when in the castle. There's a bit of mystery as to who the villain is at first. The guy with the heavy Eastern European accent just HAS to be the antagonist. We are stupefied, of course, until one of the characters disappears whenever the group goes actively looking for the werewolf in a darkened basement twice. Only one of the tourists, by the name of Ray, escapes.
The movie is too pedestrian to recommend even to genre fans. People are willing to overlook its dearth of creativity under the strange idea that its slight variation of slasher staples is OK. There is a nice twist to the ending where two men argue over which one of them is the werewolf while ignoring a young girl who is rarely seen on screen. I just wish we saw the werewolf get them. The girl, Mary Lou, makes a cameo in the much-better follow up to this film: The Howling 6: The Freaks. She is also the central antagonist of part 7.
Not Recommended