The Howling parts 1 and 2

THE HOWLING

Based on a 1979 novel that I’ve never read, the 1981 film The Howling (which The BFI Companion to Horror describes as a “hip horror parody”) tells the tale of a broadcast news anchor named Karen who takes the advice of her mental health care doctor and ventures with her husband to an isolated getaway known as “the colony” to recuperate after her traumatic encounter with a serial killer named Eddie.  Unfortunately for Karen, the denizens of the colony are secretly a pack of werewolves who can change form at will.  After Karen realizes the danger she’s in, she escapes from the colony (with the assistance of a co-worker), but not before she’s infected and turned into a werewolf too.  Karen transforms into a wolf creature during a live television broadcast in an effort to warn the public at large of the monsters in the world.

The plot of The Howling hinges on one huge coincidence (Eddie the serial killer is a werewolf who belongs to the colony that Karen’s doctor oversees).  The movie boasts some horrific imagery (Eddie’s transformation into a wolf in front of Karen looks exceptionally real) but suffers from having a terribly passive protagonist.  Karen likely would have died at the hands of the wolf pack if her co-worker had not shown up with a rifle and a bunch of silver bullets at just the right time.  Widely considered a seminal werewolf film, The Howling seems overrated (especially considering that the first full-on werewolf attack doesn’t occur until forty-two minutes after the story begins, and that scene involves Karen’s husband just getting scratched on the arm).  I don’t dig this flick too much, but it does have its share of rabid fans.

THE HOWLING 2: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF

An astonishingly-awful waste of ninety minutes, The Howling 2 follows a fellow named Ben (the brother of newscaster Karen from the first film) as he travels to Transylvania with an occult investigator named Stefan (played by Christopher Lee, who must have been in dire need of a paycheck when he agreed to appear in this project) to hunt and kill a werewolf queen called Stirba. 

Cheesy electronic mid-eighties music saturates the soundtrack of The Howling 2.  I’ve seen more convincing werewolf costumes on kids parading up and down suburban streets in search of candy on Halloween.  The plot features characters behaving in maddening ways (upon their arrival in Transylvania, the intrepid werewolf hunters quite logically split up and enjoy a street fair).  Essentially there’s so much to dislike about this movie that I’m stunned it was never used as fodder for snarky riffing on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Do not expose your senses to the sights and sounds of The Howling 2.  I regret taking this DVD out of the shrink wrap.

Stake Land

STAKE LAND

A 2010 film in which a teen named Martin takes a road trip with a vampire hunter called Mister through what remains of the United States after undead bloodsuckers have decimated the population, Stake Land contains many gripping scenes and horrifying moments but suffers from an emotionally-unfulfilling ending.  In a prologue, a vampire kills Martin’s parents and baby sibling, and Mister swoops in and rescues Martin.  The two head north in the hope of finding a place known as “New Eden” (reputed to be a safe haven, much like Sanctuary in Logan’s Run).  Along the way, they pick up a couple of traveling companions including a pregnant young woman named Belle.  They survive assorted encounters with vampires and fanatical human cult members until Belle dies around the end of the second act.  After Mister and Martin meet a girl about Martin’s age, Mister inexplicably abandons Martin and vanishes to parts unknown.  Martin and the girl continue north until a road sign notifies them that they have allegedly arrived at New Eden.

I very much wanted to see New Eden (if it actually existed) and find out how exactly the denizens thereof were safe from vampires.  The story ends before Martin actually experiences the place, which left me feeling cheated out of a proper denouement.  The journey to the end is worth experiencing, though.  The vampires in this world are brutal feral creatures (unlike the kind found in Anne Rice novels) and quite disturbing to see in action as they hunt and feed.  A couple of moments left me scratching my head (like the scene in which a religious cult drops vampires from a helicopter into the midst of the heroes – I wondered how exactly the cultists captured these monsters and wrangled them into an aircraft), but I still recommend checking this project out.  If you dig home video extras, the Blu-ray includes two commentary tracks.  Stake Land is a flawed but engaging movie.     

Satan's Triangle

SATAN’S TRIANGLE

A superb 1975 made-for-TV movie, Satan’s Triangle takes place almost entirely on a boat.  A Coast Guard rescuer named Haig boards the vessel from which a distress signal originates.  There he finds three corpses (including a priest hanging upside down from a mast) and one survivor (a traumatized woman named Eva).  Haig’s Coast Guard partner takes the helicopter back to base (citing engine trouble and low fuel).  Haig listens to Eva tell the tale of what happened on the boat, and the story unfolds through a series of flashback scenes.  Essentially the members of a fishing expedition spot the priest adrift on the wing of a plane and rescue him from the ocean, at which point a mysterious storm arises and unusual accidents claim the lives of everyone but Eva (who attributes the deaths to the fact that the boat was in the middle of the Devil’s Triangle).  Haig provides a rational explanation for each death, and at dawn the Coast Guard returns to rescue Haig and Eva.  A spectacular twist ending (the nature of which I will not spoil here) then turns the story on its ear.

Absolutely deserving of an official DVD release and a big-screen remake, Satan’s Triangle features atmospheric music and a plot that layers one narrative question atop another until the viewer is dying to know what’s going on.  The whole project is a lesson in superior creative storytelling.  This is one made-for-TV tale well-worth seeking out.

The Bone Snatcher

THE BONE SNATCHER

A 2003 film about a scientist named Zack on an expedition to locate three missing miners in an African desert, The Bone Snatcher features a singular monster in a largely boring (and periodically hard to follow) story.  Zack and his allies (including a potential love interest named Mikki and her ex-boyfriend Karl) locate the miners’ truck and find two bodies that have been mostly stripped of flesh.  Assuming incorrectly that the third miner killed the other two, the heroes follow a set of tracks through the desert.  They ultimately encounter a creature of sorts: a vast army of insects that use bones to take the form of a single large organism.  Zack, Mikki, and Karl deduce that the insects are developing a fresh colony in an abandoned mine and set out to destroy the nest.

The Bone Snatcher features some excellent creepy imagery (at one point the monster wears the face of one victim like a mask), but the story plods along at an uneven pace.  There are a couple of moments when one wonders just why the protagonist takes certain actions, like when he prevents Karl from shooting at the monster.  The tale takes a couple of weird turns.  At one point, Zack and Mikki and Karl spot the creature near their camp at night.  It seems to rush at them, and then suddenly there’s a scene the next morning with everyone alive and well with no trace of the insect-beast around.  Life’s too short to waste ninety minutes on this little movie.

The Crazies (2010 version)

THE CRAZIES (2010 version)

A remake of a 1973 film, the 2010 incarnation of The Crazies is a gripping tale that follows a small-town sheriff (David) as he and his pregnant wife (Judy) strive to escape from their community after the outbreak of an illness that induces murderous behavior in those infected.  David gradually pieces together that the epidemic stems from a contaminated water supply (a military plane carrying an experimental bio-weapon crashed in a body of water nearby).  David and Judy must deal with not only their newly-psychotic neighbors but also the military troops that have been sent in to contain the outbreak. 

The Crazies is filled with numerous excellent sequences in which it seems time and again that there’s no chance for the protagonist and his wife to escape.  Two nearly back-to-back scenes (one in the nursery in David and Judy’s house and another in a car wash) stand out as being among the most harrowing circumstances I’ve ever seen a cinematic hero overcome.  If you’re in the mood for a thrilling story about a struggle for survival against overwhelming odds, spend one hundred minutes enjoying the 2010 version of The Crazies.

Bloody Birthday

BLOODY BIRTHDAY

A 1981 film in which three ten-year-old kids go on a murder spree, Bloody Birthday features a couple shots (of teen girls walking and talking on a suburban street) that seem like an homage to John Carpenter’s Halloween, but this project unfortunately lacks the soul and tension of that masterpiece.  The ostensible protagonist of Bloody Birthday is a young lady named Joyce who spends much time searching for and babysitting her little brother.  Joyce is a non-traditional hero insofar as she has no clear goal that drives the story.  She mostly goes about her day-by-day existence (aside from one scene in which she is nearly run over by a car in a junkyard) until the final ten minutes or so (when she and her little brother realize that three of the neighborhood children are actively trying to murder them). 

The film opens with the near-simultaneous birth of the three killer kids during an eclipse in 1970.  Joyce later spouts some exposition about astrology and how someone born during an eclipse might have some key personality elements missing.  The bulk of the movie takes place in 1980 and includes the tenth birthday of the antagonists (and despite the title, I don’t recall any murders actually occurring at the birthday party). 

Bloody Birthday never evokes true chills (a major shortcoming for an alleged horror film).  The kill scenes are relatively tame (three of the victims are shot with a gun) aside from one bit that involves a peephole and a bow & arrow.  There’s no mystery about the identity of the killers after the first few minutes.  There’s never a sense of dread.  I’m not sure how three youngsters manage to outwit the local police force and get away with murder after murder.  Bloody Birthday runs less than ninety minutes but even so feels too long.  I don’t recommend wasting any time on this film.

Pale Blood

PALE BLOOD

A decent little vampire flick from 1990, Pale Blood follows an undead bloodsucker named Michael Fury who arrives in Los Angeles from Europe to search for a serial killer whose victims are drained of blood via two puncture wounds on the neck.  A young woman named Lori (who works for a detective agency) assists Fury in his hunt. 

Pale Blood stars Pamela Ludwig (who plays the love interest in the exceptional 1979 coming-of-age teen rebellion film Over the Edge) as Lori, and her presence is the reason I sought out this vampire film on VHS (it unfortunately has not yet been issued on DVD).  The plot of Pale Blood suffers from what a screenwriter named Blake Snyder refers to in a book called Save the Cat as “double mumbo-jumbo.” Snyder posits that “audiences will only accept one piece of magic per movie.”  In Pale Blood, vampires are real.  The second “piece of magic” that is shoehorned into the story is that Lori attempts to contact the spirits of the victims for information about the killer, but for some reason the visions from the spirits go to Fury instead of Lori. 

Pale Blood’s core concept of a real vampire investigating vampire-like murders is intriguing, but the tale doesn’t unfold in a very engaging way.  I would have liked Fury and Lori to piece together clues and ultimately track down the murderer, but instead the killer actually seeks out and sets a trap for Fury.  The film’s saving grace is a wicked twist ending that blindsided me. 

Pale Blood runs about ninety minutes long and is worth checking out (despite its narrative flaws) for fans of vampire pictures.  The three main characters (Fury, Lori, and the killer) are distinctive and memorable.  It’s not a brilliant film, but it is singular.