The Howling 2 is what you would get if you fed David Lynch shrooms, told him to write a werewolf sex comedy, took the finished script and removed everything that made sense, did your casting in an opium den and decided to dress all your werewolves up like gorillas.
Originally intended as a comedy, about halfway through the filming the producers decided they wanted a scary movie instead. The ensuing result is one of the most absurd messes I've ever seen, but it's an entertaining mess.
The first half hour or so is stammeringly awful as we open at the funeral of Dee Wallaces character, who met her maker at the end of the first Howling. Here we meet the main players, Christopher Lee as a werewolf hunter, Reb Brown as Nancys brother, and Annie McEnroe as a girl she worked with. Brown and McEnroe appear to be robots, his thing is that he screams when he shoots a gun, while she appears to be unfazed by anything anyone tells her and just goes along with it.
So Lee tells them about the werewolves and how they killed her his sister and even shows them a tape of the live broadcast in which she was killed. Now, I don't know why they just didn't use the footage from original, but instead they recreate it using an actress who looks nothing Dee Wallace. They even go out of their way to show her in the coffin, even though it's a completely different woman. Whatever, this part of the movie is bad, but have no fear, within a day of meeting each other the 3 are off to Transylvania to fight werewolves and to try and kill their queen and this is where the movie falls into the ether of the ridiculous.
Upon arriving in Transylvania, Lee goes off and does some shit while our couple seem to fall into a Woody Allen movie. He's there to avenge his sister, she's there to get the story, but they seem more interesting in just hanging out and watching the puppet shows in the street. Perhaps they're trying to get some acting tips. Neither one of them seems too bothered by the amount of creepy people who could be werewolves, all around them. When they check into their hotel he asks for two rooms, the very next scene they're having sex. Now I say they're having sex, but he's got his jeans on, pulled up about chest high. I have no idea.
Meanwhile the films real star, Sybil Danning, playing the Queen werewolf, is holed up in her castle with a bevy of werechicks dressed like they just bought out all of Fredericks Of Hollywood, which I got no problem with. She spends most of the movie with her excellent boobs either out, or barely contained, which again, I got no problem with. She has a furry 3 way with two other werewolves, I assume they're having sex, really they just howl, meow, and roll around a lot.
So Lee, a posse he gathers, our leads, and a Transylvanian leprechaun all converge on the werewolf castle where some sort of orgy is going on. Earlier in the film there was a scene in a club where a band was playing the movies theme song, suddenly the band is in the castle playing the theme song as the leather clad werewolves all dry hump each other. Except the band isn't there, the scene from the club is just spliced into the orgy. I think we're supposed to think the band is there, I dunno, it's making my head hurt.
So yeah, we have the inevitable showdown, Reb Brown yells "hyahhhhhh" every time he shoots his gun at the werewolves who all walk upright and look to be wearing costumes left over from Planet Of The Apes. As the credits roll we get to hear the theme song again, because the 7 or 8 times we've heard it during the movie weren't enough, but they also show a clip of Sybil Danning ripping her shirt off, exposing her lovely boobies, about 20 times. I have no idea why and I wont argue against it.
So so so so very campy and nonsensical, The Howling 2 goes from bad, to so bad it's good, to so bad it's great. Captivatingly awful acting, coupled with a script that may very well not exist, throw in some blood, lots of boobies and werewolf sex, and you have a film that in no way deserved to be released, but is a must watch.
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