Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Stevieboy666 Comical Australian entry in the Howling series which has nothing to do with the first two films. In fact this is not your usual werewolf movie. These can change at any time, not just the Full Moon, and is based on a unique Australian variant of this creature. The good points: plenty of quirky Aussie humour, Imogen Annesley looks great as the main werewolf character, nice use of Sydney Harbour & outback locations, decent effects for the baby marsupial & no shortage of werewolf action. And of course an hilarious cameo by Dame Edna! The bad: much bad acting (Australians seem to really struggle doing American accents), silly script, some of the worst looking werewolves to appear on screen & an annoyingly, poor 80's soundtrack that really dates it. I can understand why this movie gets a lot of hate, it certainly is not for everybody. But, if like me, you can laugh at a bad movie then it's not all bad. Rated 18 here in the UK, seems pretty harsh as in terms of sex, language or violence it's pretty tame.

lennietofft The take of this film on the werewolf myth, interpreting it as a separate biological race, is refreshing and intriguing. The casting is good, and especially the female werewolf protagonist suits her role well. It contains many bizarre, and at the same time visually beautiful and imaginative scenes, and lots of stunningly beautiful aerial views of Sidney, which in themselves makes the film worth a watch. The only downside is that the progression halters somewhat at the end, and the film seems unsure of how to actually end. I would still say this is one of the best films in the "howling" installment.

capkronos Having no relation whatsoever to THE HOWLING (1981) or HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF (1985), this is pretty much a standalone film... and what a strange film it is! Director Philippe Mora had previously made the critically-abhorred second entry and wasn't completely happy with the finished results himself. Since he'd purchased the rights to the "Howling" brand name from the original author, he decided to take a second stab at making a comic werewolf flick. Though the opening credits claims it's based on Brandner's third book in the series, it in fact has nothing at all to do with the book and is based on an original idea by the director himself. Aside from the abysmal HOWLING: NEW MOON RISING (1995), this is the lowest-rated "Howling" title here on IMDb, which I find utterly perplexing. This is extremely bizarre and sometimes off-putting in its weirdness, but it's also frequently hilarious, often very clever and filled with interesting ideas. Instead of being the 2nd lowest rated film in this series on here, I actually think it deserves to be the 2nd HIGHEST rated.Silent film footage from 1905 depicting Australian natives tying a werewolf to a tree and killing it as well as current reports of werewolf killings in the village of Leovich in Siberia send anthropology professor Dr. Harry Beckmeyer (Barry Otto) - later joined by colleague Professor Sharp (Ralph Cotterill) - on a quest to prove the creatures actually exist. Meanwhile, in the small village of Flow, Jerboa (beautiful Imogen Annesley) is getting fed up dealing with her abusive stepfather Thylo (Max Fairchild) and flees her tribe. After a bus ride, she ends up in Sydney and is immediately discovered by Donny Martin (Lee Biolos), assistant director on a horror movie called "Shape Shifters Part 8." He takes her to meet director Jack Citron (Frank Thring, doing his best Hitchcock impersonation), who immediately casts her in his film. Well, if she doesn't mind "being gang-raped by four monsters." And she doesn't. After he takes her to the theater to see "It Came from Uranus," Donny and Jerboa end up falling in love, but what he doesn't realize is that she's actually a werewolf... and a marsupial one at that! Things really take off into the realm of strange once the scientists get hold of a pregnant Jerboa and her tribe sends three female tribeswomen decked out as nuns to get her back.This movie is literally all over the place with its tone. It begins as a campy horror-comedy with a bizarre sense of humor and then, in the second half, begins aiming more for poignancy. It doesn't always work, but it's a consistently interesting film and one of the most original werewolf films ever conceived. Mora deserves more credit than he has gotten for trying something completely different here. The plot makes room for an odd werewolf birthing scene (it's a cute little thing that lives in the protagonists belly), a posse of hunters sent to eradicate the werewolves with machine guns and bazookas (!) and a Russian werewolf ballerina (Dagmar Bláhová) who flees her homeland to meet up with the Aussie tribe and ends up transforming mid-performance. Hell, even the President of the United States (played by Michael Pate) gets involved at one point!The werewolves themselves are handled completely differently than in any other film of this type. These are not monsters who kill for pleasure or even food, and they are not cursed humans, they are depicted as a misunderstood separate species who resort to violence only when they have to as a means of survival. The film draws a fascinating parallel between the werewolves and the thylacine, which were striped marsupials commonly called "Tasmanian Tigers" that lived in Australia and Tasmania until the mid-1930s are were driven to extinction by man. Like the werewolves here, the thylacine had patterned stripes along their backs and were misunderstood and feared by humans, who wrongfully blamed them for killing their sheep and livestock when that wasn't actually the case. The few surviving thylacine in zoos were apparently mishandled and poorly treated until they existed no more. The film includes rare film footage of the now-extinct animal taken at a London zoo.The expected lycanthrope mythology is also refreshingly thrown right out of the window. Full moons and silver bullets don't factor in at all and the transformations of man to wolf can be willed by the werewolves or caused by fear, stress or flashing lights. Mora also includes both nods to his previous films (a poster for THE BEAST WITHIN [1982] hangs above a bed) and some amusing references to the first "Howling" film, including a mock Oscar ceremony with a cameo appearance by Dame Edna (Barry Humphries) directly referencing the the original film's ending.

BaronBl00d OK.OK.OK. It is surely VERY,Very easy to put this film down. It has for intent and purpose absolutely nothing to do with the two previous Howling movies - much like Halloween III - but, unlike that film, there is no doubt in my mind that this is miles and leaps better than Howling II. Set in Australia a professor of strange phenomena goes, after interceptions of Russian transmissions, to Australia to find the werewolf. He does. No surprise there. Holed away in the Australian bush is a group of barbaric lycanthropes. One wants to go to the great opera house, leaves, falls in love, has sex, is captured, and then rescued by three werewolves dressed as nuns. The film definitely has campy elements, much like Howling II. The story here is pretty absurd for the most part, and the ending about a new race surviving and coexisting...ahhhh...let me put that yawn down! There are such scenes of ineptitude that you cannot do anything but laugh. Such as: the special effects sometimes are pretty good, but other times appear shamelessly hokey(like the faces of the three nuns). How about that scene in the hospital when the bald dude goes berserk? Or when an old werewolf named Kendi takes a group of hunters on and not one of them, even though all are armed and hunting for lycanthrope, ever thinks to shoot the werewolf but rather watches each in the group get killed one by one? How about the story of the marsupial werewolf and the werewolf baby that instinctively climbs to his mother's pouch? Or, for my money the most bizarre and ludicrous, the ballerina-turning-to-werewolf scene? Despite all this - the baby werewolf special effects were rather good, to me, and surprisingly tender. The acting is not bad either. All the leads can act. The director can direct. They all went on to do quite a bit more. Barry Otto in particular does a very honest and workmanlike job as the professor out to find out more about this "lost" race. Unlike the camp effects in Howling II, some of them actually work here AND this film, even if misplaced, has heart. It looks like effort was attempted. I laughed at quite a few things that were intentionally funny. How about the movie It Came from Uranus. Funny. The bit at the end with Barry Humphries - aka Dame Edna Everage. FUNNY! And Frank Thring - the stoic Pontius Pilate from Ben-Hur - giving an over-the-top portrayal of a horror director. He is literally and figuratively larger-than-life. A real hoot too. CUT! Anyway, I liked this a lot more than my 4 might suggest yet know it is dreck and drivel, BUT compared to that piece of cinematic waste called Howling II...this is a minor masterpiece. Take Christopher Lee and Sybil Danning's chest out...you have absolutely NOTHING.