THE HOWLING COLLECTION (1987-1991) (Umbrella Entertainment DVD Review)

THE HOWLING COLLECTION (1987-1991) 

Label: Umbrella Entertainment

Region Code: Region-free, 4 PAL, NTSC 

Rating: M

The Howling Collection arrives on a 4-disc set from Umbrella Entertainment collecting Howling III-VI, a series of films that are not really connected in anyway whatsoever, aside from the fact that they all feature werewolves to varying degrees. 

HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS (1987)

Duration: 98 Minutes 
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1) 

Director: Philippe Mora
Cast: Barry Otto, Imogen Annesley, Max Fairchild, Leigh Biolos, Dasha Blahova, Ralph Cotterill, Barry Humphries

Howling III - The Marsupials (1987) is what I consider to be the last really good film in this series, an all-out ozploitation version of a werewolf film that while never boring also doesn't make a a lot of sense. The film is directed by Phillipe Mora (The Beast Within) who also directed the fairly awful - though not un-entertaining - The Howling II: You're Sister Is A Werewolf (1985), and for this third film he went full on ozploitation, filming in Australia with a largely Australian cast, making a full-tilt slice of weird werewolf movie making the likes of which the cinema world had not seen before, or since.

HOWLING IV: THE ORIGINAL NIGHTMARE (1988)

Duration: 88 Minutes

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 

Video: Full Frame (1.33:1) 

Director: John Hough 

Cast: Romy Windsor, Michael T. Weiss, Suzanne Severeid, Anthony Hamilton, Lamya Derval, Dennis Folbigge, Norman Anstey

The fourth film in the series is advertised as going back to the original source novel, but also really coming across as a much poorer version of the first film. Here we have an author suffering a mental breakdown who moves into the country with her philandering husband, where it turns out that all the locals are weirdos... and werewolves! Strangely the turd of a film was directed by John Hough (The Legend of Hell House), but I've heard he was brought in late after the original director was canned, but even he couldn't polish a werewolf turd of this magnitude, not could some decent special effects work from Steve Johnson (Bad Moon). That said the special FX are truly the only highlight of the film, with a melt-down scene reminiscent of The Devil's Rain (1975) and some cool-looking werewolves that are only glimpsed for a few moments. The film has zero atmosphere, but plenty of fog, and the acting is uniformly awful throughout, making this the worst of all the Howling sequels in my opinion.

HOWLING V: THE REBIRTH (1989)

Duration: 96 Minutes

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 

Video: Full Frame (1.33:1) 

Director: Neal Sundstrom

Cast: Philip Davis, Victoria Catlin, Elizabeth She, Ben Cole, William Shockley, Mark Sivertsen, Stephanie Faulkner

Thankfully not as awful as the previous film, Howling V: The Rebirth opens with a prologue set in 15th century Budapest in a castle where there's been some sort of  massacre, an ill-fated attempt to kill a werewolf in hiding among the inhabitants of the castle. A few hundred years later we arrive at the same castle where a group of nine stranger have been summoned to the castle. What transpires is a bit like The Beast Must Die, a sort of Agatha Christie murder mystery with a werewolf as the culprit. What this has going for it is a fun ensemble cast, a cool-looking snowbound Gothic castle, and some decent creepy-castle atmosphere. The bummer of it is that there is practically zero werewolf in it, even less than the last film, all we get is glimpses at a hair-suit and some lycan POV shots. What we get in it's place is a few too many scenes of people wandering aimlessly through the castle's shadowy corridors, and not enough bloody werewolf action. It's still a watchable murder-mystery of sorts with a finale that features the killer cheekily looking straight into the camera with a wink and a nod to the audience. Not a good werewolf film by any means but a fun enough murder mystery that's at least competently made which is not something I can say about the last film.

HOWLING VI: THE FREAKS (1991) 

Duration: 102 Minutes

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 

Video: Full Frame (1.33:1) 

Director: Hope Perello

Cast: Brendan Hughes, Michele Matheson, Sean Gregory Sullivan, Antonio Fargas, Carol Lynley, Jered Barclay, Bruce Payne, Gary Cervantes

In Howling V: The Freaks we have a Brit drifter who wanders into a rural village in Southern California, much to the chagrin of the local law. His arrival there is no accident, he's there to get revenge on the vampire that cursed him to become a werewolf in the first place, a vampire carnival owner who runs a circus freak show. The film does enough different to keep things fresh, making the werewolf a tragic hero is a nice touch, plus introducing a vampire element into the franchise, while none of that is groundbreaking stuff it certainly kept me entertained in a Full Moon Entertainment sort of way. It also helps that there's a lot more werewolf action happening here than in the last few entries in the series, including an actual transformation scene that feels a bit like the transformation from An American Werewolf on London but on a shoe-string budget, and a cool-looking purple-skinned, yellow-eyed vampire, with a decent bloodsucker versus lycan battle royal right at the end which was fun. Surprisingly this film is my favorite in the series since the third one, which I was not expecting. This has a good cast with fun supporting roles from the rubber-faced Antonio Fargas (Cleopatra Jones) and Deep Roy (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), plus special FX from Steve Johnson (Bad Moon).  

Audio/Video: Howling III-VI arrives on 4-disc DVD from Umbrella Entertainment with each film getting it's own separate disc, which is cool. Howling III is the only film on the set presented in anamorphic widescreen, looking to be the same restoration used by Umbrella for their latest Blu-ray release. Howling IV-VI are presented 4x3 fullframe, looking a lot less glorious. Audio for each film comes by way of English Dolby Digital with no subtitles. While each film gets it's own disc the films are presented bare-bones, there are no extras for any of the films whatsoever, there's not even a start-up menu. All the films are presented region-free even though the case indicates that it is region 4 locked. Howling III-VI are NTSC formatted, while Howling VI is PAL formatted. 

The 4-disc set arrives in a standard DVD keepcase, inside there are four discs featuring the films. The artwork on the wrap is a new illustration by Umbrella's in-house designer Simon Sherry, which looks to be based on the werewolf design from Howling V: The Rebirth, it's a fantastic illustration, the type of cool-looking artwork that will definitely sell a few copies of this set all on it's own. That same illustration is featured on all four discs.

This is a cool little set from Umbrella, the A/V of the latter films is not ideal, but then again neither is the quality of the actual films. That said I love having these four Howling films on one cool set with some eye-catching artwork.