The Howling 6: The Freaks (1991)

Well, it may seem hard to believe but after five attempts they finally came up with a decent “Howling” sequel. By no means will it make you forget the first film, but “Howling 6: The Freaks” is a solid little B-flick that not only gives you the standard werewolf fare, but also throws in a fairly nifty vampire as well. A young man named Ian is tracking a carnival, “Harker’s World of Wonders” across the country with revenge on his mind. Ian’s family was wiped out by head carnie/vampire Harker who placed the curse of the lycanthrope onto Ian. Harker soon captures Ian, and with the use of an amulet that can cause Ian’s transformation to take place at any time, places Ian as the star attraction in his freak show. Harker, who tries to pin several murders of the town’ s locals on Ian, soon comes under suspicion from the town’s sheriff and a family who took Ian in, setting up the time honored tradition of werewolf versus vampire for the film’s climax. I’ve seen this one about 3-4 times over the years, and can honestly say it’s a darn good little film. I really enjoyed the whole “evil carnie vibe”, and actor Bruce Payne is great as the evil head carnie/vampire Harker. The rest of the acting is competent as well, especially good was the subplot of Winston the Alligator Boy, which sort of added a touch of “The Elephant Man” to the proceedings. Now, I’m not sure if they had more money to spend or what, but here we get an actual werewolf transformation and, unlike the previous sequels where you only got split second glimpses of the beast, here you actually get to see the monster. Both the werewolf and vampire costumes are courtesy of Steve Johnson, doing his usual great job while working on a sub-par budget. This ones a solid little monster film which unfortunately gets overlooked since the previous “Howling” films were so crappy.