Five hundred years ago, a Hungarian queen and a knight stand over the corpses of their castle’s inhabitants, strewn all over the banquet hall. The queen turns to the knight, begs her to drive his sword through her. He does and, after turning the sword on himself, a baby cries elsewhere in the castle. As he helplessly bleeds out, the man shouts, “A baby lives! We killed ourselves in vain!” An intriguing opening, especially compared to the dullness that opened The Howling IV.
Fast forward to 1989. The castle’s new count is throwing a grand reopening. He invites a large group of people with no apparent relation to each other (yeah, right) to come spend the night. After dining in the very room where so many people died in medieval times, the group disperses to explore the castle and check out their rooms. Damn near immediately the professor of the group gets himself killed when investigating noises coming from the maze of tunnels beneath the castle. Like most of the kills in this movie, the action takes place off screen.
About halfway through, the film becomes a werewolf whodunnit. The count himself is the prime suspect, but you’ll have your suspicions about other characters. Ten or fifteen minutes from the end, however, it becomes crystal clear who the werewolf is, long before the official reveal. I’d like to say it’s the journey that matters, not the destination, but in this movie getting there isn’t very fun either.
The Howling V is a dud any way you slice it. It opens with a promising 80s theme, you’ll recognize a couple more faces than you did in Howling IV, there’s a pretty decent decapitation near the end, and the screenwriters at least tried to make the dialogue cheeky and entertaining. The film is marginally superior to its immediate predecessor, but there are a few unforgivable crimes here. My biggest gripe is we don’t see a single werewolf transformation.
This time around, the opening credits claim the screenplay isn’t just based on one of Gary Brandner’s Howling novels, but all three of them. Does it really matter? The filmmakers are just paying for the name at this point. As much as I enjoyed the first three movies, I’m not going to bother with the sixth. Frankly, I need a nap after slogging through this one.
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