The Howling 2: Your Sister Is A Werewolf (1981)

Oh my. Here’s a completely inept sequel that has the dubious distinction of beginning the downward spiral for the “Howling” franchise. Amazingly enough, and after watching this one you’ll no doubt find it hard to believe, there are actually worse “Howling” sequels to follow. Scary, eh? Here we find the brother of Karen White (you know, the news chick who turned into a werewolf from the first film) along with his reporter girlfriend teaming up with werewolf hunter and occult expert Christopher “what the fuck am I doing here” Lee on a mission to Transylvania to stop the evil Queen of Werewolves from unleashing a lycanthropic jihad against the entire world. Whew. The werewolf Queen is none other than Sybil “see my bosoms” Danning who frequently flashes her tits, bosses other werewolves around, and frequently engages in lupine three-ways. Sounds cool huh? Well, somehow it’s not. This one is such a mess it’s really hard to find a starting point in which to begin the blaming.

The story is ho-hum and contains plenty of loops for the audience to pick apart. You’ll find them on your own, no sense in me stressing the obvious to you. Acting wise, things are of course fairly bad, though Christopher Lee is Christopher Lee no matter what film he’s in, resulting in a nice turn as the head werewolf hunter. Sybil Danning spits out tons of occult gibberish when she’s not walking around in her funky looking duds and baring her breasts, large and glorious that they are. Everyone else however, can be summed up in one word: disposable. Many bash the effects in the film, though I feel the werewolf costumes were actually nicely done. Not as good as the first film’s mind you, but passable nonetheless. Then again, my old Thorn/EMI print was so dark it’s really hard to make out things in broad daylight, never mind a wolf attack in the middle of a deep, dark forest.

We do get lots of werewolves though, and that can never be to bad of a thing, except for maybe in real life. Bad as it is, there still is a cheesy appeal to everything going on here. I mean, in what other film can you see werewolf orgies, Chris Lee wearing punk rocker sunglasses, and Sybil Danning baring her tits no less than 17 times in the film’s closing montage? Did I mention Sybil shows her tits? Sheesh. I do think the film has a decent overall atmosphere to it; I especially enjoyed the opening credits that featured lots of weird shots of skeletons and the like. And lord help me, I can’t get that fucking theme song out of my head. You’ll hear it about fifty times during the movie so be sure you’ll suffer the same fate. In closing I will admit it is a real shitfest of a film, to that there is no doubt. However, if you are in the right mood you might, and I stress the “might” part, get a kick out of all the awfulness and cheesiness that’s on display here. Howl indeed.