a.k.a. Howling II / Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch
Directed by: Philippe Mora
I brought up bad movies and BAD movies in my first review here (Vampirella), and I would have to class this a BAD movie. A really, REALLY BAD movie... but, still there is something about it that makes me not being able to tell anyone to not watch it. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's so bad it's good (because good it ain't), it's more like a car crash - you can't look away. I remember having this movie on a VHS tape together with "The Lost Boys" (now, that's a great movie) and I watched this flick many times in my teens... Now when I rewatched it for the first time in many years I couldn't really understand why I did that back then, and I really didn't remember any of the story even after having watched it so many times back in the day. Well, the mystery was solved when Sybil Danning entered the picture... her getting topless was probably all I needed to want to watch this flick over and over again back in my teens. I wasn't the only one liking the scene where Sybil rips off her dress to bare her chest, the editor of the movie must have loved that scene as well as it repeats no less than 17 times (yes, 17 fucking times!) in the end credits...
I love werewolf movies, but god damn... the werewolves in this movie looks more like hippies with bad hair days (and a bad personal hygiene) or rejects from "Planet of the Apes". Compared to the first "Howling" movie they're a damn joke, and it doesn't help that the director (or editor) apparently loved the transformation scenes as they are repeated over and over... ugh!
Ok, over to the story... We start with the funeral of Karen White (the main character of the first movie) where Stefan Crosscoe (Christopher Lee) tells Karen's brother, Ben White (Reb Brown), that she's a werewolf and not truly dead. Yeah, that's a dickish thing to do at a funeral, but Stefan doesn't care - he's here to kill a werewolf! After having shown Ben and his reporter friend Jenny (Annie McEnroe) a tape of the death of his sister (which is a extremely bad recreation of the last scene of the first movie) they all end up at Karen's grave where they are attacked by werewolves (among them Karen). After having captured an old, decrepit white haired werewolf they learn that the Queen of Werewolves, Stirba, is hiding in the "dark country" and she's planning to gather a bunch of werewolves to... ugh, I started to drift away a little here, but I'm sure it's nothing good...
The "dark country" turns out to be Transylvania (of course) and the trio heads over there to battle the Queen of the Werewolves. They end up in a small village where everyone acts creepy and weird (not sure if it's only because the script said so or because of shitty acting as there is A LOT of shitty acting in this movie, especially in the Transylvania part of the movie... which is most of it), but luck has it that Stefan has a couple of pals (a priest, a dwarf and a couple of other weirdos) that will help our heroes to fight Stirba. Like in most (good or bad) horror movies the female lead gets captured by the villains and it's all up to the men to save her (while killing as many werewolves as possible). And that is all I care to say about the plot of this movie...
It's always great to see Christopher Lee in a movie, but he's too good for crap like this (even though he has probably done worse movies in his career). I don't wanna go on too much about bad acting (as I usually don't really care as long as the movie is good), but the other two main characters are so fucking stiff and shitty you just want to poke your eyes out and cut off your ears. And to make matters worse, you get to see (and hear) a lot more of them than Christopher Lee in this movie... wtf?!?!?! Sybil Danning isn't the best actress either, but you kinda forgive her for that because no matter what she's delicious as the evil Werewolf Queen (and I'm not just talking about her nudity now, her evil Queen Bitch is always fun to watch). And you know they didn't hire her for her acting anyway...
I feel I'm gonna come off as very schizophrenic now, as I can't say that this movie is any good at all - but still, if you love bad horror movies this is a movie you shouldn't miss. If you want bad b-movie horror, you'll get plenty of it here! And on top of that you'll get an extremely 80's title track that's hard to not like!
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