The Howling: Episode IV

You know, the last two Howling movies have been bad, but a badness born of misguidedness, insanity, or unselfconscious stupidity. I didn't realize how much I preferred this kind of badness until I slurgleblogged through The Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, which you'll notice is neither original nor a nightmare. This movie occupies a whole other species of bad: one born of sheer fucking incompetence.

The Howling IV is a kinda-sorta-not-really remake of the original film and based more strongly in the novels by Gary Brandner, as if those facts somehow bolster this direct-to-video stinking pile of fuck. We're introduced to Marie, a big important author who is having mysterious visions of disappearing nuns and wolf-puppets in a fire. Her doctor decides she needs some time in the country with her husband, who is the real beast of this movie.

Look at that feathered, mulleted adonis, perpetually shirtless or shirt-unbuttoned! Anyway, Marie and Mulletar, Lord of Manliness, shack up in a cabin in the middle of a nowhere that is very clearly South Africa pretending to be Small Town USA. Then what happens? Oh, just about 70 minutes of fuckall. Seriously, everything up until the last 10 minutes can be summarized as this: Marie hears a noise, frets, whines to husband or townperson, gets dismissed; husband fluffs hair. This film was trying to re-imagine the original Howling story, wherein the protagonist was haunted by an unknown force or presence, retreats to the countryside, then unearths the source of her torment and a local conspiracy - werewolves. We don't know about the werewolves until the final act, which ostensibly makes it a surprise. It's a bit difficult to pull that off when you're #4 in a franchise, fuckers. The audience is expecting werewolves, and what they get are a couple of unfinished puppets and Garbage Pail Kids for 30 seconds after sitting through this boring soap-opera-vision movie with lolarious acting and no plot.

Fuck this malarkey.

The Gaffer's Rating: 0.5 out of 4 Snausages.