Review of Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch
by Jeremy Thomas
film #23 of hooptober part vii: the new blood the first howling film is a somewhat underrated classic that deserves a place next to an american werewolf in london as one of the greatest werewolf films of all-time. why is it underrated? because there was garbage like howling ii: stirba – werewolf bitch immediately following it and damaging its legacy. where the original had joe dante directing a damned good horror flick with a great dee wallace performance and great effects work, this has none of that. instead, we get an ambitious but catastrophic effort to do something different by director philippe more and the screenwriting team of gary brandner and robert sarno that flies the action across the atlantic to transylvania where it very quickly gets lost in laughably bad nonsense. listen, i'd like to say good things about this film. but there really isn't any such potential. christopher lee looks embarrassed in every frame to be in this movie, which features the goofiest threesome in cinematic history and some abjectly terrible dialogue. the performances are almost all bad, but none more so than annie mcenroe and reb brown who fail to emote on just about every line. this seems to have become a minor cult hit largely because it's one of those "so bad it's good" things, and because we see a lot of sybil danning's breasts despite their only being bared in one scene (we just see it many times). it's quite simply bad all around on a level i can't quite believe i experienced.