Howling V: The Rebirth (1989) – Review

As a horror franchises go the Howling films are of a very different breed of dog as they’re mostly a series of fairly unconnected film that has the barest amount of loose continuity between them just so that the producers can claim they are all part of a franchise and not just a collection of stand-alone werewolf films and any fan of Joe Dante’s original classic can tell that is just utter bullshit, but with Howling V: The Rebirth they stopped even trying to pretend that this particular outing had anything to do with the original film or the three bizarre sequels that preceded this entry.

What if Agatha Christie wrote a werewolf story? With Howling V: The Rebirth we basically get the “And then there were none” mystery trope with a small group of people trapped in an isolated location with one of them being the killer, which I have to admit is a pretty good setting for a werewolf story, unfortunately, director Neal Sundstrom and writer Clive Turner had neither the talent nor the budget to pull that concept off to any successful degree. The supposed plot of Howling V: The Rebirth deals with a group of people who have been invited by a mysterious Count (Phil Davis) to the opening of a castle in Budapest that no one has set foot inside for over five centuries. The group consists of Gail Cameron (Stephanie Faulkner), Marylou Summers (Elizabeth Shé), Jonathan Hammet (Mark Sivertsen), David Price (Ben Cole), the Professor (Nigel Triffitt), and Dr. Catherine Peake (Victoria Catlin) with the only other people on hand being two servants, but as this is not a proper mystery this will not be a case of “The butler did it.”

I must say, Downton Abbey could have used a werewolf in that last season.

Before the film introduces us to this lovely group of people, and by that I mean a collection of D-Listers who couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag, we get a prologue that takes place in that selfsame castle in 1489 where we witness a knight of some sort overseeing what appears to have been a slaughter. The knight murder-suicides himself and one other survivor but not before hearing the crying of a baby as the knight bleeds out and his last words are “The baby, it can’t be. We died in vain.” That’s a pretty good hook to start your story but, alas, what follows will barely hold your interest. When the group of strangers arrive at the castle they quickly learn that a thousand years ago the region was terrorized by packs of wolves, supposedly being controlled by Satan himself, who could take the form of a wolf and since that time the castle was abandoned and remained empty ever since.

“Shall we all just kill ourselves now and save everyone time and grief?”

The bulk of the film’s running time consists mostly of people endlessly wandering around dark corridors until a character is occasionally killed off by a werewolf, not that we will actually get a good glimpse of said werewolf as this film clearly didn’t even have the budget for a decent werewolf costume. I have to assume this production had amazing Craft Services because I can’t see evidence anywhere else as to what the money could have been spent on. I’ll give it that the castle the production rented for the film is fairly impressive but the cinematography is so beyond pedestrian that any production value they should have got from this cool location was pissed away. So, if you love to see figures stumble down dimly lit corridors then Howling V: The Rebirth may just be the film for you, otherwise your best bet is to turn it off after the first six minutes and spare yourself the agony of this dreary horror offering.

Barry Lyndon this film is not.

Stray Observations:

• The movie begins with the title card “Budapest 1489” but the cities of Buda and Pest were not merged until 1873, and sure, one doesn’t necessarily expect historical accuracy in a werewolf movie but that looks like something that could easily be fact-checked.
• I find the concept of werewolves to be a lot more believable than that of there being a European castle that not a soul has stepped inside for five centuries as even the most rundown castles in Europe have become a tourist attraction. That someone jokingly suggests “Maybe the lost the key to the front door” nicely points out the absurdity.
• Dozens of torches and candles are lit from the castle towers to the catacombs beneath, which means those two servants were very busy little beavers.
• When they discover members of their group have gone off on their own and are now missing their solution is to split up and look for them, clearly, a brilliant strategy and evidence that none of these people have ever seen a horror movie.
• Catherine spears Richard through a curtain, much as Hamlet accidentally murdered Polonius, but lucky for her Richard was already dead at the “hands” of the werewolf.
• The Count tells the group that only a werewolf can kill a werewolf. Gee, I thought that only applied to Ninjas.

I’d say the world could do with a good Ninja/Werewolf movie.

The idea of Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot trying to unravel the mystery of an abandoned castle, a series of brutal murders and the possibility of an actual supernatural threat is something I would love to see, and maybe someone reading this review will make that happen someday, but Howling V: The Rebirth is just a drab entry in a franchise that couldn’t seem to nail any kind of consistent tone or even quality to its entries. In this movie we get a group of forgettable characters running around like a bunch of idiots, with an occasional clue like matching birthmarks being randomly tossed out, and when we finally get the big reveal as to who is the werewolf we as a viewer are far beyond caring.