HOWLING V: THE REBIRTH (1989)
Tagline: For 500 years the secret lay dormant... Until now!
(Horror, Suspense, Humans That Are More Dangerous Than the Werewolves) [R]
There is an ancient Hungarian proverb: "Check the one who looks innocent!"
In this one, The Count invites a group of seemingly unrelated people to the re-opening of a castle in Budapest. Sealed for 500 years the castle was the location of a mass murder of a suspected werewolf den. One by one, the guests are killed in gruesome ways. The guests break into groups to try and find out who the killer is, it doesn’t take long before suspicion begins to turn towards The Count himself.
First off, I have now seen 7 films in the Howling series. I have 2 more to watch and review to complete the series, but unless something changes I think I can confidently say this is the 4th best film of the 7 I have seen. Unlike a lot of people, I actually liked THE HOWLING REBORN enough to give it a 4 out of 7. So far that is the best rating I can give any of the sequels in this series.
The Good – What works well in this film is the score. It's actually excellent throughout and brings some atmosphere to this film that it had no business having on its shoestring budget. This is also the best cast of any of the HOWLING series. I am not saying these talents are mind-blowing or any of that, but they are at least interesting and attractive which never hurts. Phil Davis (ALIEN 3) plays the count and does a really solid job here. He’s got a duplicitous nature, but I really enjoyed the character. Victoria Catlin (GHOULIES) plays the kind-natured Dr. Catherine Peake and is solid. I mean, I didn’t want a lot of these characters to get picked off so fast, or at all. Ben Cole (CYBER EDEN) is solid as David and gets one of the better lines “We’re puppets, and *The Count* is pulling the strings.”. Elizabeth Shé plays the innocent girl in this who seems to always be painted as somewhat naive named Mary Lou. It’s the kind of character that you kind of expect to get picked off first. Mary Stavin (HOUSE) is great as Anna. I think my favorite in the entire cast is Stephanie Faulkner (VIRUS: THE END) who plays Gail, but her screen time is low. She actually got out of acting after this film.
I also thought the setting and lighting were pretty good in this. Castles can be hit and miss. They sound like great locations, but bad lighting can ruin a castle movie. That doesn’t happen with this one.
The Bad – When you make a werewolf movie, the most gnarly kill should never be awarded to one of the humans. We only see this werewolf up close where you can see the face once. It’s pretty disappointing if you are a horror fan. I don’t need a ton of gore at all. I am not a gore, fan, but at least show me the werewolf if you are making a werewolf movie. I understand this was a low budget, but if you took the time to make the one werewolf mask, just show us that 10 to 20 times.
If I am putting this up against the original, it doesn’t measure up, but when you put it up against some of the other films in this series, as I said, it stands out as the 4th best to me. I do like that at the time this came out we actually had two decent HOWLING flicks in a row. It was a nice departure from the garbage that was HOWLING II and HOWLING III. As I stated I wish we got more werewolves on this werewolf tour, but overall the story was kind of cool and the cast helped this thing out a lot.
HOWLING V: THE REBIRTH gets a solid 4 out of 7. A few watches might end up having it edge out HOWLING IV which has a few lulls. This one has pretty great pacing and I was never bored.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF ALLIED VISION AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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