Review: Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf (1985)

The Howling (1981) is one of those seminal horror films. Something so unique and so good that it’s hard to see how it could be bettered. Gary Brandner’s superb novel about a colony of werewolves was translated brilliantly to the screen by Joe Dante, and with make-up effects courtesy of Rob Bottin, the final film is just sublime. With this effort, however, you distinctly get the feeling that it was a different film entirely, and they just slapped the Howling moniker on it to cash in on the original … but then you realise that Brandner has a co-credit on the screenplay, and start to wonder what on earth happened!

Howling II seems to have a few subtitles. Your Sister is a Werewolf is the one on this Arrow release, but IMDB favours Stirba – Werewolf Bitch which is possibly more accurate. Whatever you call it, the film is a mess from start to end. Nominally it’s following the story of Ben White (Reb Brown), brother of Karen White from the first film. But the shots we see of Karen are a different actress to Dee Wallace in the original, and even the clips we see of Karen transforming in a TV studio look totally different and are not as good as the original. Anyway, Ben is investigating his sister’s death, and in the melee of ideas there’s more werewolves, a Queen Werewolf called Stirba (Sybil Danning) who wolfs-up and spends much of her screen time in bed with two other werewolves having wolfy sex, there’s black magic, forbidden books, all sorts of lore about killing werewolves by stabbing them in the heart with silver (mixing up vampire lore there too), there’s dungeons and orgies, and kidnappings, and one of the worst performances of all time from Annie McEnroe as a reporter called Jenny, who drifts through the film being weak and hopeless as all the carnage erupts around her.

It’s hard to know where to start pointing out the faults – the whole film is a fault! Lots of it seems jumbled in together with midgets being possessed and having their eyes popped out, old women transforming into Sybil Danning, and Danning strutting around wearing a black leather and copper swimsuit, along with overlarge chaps and shoulder pads … It’s a camp nightmare! Even the scene where she rips open her cloak to reveal her breasts is reportedly repeated seventeen times during the closing credits!

And striding through all this, there’s Christopher Lee! Wandering through the madness and looking as though he’s wishing he’d taken another film – any other film – than this one.

Basically it’s about as bad and as crazy and as inept as any low budget eighties horrors. There are films out there far more worthy of your time and money.

ARROW FILMS: Release Date: 14th November 2016

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

 

• Brand new digital transfer
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
• Original Mono Audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray)
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Audio commentary with director Philippe Mora
• Audio commentary with composer Steve Parsons and editor Charles Bornstein
• "Man, Monkey, Wolf"! - an interview with Philippe Mora
• Leading Man – an interview with actor Reb Brown
• Queen Of The Werewolves – an interview with actress Sybil Danning
• A Monkey Phase – interviews with special make-up effects artists Steve Johnson and Scott Wheeler
• Behind-the-Scenes Footage
• Alternate Opening and Alternate Ending
• Still Gallery
• Theatrical Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys

 

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Blyth

Review: The Initiation (1984)

Not one of the best or most memorable of slasher films, The Initiation comes over today as something of a pale imitation of the best of the genre. It’s interesting that the same year it was released, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was also released, and Craven’s film is superior in just about every way.

In The Initiation, Kelly (Daphne Zuniger) is plagued by bad dreams, caused by some trauma she suffered as a child. Not to be put off, however, she wants to become a member of her school’s sorority, and the initiation involves breaking into her dad’s department store and stealing the clothes from the security guard.

Of course things aren’t as simple as that, and when you add in some escaped prisoners from a local sanatorium, then the deaths start to add up. The main issue, from a plot perspective, is that the killings are random. No-one who dies deserved to die – this is one of the common tropes in this genre of film: usually if you are young, if you have sex, you die … but here there’s not even that tenuous morality to save you. People are bumped off left and right and the viewer is left to try and guess who the killer is …

Of course it’s a curveball at the end which answers the question of why Kelly is having the nightmares … but ultimately it’s not very satisfying.

ARROW VIDEO: Release Date: 7th November 2016

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new restoration from original film elements
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Original Uncompressed Mono PCM audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Brand new audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues
• Brand new interview with actor Christopher Bradley
• Brand new interview with actress Joy Jones
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Justin Osbourn

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic James Oliver

Review: Vamp (1986)

Another eighties horror film, and this time something which has something of a poor rep, but it’s hard to see quite why. There’s a lot to like in Vamp.

It’s ostensibly the tale of a couple of young men about town, Keith (Chris Makepeace) and AJ (Robert Rusler) who, in order to pass a College initiation ceremony, have to procure a stripper … so they head for the most jumping joint in town after procuring a ride from Duncan (Gedde Watanabe), a rich, but lonely, loser. They end up at the place where Queen Katrina (Grace Jones) performs, except that she’s a vampire queen and just about all the other performers at the club are also vampires. All except, strangely, for Amaretto (Dedee Pfeiffer), a familiar young girl who, it turns out, once kissed Keith. AJ is killed by Katrina and becomes a vampire himself, and Keith and Amaretto have to escape from the vampires, corrupt police and a psycho-albino vampire … Duncan is also vampirised, and it all comes to a head as they flee through the sewers and stumble across the vampire’s lair …

The film is great fun, and in common with gems such as Fright Night (1985) and Return of the Living Dead (1985), it doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s some smashing make-up effects, Grace Jones is as weird and kooky as you would expect her to be – one distinctly gets the impression that for her stage routine, they just pointed the camera and let her get on with it – and Dedee Pfeiffer is cute and perky and ‘girl next door’ as anyone from Night of the Comet (1984) or pretty much any other eighties horror flick. There are also elements which seem to have been borrowed by From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) … and lots more besides.

It’s a film to enjoy with a few beers, and to snuggle up with the girlfriend (or boyfriend) … as such were these films designed to be.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• High Definition digital transfer
• Original mono audio
• Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• One of those Nights: The Making of Vamp - a brand new documentary featuring interviews with director Richard Wenk, stars Robert Rusler, Dedee Pfeiffer, Gedde Watanabe
• Behind-the-scenes rehearsals
• Blooper Reel
• Image gallery
• Dracula Bites the Big Apple (1979) – Richard Wenk’s celebrated short film
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil

First pressing only: Booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Cullen Gallagher

Review: The Guyver (1991)

The Guyver is a film which somehow passed me by! It's also quite hard to categorise, being a sort of superhero movie, where the hero is as mutated and twisted as the bad guys ... oh, and they all look like monsters ...

Based on original Manga and Anime, the film has an immediate feel-good credential as the amazing FX artist Screaming Mad George is involved as both FX and co-director ... and it's a good call as the film relies on various mind-blowing transformations and monsters for its impact.

The idea is simple: as an opening sequence of text tells us: there are alien monsters among us, who can disguise themselves as humans ... and the only thing that can defeat them is a human using a transformation device called a Guyver. So enter Sean (Jack Armstrong), who stumbles upon the Guyver device after it is smuggled out of the Chronos Corporation HQ. It changes him into this amazing super weapon ... and from that point it's fights and chases and action as the alien monsters all want to get their hands on it!

To be honest, it's pretty much exactly the same as watching Power Rangers only slightly more for adults. The monsters all look like creations from that show, or perhaps early Lost in Space and have the same habit of throwing dialogue and quips in all the time as they fight. It's certainly not to be taken seriously!

When Mark Hamill (yes, him off of Star Wars) turns up and ends up being transformed into some giant beetle thing, you know it's not going to end well!  And the final battles against a giant monster (which is what the CEO of Chronos turns into) is likewise great fun.

And that really sums up the film ... it is great fun! Linnea Quigley (off of Return of the Living Dead) appears as a 'scream queen' when one of the monsters invades a film set on which she is working, and Michael Berryman (off of The Hills Have Eyes) plays Lisker, the lead monster creature ... Even Jeffrey Combs (off of Reanimator) makes an appearance as 'Dr East', playing off his popular role as Dr West in the Lovecraft films ...

There are fights galore, transformations aplenty, gloopy monsters in vats, enough bodily fluid to keep David Cronenberg happy for months, and a crazy plot which just about holds everything together. It's a great film in its own way, and a good way to spend an evening with friends and beer ...

ARROW FILMS: Release Date: 19th December 2016

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

    

• Brand new digital transfer of the Director’s Cut
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
• Original uncompressed audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new interview with producer Brian Yuzna
• Trailer
• Image Gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nick Percival

 

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Fully-illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film

Review: Slugs (1988)

Slugs is a gloriously rubbish slice of eighties hokum. If you like your horror films silly and illogical with lots of blood and gore, then this is for you! Nominally based on the novel of the same name by Shaun Hutson, the film actually seems to have nothing in common with it except the title … oh, and the slugs of course.

We open with a couple on a rowing boat, and there’s a disturbance in the water. The chap fishing has one foot dangling overboard, and the girl is about to take her top off … you know what’s going to happen! Somehow the slugs grab the chap’s foot and drag him under where there’s an explosion of blood! Then we’re in America where slugs have gone carnivorous and are attacking people – speeded up! A man in a greenhouse puts on a glove into which a slug has gone, and then screams and cannot get the glove off! Mighty strong these things. The solution: to thrash around screaming before grabbing an axe and cutting his own hand off! Then another woman prepares dinner, not noticing the large black slug in her lettuce as she chops it up. It’s then eaten with neither of the diners noticing the slug – or tasting it … Then the man collapses in a restaurant later on and his face explodes as slug larvae burst out of him! It’s all crazy daft stuff, with the police not noticing the slugs or their trails, and these creatures popping up all over the place and eating people!

It all ends in the sewers as Our Heroes don yellow outfits and descend to try and find the source. What’s interesting is that an earlier scene suggested there were giant slugs but we never see any sign of them … But the solution seems to be to spray them with a mixture of lithium and arsenic which a local school science master has in industrial quantities! Madness. Of course all the sewers explode, as do several houses for no reason … but a slug survives …

It’s a crazy mad bad film, but it’s actually well made, and for the most part well acted (there’s a couple of phone-them-in performances). The Arrow disk contains some nice extras including an interview with the effects guy and some photos of the impressible model shots that were undertaken. Even the supremely silly shot of a slug rearing up and biting someone’s finger was fascinating – done with enlarged models: a giant slug and a giant finger! Although silly, it does work well!

If you’ve a passion for the best of the worst of eighties horror, then this is certainly one to add to your shopping list!

ARROW FILMS: Release Date: 26th September 2016

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new restoration from original film elements
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Original Uncompressed PCM Stereo audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with Slugs author Shaun Hutson
• Audio commentary by writer and filmmaker Chris Alexander
• Here’s Slugs In Your Eye – an interview with actor Emilio Linder
• They Slime, They Ooze, They Kill: The Effects of Slugs – an interview with special effects artist Carlo De Marchis
• Invasion USA – an interview with art director Gonzalo Gonzalo
• The Lyons Den – an interview and locations tour with production manager Larry Ann Evans
• 1988 Goya Awards promo reel
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Wes Benscoter
• Fully-illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by writer Michael Gingold