Clive Turner makes his return to the Howling franchise with Howling VII: New Moon Rising, writing, producing, directing (after wresting control from the original director Roger Nall), starring and editing. So I think it's safe to say that this film, even more than the others he left his mark on (4 and 5) is his cinematic baby. Unfortunately, I'm about to indulge in some baby-killing.
An Australian biker and drifter called Ted Smith arrives in the small town of Pioneer Town looking for work. and quickly gets a job working in the town's one bar, where he quickly becomes popular with the locals and his fellow employees and even starts a romance with the town widow. Ted has a secret, however - one that he wants to keep hidden from the townspeople, and anyone who confronts him or starts a fight with him soon turns up missing or dead, with reports of coyotes or mountain lions prowling the outskirts of the town... At the same time (I think) a detective investigating the killings meets up with a priest who is also a werewolf hunter. He helpfully recaps the events of Howling V: The Rebirth for us, and a little bit of Howling VI: The Freaks. Later on, Marie Adams from Howling IV: The Original Nightmare turns up as well to recap that movie for us as well. All of this talking and recapping is to hammer home the fact that there is a werewolf in Pioneer Town, and all bets are on Ted Smith. So, of course, it's not. Who is the actual werewolf, and will they be able to stop it before it kills any more people and/or leads to the cancellation of line dancing night at the bar?
Welcome to Howling: the Clipshow. Seriously, a good portion of this film is just a recap and clips from The Original Nightmare, The Rebirth and about a minute from The Freaks (merely to try to connect all the films together with the appearance of the surviving werewolf from The Rebirth, Marylou Summers). Apparently the original plan was to have the entire film made up of footage from the previous films and no new footage at all, which I'm pretty sure doesn't count as a film but a scrapbooking project, but in the end, they decided on having an original story wedged in there as well. Or they had a half-finished mystery story set in Pioneer Town that they hadn't come up with an ending for, and decided to splice the two films together and hope for the best. To say it doesn't come out well is an understatement.
Howling VII is pretty clearly a vanity project for Clive Turner if you hadn't already guessed that from his writing, editing, producing, directing and starring in it. He also really liked Pioneer Town, so he decided to set his movie there, and rather than hire actual actors, he just had the locals play themselves going about their everyday lives, with the occasional mystery/werewolf subplot thrown in to remind people they were watching a werewolf movie. On that note, if you're a fan of country and western and line dancing, then this is the film for you! Sadly it wasn't able to win me over as, apart from Johnny Cash, country and western has never been my thing. But there's a lot of it in the film, be it as the background music for montages, or being played and sang by the owners of the bar, who also have a C&W band (of course).
As I said, every now and then the film seems to remember that it's supposed to be a werewolf movie, and so we get some werewolf POV shots as it stalks victims, but said POV shots are just a camera with a red jelly over the lens. It looks like Predator-vision when he's not got his mask on or his contacts in. then at the very end of the film, when the true identity of the werewolf is revealed - it's supposed to be a mystery for us but the astute/awake will probably have figured it out before this point) we get a brief shot of a bad mid-90s CGI transformation and someone in a Yeti suit runs about for a few seconds before being shot. Then we've got just enough time for another C&W number before the credits.
Howling VII also brings back that idea of lycanthropy being devil/demonic possession that is now quite clearly Clive Turner's pet idea, as it only appears in the films he's involved in. It also attempts to retcon a lot of things, including Howling IV allegedly happening after Howling V, and Ted Smith also being Ray Price from Howling V, who everyone thought died but actually didn't (no explanation as to why he changed his name and went from music star to drifter though). Also, Marylou the werewolf from Howling V arranged things with the town of Drago in Howling IV, werewolves have mind control abilities and can jump into other people's bodies, but need three years to reach their full power and can make other people werewolves. Suddenly vampires able to turn people into werewolves in Howling VI seems perfectly reasonable.
A few days ago I said that Howling IV: The Original Nightmare was the nadir of the Howling franchise. I now think I spoke a little too rashly, because holy crap, I don't even think this qualifies as horror, except maybe if it was to haunt film students with threats of being the films they end up making if they don't study hard. If there's ever a crossover with the Howling franchise as it is at this point and the Hellraiser franchise as it was after its last film, I think it might cause the apocalypse to start. Pray no-one ever has that idea.
(Note: I literally could not find a trailer for this film, so this is the best you're getting. Even YouTube, which has a trailer for The Nostril Picker, doesn't seem to want to have much to do with this film.)
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