- Directed by Philippe Mora
- Written by Gary Brandner, Robert Sarno
- Stars Christopher Lee, Annie McEnroe, Reb Brown
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y36te2qOSWk
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
Christopher Lee expressed some shame about being part of this one, which gives you some idea of the quality. It’s not… good. There are some entertaining moments, but they’re pretty fleeting. The acting, editing, special effects, story, just all lack quality. If you want to see what happened immediately following the first Howling, check this out. Otherwise we can’t really recommend it.
Synopsis
This time, we’re in Los Angeles, at a funeral for Karen White. The news editor tells Jenny the reporter to cover the story about six dead bodies found half-eaten. Stefan, an occult investigator, gives Ben a business card. Jenny asks him about Karen, and he says that Karen was and still is a werewolf. Jenny tells Ben, “Your sister is a werewolf.” Then we see Karen beating on the lid of her coffin from within.
We shift to a nightclub where Stefan is the least hip-looking guy around, but nobody seems to notice – it must be because he was given cool sunglasses to wear. He watches a woman lure Moon Devil, Deacon, and two friends to a warehouse. She turns into a werewolf and kills them all.
Jenny and Ben go to see Stefan. He explains that Ben’s sister was shot with a silver bullet, but the bullet was removed at the autopsy, so she can never rest in peace. “There are great numbers of werewolves living among us.” Stephan says Karen arranged her own murder. He shows them a videotape of Karen’s last news broadcast; she was the reporter in the first “The Howling” film. He shows them a photo of Mariana, the woman we saw in the warehouse; Stephan explains that only titanium will kill her kind, not silver. Their leader is a woman called Stirba.
Stefan says he’s going to make sure Karen is really dead, and Ben swears to kill him first. The three all converge on the mausoleum. They hear wolves howling. Ben shoots a werewolf outside, and then shoots his sister inside. More of the rubbery monsters attack, and they chase him until one of the beasts tells them where to find Stirba.
Stefan says he’s off to find Stirba, and now Ben is on his side and wants to go with him. Jenny will tag along too. The Dark Country is, of course, Transylvania.
Mariana also travels to Transylvania, where she is meeting Stirba. The truckload of werewolves stop to pick up a couple German appetizers. We soon see that the werewolves like to dress in bondage gear and chant in the candlelight. Once the chanting is done, an old woman sucks the life out of a sacrificial victim and becomes young again. This is Stirba. Her breasts are pert again, and we get to see them and their cleavage a lot through the rest of the movie. Then they all have a werewolf orgy.
Stefan, Jenny, and Ben arrive and almost immediately stake a werewolf. Another werewolf is hiding in their backseat, but they don’t notice. They go to the hotel and stay in room 666, but the hotel doesn’t have six floors. Jenny and Ben have sex in a bad montage with gypsy dancers. Werewolves and people with fangs seem to be literally everywhere in town, even in the daylight.
The full moon rises, and Ben sneaks up to the werewolf castle. Vasile the dwarf gives Ben blessed earplugs that look like teeth. Stirba reveals that Stefan is her brother. Stirba says some magic words, and when Vasile loses his earplugs, his eyeballs explode.
Stirba captures Jenny, and Ben and Stefan have to rescue her. Meanwhile up at the dark castle, the werewolves are having a major orgy, including the same band that was playing back in L.A. “I haven’t felt like this since I was in the Mekong Delta,” Ben says. Meanwhile, more orgy. They get word that their enemies have arrived, and the orgy is over.
There’s a battle between five well-armed guys in the dark and a dozen men in monkey suits. “I told you we’d get these fuzz-balls!” shouts Ben. Soon, there are only three guys with guns. Stirba then throws her pet dragon at the priest in what is probably the coolest effects and gore shot in the movie.
Ben rushes in, kills Mariana and Vlad, and rescues Jenny. Stefan continues on to find Stirba. “Finally, we meet again,”she taunts. “For the last time,” he answers. Yeah, that’s the real dialog. Her hands glow, and he stabs her, letting all the glowing light out. The light surrounds them both and they burn to death.
Back in L.A., it’s Halloween, and Ben and Jenny go to answer the door. It’s their first trick-or-treater. They open the door and it’s a werewolf. Their neighbor is a little Transylvanian priest that they saw on the road outside the castle. They’ve been followed home!
Commentary
This might just get my vote for “objectively worst episode of a franchise horror film.” It’s painfully bad to watch, and not in a fun way. I don’t know what the director and scriptwriter were on, but it was some pretty powerful stuff. Someone, somewhere, thought this was worth releasing to the public.
The monsters are cheap, the special effects shots are heavily borrowed from the first film, and the script and story are both atrocious. Most of the werewolves were literally men in monkey suits; the studio delivered monkey suits by mistake, and the director was told to “make it work.” A number of scenes had no purpose whatsoever, and nothing connected some of them together.
Sybil Danning spends most of the film dressing and posing like a supervillain from an R-rated version of the Power Rangers.
Christopher Lee looks bewildered here, as if he wasn’t given a script. He’s truly the only good part of this film, but even he can’t save the dialog. He wanted to be in this because he’d never done a werewolf film before, and spent the rest of his career apologizing to people about it.
He wasn’t wrong. This movie is comically awful.