Remember how I referenced Philippe Mora the other day? Welcome to the insanity that is his world.I am not going to defend the quality of this film. As with all of his films, it’s inept and sloppy and frequently illogical. The editing is particularly bad, as Mora seems to randomly cut to objects, a creepy owl, parts of a performance by a band called Babel, and shots from earlier in the movie. He also apparently never met a screen wipe he didn’t like, because this film is swimming with them.
But man, is there an energy to this film, especially in regards to the narrative flow. Experiencing a Phillipe Mora movie is akin to listening to a story being made up on the fly by a school kid on a sugar rush. You have to go into this acknowledging that stuff will happen because...reasons. Why do werewolves explode when hit with vials of consecrated oil? Reasons. Why does Sybil Danning decide to wear a really uncomfortable looking plastic Sci-Fi Queen outfit? Reasons. Why does the knife wielding dwarf come back from the dead to attack Christopher Lee? Reasons. Why are some werewolves immune to silver, but vulnerable to titanium?
...you get the idea.
Trying to summarize this film is pointless. The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (the script, by Robert Sarno and Howling author Gary Brandner, has characters recite that subtitle three times) is best experienced by letting it wash over you. Just let yourself be taken over by the sudden shifts in tone and narrative digressions and enjoy yourself. This is the kind of movie where one shot of Sybil Danning, playing the alternate titular werewolf bitch Stirba, baring her breasts is intercut repeatedly by reaction shots from the film in some bizarre Eisensteinian experiment.
This is the second movie Mora made with Christopher Lee, who stands out by classing up the joint and giving credible readings to actively stupid lines. He definitely stands out in contrast to co-leads Reb Brown and Annie McEnroe, who are wooden enough to be cut into 2x4s, and the legion of Czech actors speaking phonetically. The werewolf characters are goofy, mainly played by guys in ape suits because there’s apparently an ‘evolution’ you go through the longer you are a werewolf.
And then there’s the Furry Werewolf Sex Scenes. There are...quite a bit of those. There’s one sequence where Stirba, who Mora describes as ‘bi-curious’ engages in a threesome with her two henchpeople that seems to last for hours, and a big ol’ Furry Werewolf Orgy filled with bare-breasted gals dressed in black leather fetish wear. When we see main henchperson Marianna (played by the quite striking Marsha A. Hunt) lounging around the Werewolf Castle, she’s wearing a dress that bares one of her breasts like Janet Jackson after a duet with Justin Timberlake. Hell, when we see the werewolf cult conducting their ceremonies to transform an aged hag into Sybil Danning, they all dress in black leather fetish wear. I can’t help thinking that Mora was working out some sort of deep sexual kink in this movie--he is reported to have said the whole film was inspired by ‘New Wave Eroticism.’
I know it sounds like I’m bagging on this movie, but I’m anything but. It is glorious and I enjoy it thoroughly. It’s not my favorite of Mora’s work--I would place The Return of Captain Invincible and The Howling III: The Marsupials higher in my esteem. But it is a wonderful example of how appealingly...alien...his work can be.
I recommend it, as long as you understand this is not to be judged by the Hollywood Movie Ruler. It is possible for a movie to be objectively bad, but also be validly entertaining, fun and engaging in an unironic way. And here, my friends, is your proof.
You can still head over to my Twitter Page to vote in The Back From The Dead Grand Finale Poll to determine what I watch today. And please let me know if you would like me to do something like this--not on a daily basis, but maybe bi-weekly--where I conduct a poll to dictate what I watch, 'cause it's been fun.
Well, maybe not the day I had to watch The Mummy. That sucked.
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