HOWLING V-THE REBIRTH

1989/USA/96 minutes

Tagline- For 500 years the secret lay dormant... Until now!

            The Beast Returns

Eight people from different walks of life are invited to attend the re-opening of a castle in Budapest, 500 years after it was closed upon being mysteriously abandoned. A professor in the group who reckons that the circumstances surrounding the abandonment have something to do with the absolute lack of historical record of the past 500 years, is the first victim of a chained werewolf in the castle dungeons. As he sets out to explore the castle, he inadvertently lets loose the hungry werewolf which proceeds to rip his throat off. 

At the prologue of the film, we witness the events of the same castle in 1489(the present events are of 1989) where an entire family of kings, Queens and other royalty were butchered by the loyal valet and his wife while enjoying a scrumptious dinner, purportedly to eviscerate a family curse which could harm the outside world, akin to a plague. As the servants take their own lives, apparently in guilt for the crimes, a baby wails and the dying valet laments his oversight in letting go of the infant which would probably continue to spread the legacy of evil.

The scene shits to 1989, where the eclectic bunch of persons, which include the professor and a famous Scandinavian actress, set off to the ancient castle on the outskirts of Budapest. Almost at once, the imposing castle walls and oppressive interiors overwhelm the group, though most don't bother as the stay is supposed to for a few hours only. However, when the professor is discovered lost and the castle is engulfed in a heavy blizzard, their mysterious host Count Bazeli directs the guests to put up for the night.

A black writer named Gail has an eerie encounter with the werewolf-while she is changing clothes in the room next to the sitting room, she hears footsteps and sees a shadow but sees no one when she emerges from behind the latticed screen. However an unknown presence observes her as she talks to another guest Richard in the sitting room. After lunch, a concerned Gail talks to Ray and tells him that their collective presence in the castle was carefully designed and was not a coincidence, and that the bus meant to transport them back to the Grand Ramada Hotel where they all had accommodations had left abruptly, leaving them stranded. Richard disregards her words, but then finds a secret passageway leading to the dungeons of the castle, apparently its  'center' and is then attacked by the werewolf, which bursts out from snow as Ray is making his way back to the castle from a back-door. Earlier, the werewolf kills Gail as Ray watches helplessly, locked behind the secret door. One by one, most of the guests and staff are decimated in the same fashion-encounter with the werewolf at the least expected moment, from out of dark corners of the old, creaky castle.

During the last twenty minutes or so, the Count's secret is revealed. It seems he is an agent of some religious order, which has been assigned the task of tracking down and killing the last of the werewolf bloodline, whose ancestor had miraculously survived that fateful night in 1489. The eight guests were not selected randomly, but instead all were orphans who had a mysterious triangular mark on their left arms, and one among them was a werewolf killing the others.

Now this supposed explanation actually confuses more than clarifies, since if all eight have the same symbol of the blood curdling family, why are they all not related, and why were they all not werewolves ? In the movie, the manner in which the main characters and the werewolf are positioned makes it impossible to believe that there is one werewolf in action; instead it looks like there are at least two or possibly more. For instance during the first killing of the adventurous (or stupid, as you see it) professor, a voracious werewolf hidden in the castle dungeons escapes from its chains and attacks him. Simultaneously, the other guests including the werewolf revealed during the last scene are shown eating lunch. How would that be possible unless there were a companion werewolf (maybe the twin ??) Also, if these persons are related, then the script throws few hints of incestuous liaisons between them-Richard and Catherine Peake have an extra-marital relationship, and the actress Anna boasts to the shy Mary Lou about her sexual escapades with two guys present there-Richard and Ray. 

Another useless scene shows the male servant take negative rolls out of photographer David's camera, which has no connection with any character, subtext, theme or storyline whatsoever. Also, the final reveal of the werewolf is disappointing, because the character does not transform into one at the time when the full moon is covered by clouds (as the count had predicted), instead only showing a slight malicious gleam in the eye. Despite all the lacking in logic, pacing (most of the running time is spent by characters fishing around in the damp dungeons for undefined mysteries and looking clueless), acting and character development, this movie has always fascinated me. I think it is the heavy atmosphere and the mood created by the spooky setting of the castle (it was shot on location in Budapest in a truly eerie looking castle) with its moth eaten walls, stone paneling and shut-off and barely lit rooms, stuffed animal decorations and carvings, and the slight yet chilling music score which does it for me. The use of falling snow around the castle ramparts as the establishing shot after every death also appropriately signifies a sense of gloom surrounding the characters. One scene that still scares me is where Richard (the playboy tennis player who tries too hard to woo Mary Lou) is sitting at her bedside in a deeply curtained and fire-lit room, when he imagines seeing the actress Anna emerging from the shower. Transfixed, he goes closer to the mirror where her reflection is cast and sees her perfectly shaped body and breasts. Then it turns out that the image was an illusion, as the werewolf bursts into the room through a door adjacent to the mirror and murders him. The bottomline is that though the movie benefits from and makes good use of the location and the castle interiors to suggest evil afoot with the wall adornments of weapons and stuffed animal heads as sinister motifs, it suffers from low budget as evident from the dark photography and minimal scare impact through a rather cheesy looking werewolf. In fact, the audience barely gets to see the werewolf in full form, rather it is shown for a microseconds before the kills as a huge fur-ball with sharp fangs and long claws.

The film was released theatrically on 22.02.1990 (the year of production shows as 1989)  and was subsequently available on home media in the US through VHS, laserdisc (Image Entertainment,1990), DVD (Artisan Entertainment, 2003 as a double bill with Howling 6: The Freaks) and also had a blu ray release from Shout Factory/Timeless Media in 2010 (presented along with Howling 3:The Marsupials and Howling 6: The Freaks). Although I do not own the blu ray, I have heard that the transfer is hardly the pristine HD expected from the format, but looks like a full screen port from a previous VHS release.