Howling V: The Rebirth (1989)

User Rating:

4.2/10   

Director:

Neal Sundstrom

Writers:

Gary Brandner (books)
Freddie Rowe (writer)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

For 500 years the secret lay dormant... Until now!

Plot:

When a group of people from different walks of life converge on a Romanian castle sealed for 500 years...

Plot Keywords:

Werewolf | Severed Head | Fifth Part | Sequel | Decapitation

Cast

Philip Davis	...	Count Istvan
Victoria Catlin	...	Dr. Catherine Peake
Elizabeth Shé	...	Marylou Summers
Ben Cole	...	David Gillespie
William Shockley	...	Richard Hamilton
Mark Sivertsen	...	Jonathan Lane
Stephanie Faulkner	...	Gail Cameron
Mary Stavin	...	Anna
Clive Turner	...	Ray Price
Nigel Triffitt	...	Professor
Jill Pearson	...	Eleanor
József Madaras	...	Peter (as Joszef Madaras)
Renáta Szatler	...	Susan

Also Known As:

The Howling V (USA) (DVD box title)

Runtime:

USA:96 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English | Hungarian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:M | UK:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Hungary

Company:

Allied Vision

Quotes:

David: We're puppets, and *The Count* is pulling the strings.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Howling: New Moon Rising (1995) (V)

Decent

Howling 5 (1989)

** (out of 4)

Budapest, 1489 is where our film starts off. In a dark castle everyone inside has committed suicide for some unknown reason. Two survivors are in terror and decide to kill themselves after a baby is thought to have also been killed. After their death we hear the baby cry out, which gets us onto to the mystery. Five hundred years later a group of people is brought back to the castle by a strange Count who could be hiding his own little secrets.

The group has no idea why they are at the castle and things take a strange turn when the bus that brought them there drives off into the night. To make matters worse a snowstorm has hit, which means they'll have to spend the night in the castle. Soon members of the group begin to disappear so that Count orders a search of the place. Soon bodies are found with their throats bitten out and it appears that the legend of the werewolves is real. In a Ten Little Indians fashion, the group must discover who the werewolf is and destroy the thing before more die.

Howling 5 suffers from a very small budget and I'm not sure to bash the film for this or praise it. The low budget is so low that we have to suffer through the fact that the werewolf is pretty much never seen. We get a few close-ups of its teeth and a couple quick shots of it attacking but we never get a good eye on the creature. This become pretty irritating, although I guess some could claim this was a homage to Universal's dreadfully bad She Wolf of London. Those expecting gore will also be disappointed to hear that all the death scenes are shown off screen.

The good thing about the low budget is that the director tries to make up for it with some wonderful locations and a pretty nice script, which is full of some funny dialogue. Most of the laughs come from a dumb blonde actress who is too stupid to know what's going on around here. The director pretty much abuses the "dumbness" in the woman but it's pretty funny in the end. The castle is very well decked out and adds some nice atmosphere to the mix. Another good aspect is the snowstorm that rages outside. This here leads to some very nice shots, although I doubt this is what horror fans is wanting to hear.

In the end Howling 5 is a decent little movie but the low budget and non-gory violence will probably turn more genre fans off. It's well made and well acted but that can only take a horror film like this so far. Another problem is that the film drags on and on with useless talk about the legend and mystery when the viewer knows exactly what's going on. The characters talk and talk about it not being a werewolf yet we know it is so these scenes come off as fake and really just pad the running time, which should have been cut to begin with. Many fans of the series talk about the shock ending but I pretty much caught it early on. If you want to see this same storyline better done then I highly recommend the Amicus film The Beast Must Die with Peter Cushing, which features that infamous "werewolf break".