Carnography

Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch (1985)

The first sequel to The Howling took three-to-four years to come out, which I think is something of a record for all the franchises we've covered so far. Joe Dante was not brought back to direct, not least because Gary Brandner, who wrote the books upon which the first film was based and also worked on the screenplay for this film, did not like Dante and what he had done with the first film. Quite what he thought of Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch (also known as Howling II: ...Your Sister is a Werewolf) isn't recorded but I can't imagine this improved things any.

Picking up where the first movie ends, Howling II starts at the funeral of Karen White, the heroine of the first film who we saw transforming into a werewolf on live television before being shot dead with silver bullets at the end of the film. That death has been retconned considerably, however, and now that broadcast never went out and so the werewolf revelation remains secret. What's more, the silver bullets were removed from Karen's body during the post-mortem, allowing her to rise again as a werewolf. There to stop this from happening is the mysterious Stefan Crosscoe, who has been hunting werewolves for a long time. He tries to convince Karen's brother Ben* and her former work colleague Jenny about the existence of werewolves, but they are varying degrees of sceptical until they see Karen's transformation themselves, as well as the attempts of several werewolves to rescue her. Stefan then tells them of the existence of Stirba, the 10,000-year-old werewolf queen and how he plans to track her down and kill her. Ben and Jenny then join him on his quest, travelling to Transylvania where Stirba resides and is preparing for a ritual to mark her 10,000th birthday that will give power to werewolves all over the world...

Oh, Sir Christopher Lee, why? Well, actually, he gave his reason for taking the lead role in Howling II as simply having never been in a werewolf movie before. I suspect another factor in this was that Howling II was directed by Phillipe Mora, with whom Lee had worked with in 1983 on The Return of Captain Invincible (where Lee played the supervillain Mr Midnight and which, incidentally, everyone should see because it's a funny film, a good satire and Christopher Lee sings in it). As it was, Lee seems to have regretted his decision to star in Howling II quite quickly - apparently having quite the low opinion of his co-stars' acting ability and, when cast in Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch, one of the first things he did was apologise to Dante for having appeared in Howling II. Certainly there's a couple of points in the film where I think I spotted him looking at his co-stars and silently counting the number of ways he could kill them.

So, Howling II is a mess. Its key points of notability are the afore-mentioned Sir Christopher Lee and the fact that the credits repeats the shot where Stirba, played by Sybil Danning, bares her breasts no less than 17 times. Other than that, it's got made-up werewolf lore coming out of its ears - werewolves can only be killed by silver bullets or blades, except for some who are immune to silver and so can only be killed by titanium. But holy water, holy medals and garlic can also be used to protect oneself from them, and at one point holy oil is thrown on a werewolf who goes up like it was napalm. It's bewildering, to say the least. Stirba is also a witch as well as a werewolf, which gives the film a couple of opportunities to perform some strange spells which either result in some gory special effects or some very dodgy cell-drawn ones. Originally, the film was meant to be a horror-comedy, which makes the movies title and alternate titles make more sense, but while director Mora was in Australia shooting another movie, the studio recut the film to make it more of a straight horror with some comedy elements. The fact that Brandner, who had been brought in to write the script originally, eventually quit because of executive meddling and so was replaced by another writer who re-wrote most of it couldn't have helped matters much either.

One thing that this sequel does carry over from the original is the female sexuality and empowerment themes, although even then they're given a beating with the silly stick. Apparently, if you're a female werewolf you're duty bound to wear leather underwear - the kinkier, the better. Stirba is described by many reviews as "bi-curious" but I'd say there's very little of the "curious" about her, and there is one infamous scene where she takes part in a threeway with her lover Vlad and another female werewolf, Mariana, where the three of them writhe erotically on a bed in mid-transformation, yet unable to touch each other in case the glued-on wolf hair fell off. Mora said that the film was inspired by New Wave Eroticism and that's certainly clear throughout the film, complete with a New Wave Punk band providing the movie's signature (and repeated throughout the film, so you know they got their money's worth from it) track, "Howling".

In the end, Howling II could just as easily have been a stand-alone movie instead of a sequel; it bearing so little resemblance to the first film other than the opening scenes (they don't even bother to use the same footage of Karen's on-air transformation, instead managing to make her werewolf makeup look even sillier than her look in the previous film). Sir Christopher Lee gives a fine performance despite everything, but the best that can be said for the rest of the film is that it would probably be a good film to watch with friends while getting drunk and making fun of it. Oh, and the 17 shots of Sybil Danning's breasts in the credits.

 (* - For some reason I kept calling Ben "Mike" throughout this review. I don't know where the name "Mike" came from, but I think it says something about just how uninteresting the character was that I can't even keep his name right in my head...)

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Green Room (2015)

Yes yes, it's another film where IMDB lists its year of release as 2015, but Green Room didn't get released here in the UK at least until May 2016. Add to that the fact that it came out just a few weeks before lead actor Anton Yelchin's tragic death, and it really is a travesty that it's taken me this long to finally get around to seeing it.

The Ain't Rights - Pat, Sam, Tiger and Reece - are a down-on-their-luck punk band touring and living out of their van in the Pacific Northwest. A contact of theirs sets them up with a paying gig in the area. It's a Neo-Nazi bar, but they really need the money so they play there any way (and even manage to have a little fun with a certain Dead Kennedys cover). Unfortunately, upon returning to the green room after their set, they happen to walk in on the aftermath of a murder, the victim still on the ground with a knife in her head and everything. The Neo-Nazis, of course, can't just let them leave after they see that and so they lock them in the green room whilst they work out what to do with them. The Ain't Rights end up having to fight for their lives against a club full of Neo-Nazis and their sinister leader Darcy...

I'm taking a short break from my Handmade Christmas Gift Death March for this movie, and I'm very glad that I did. Green Room is from still-relatively-new director Jeremy Saulnier, whose previous films include Murder Party and Blue Ruin. Saulnier himself refers to these three films as his "Inept Protagonist" trilogy, and while I haven't seen his previous two films I can attest to that description being an accurate one for Green Room, as of the five protagonists who end up trapped in the titular green room (the four band members and another girl), only two of them have even the faintest idea of how to fight/and or defend themselves, while the others tend to run around aimlessly and make rather bad decisions (throwing their weapons, for example, or in one case spraying an assailant with the contents of a fire extinguisher instead of using it as a bludgeoning weapon), and of course some of those bad decisions just make things worse for them. It all makes it easier for the audience to identify with the protagonists as, however much we might think otherwise as we sit here and watch these films, in reality, most of us would likely not know what to do in situations like these either. Of course, it's not entirely necessary as it's not exactly difficult to be sympathetic to the protagonists when they're up against Nazis.

I think this is one of the few horror movies I've seen where the antagonists are Nazis but not zombie Nazis, which seemed notable to me until I remembered that the Nazisploitation subgenre exists. Still, it's very easy to hate Nazis no matter how they're portrayed, and the ones in Green Room are no exception as they're racist, murdering drug dealers almost to a man. But it's their leader Darcy who really stands out. Played by none other than Sir Patrick Stewart, when he first appears he's wearing a green waxed jacket and a flat cap - the very image of a country gamekeeper or gentleman. And then he calmly, even genially, goes about organising multiple murders. I don't think he even raises his voice all that much throughout the entire film, and hearing Captain Picard/Professor Xavier (use your preferred character here) casually using racial epithets is very jarring indeed. Stewart said that he wanted to play Darcy because he felt it would be a good challenge for him to play someone so against his usual type, and I would say that he more than meets that challenge.

The late Anton Yelchin also impresses as the hapless Pat, who finds himself the defacto leader of the group and having to make-life-or-death decisions for all of them once things go south - and as I said above, not all of these decisions are the best (more of the "inept protagonist" concept). He also suffers some pretty horrific injuries during the course of the film as well, and reacts to these much as any normal person would - ie. he screams a lot and goes into shock. You really feel for his character and everything he goes through.

Green Room has been described as an "ultra-violent" movie, and while it's not on the level of, say, Robocop, Battle Royale or the Hostel movies, when violence and gore do occur it's memorable because it's realistic. People get savaged by fighting dogs (no dogs die during the film), blasted with shotguns, stabbed and beaten and the grim reality of it all makes it worse than, to take one of my above examples, the almost over-the-top blood sprays of Robocop. They're human injuries, the kind that makes us wince in sympathy as we watch them because we can imagine how that might actually feel, and I think that helps to raise Green Room above the average violent horror movie. In the end, Green Room is definitely worth watching, even if you just want to see Sir Patrick Stewart playing a Nazi with chilling aplomb.

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Rockula (1990)

 .Today would have been my late partner Nick's 40th birthday. In honour of him I decided that today's review is going to be one of his favourite movies - a movie that he introduced me to years ago. Since then I've gone on to introduce several other people to it and now I'm introducing it to all of you. It's one of those films that really has to be seen to be fully appreciated, but I'm going to do my best to review it anyway. So here we are with my review of Rockula.

Ralph is a 400-year-old vampire who still lives at home with his overprotective and more than a little eccentric mother (who is also a vampire). He's not very good at being a vampire either; he's barely able to turn into a vampire bat and even that is somewhat... lacking. Worst of all, he's also under a curse whereby every 22 years, his true love is reincarnated and he has to try to save her from being killed by a pirate with a rhinestone peg-leg, who wields a giant hambone. Obviously over the last 400 years he's not had too much success with that. Oh, and Ralph's reflection talks to him. And it's a musical.

As you might have guessed from the above synopsis, Rockula isn't a movie that's supposed to be taken too seriously. It's firmly in the category of horror-comedy, with an emphasis on the comedy rather than the horror. In fact, it's pretty much bloodless (yes, I know; it really stands out on the blog like that), which makes it the perfect horror for even the most ardent gore-hater to watch. So if you are looking for gore and splatter then this isn't the film to find it in; but don't let that discourage you from seeing the film - it's certainly cheesy as hell, but it's also a lot of fun.

One of the main reasons the film works so well is because of the cast. Dean Cameron, who was a prolific actor in 80s teen comedies (and who is still a prolific actor now, just not as a teenager any more) plays Ralph; Toni Basil, known as both an actress and a pop singer (she performed the 80s hit Mickey) plays his mother Phoebe; and then there's Thomas Dolby, who plays a mortuary owner with a line in new-age coffins. Really, Dolby very nearly steals the whole movie with his performance as Stanley - in particular a scene where he is marketing his coffins, which include a coffin on a rotisserie to keep your relatives turning in their graves, and a special line of cryogenic coffins with self-hypnosis tapes ("Are you a smoker? Quite while you're dead!").

The humour is also strong in the film as well - somewhat obvious even if you just look at the plot above. In some ways it's a bit like a Disney movie in terms of humour - most of it is pretty much family-friendly, but there's a few moments that will go straight over children's heads and adults will get the references - such as one character being called "Madame Ben-Wa" or Ralph's mother claiming that George Washington was "as wooden as his teeth" in the bedroom. And of course there's the whole double-entendre of the pirate "boning" Ralph's love to death every 22 years.

Rockula is pretty difficult to get hold of nowadays - it's available on Amazon Prime in the US but isn't available anywhere on DVD. Thankfully for us,  some wonderful soul has uploaded the movie (in 9 parts) to YouTube, and you can find it here. Normally as you know I would never suggest any form of illegal downloading or watching of movies, but in this case, since Rockula is all but out of print, I'm pretty sure it's okay. I do thoroughly recommend watching this movie, not just because it was one of my partner's favourite films but because it's also genuinely funny and a lighthearted movie to watch if - like me - the films you usually watch are full of gore and creepiness and downbeat endings.

Oh, and the musical numbers are pretty good too. Particularly the one where he dresses up as Flava Flav.