The Howling: Difference between revisions

[[File:The_Holwing.jpg|frame]]

 

 

After a bizarre and near-fatal encounter with serial killer Eddie "The Mangler" Quist, television anchorwoman Karen White is left traumatized and in dire need of a rest. Her psychiatrist sends her and her husband to The Colony, a rural retreat where select patients go to relax and participate in group therapy. However, Karen notices that The Colony appears to be populated by a number of odd characters, which together with the remote location and the strange howling she hears at night soon lead Karen to believe that something is very wrong here. When she starts looking into The Colony's affairs, the apparent resurrection of Eddie Quist soon proves to be the least of her problems...

== The Howling was followed by six sequels: ==

 

* ''Howling III: The Marsupials'' (1987)

* ''Howling V: The Rebirth'' (1989)

* ''Howling VI: The Freaks'' (1991)

 

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== General ==

* [[Animal Motifs]]: As if all the werewolves weren't enough, there's lots of wolf motifs present.

** The vampire character in Part 6 is named "Harker".

* [[Our Werewolves Are Different]]: Popularized the "man-wolf" style of werewolf.

* [[Dead Line News]]: In order to prove to the world that werewolves exist, {{spoiler|Karen transforms into one on live-television and is shot dead by her friend. Her sacrifice may or may not have been in vain}}.

* [[Dueling Movies]]: Set against ''[[An American Werewolf in London]]''.

* [[Famous Last Words]]:

** "Don't you know anything?" {{spoiler|Eddie Quist}}

** "Tonight... I'm going to show you something... to make you believe..." {{spoiler|Karen White}}

* [[Heroic BSOD]]: Karen suffers one of these her first time back on TV after being attacked by Eddie.

* [[Make It Look Like an Accident]]: Karen ''is'' a famous anchorwoman, and she ''would'' be missed.

* [[Oh Crap]]: The Werewolf mob's reaction when the hero shoots one of their own dead with silver ammunition and they realize that they are all easy targets out in the open for a human with the means to kill them easily.

* [[Painful Transformation]]: {{spoiler|averted in the first film with Eddie as he seems to be enjoying it.}}

* [[Transformation Is a Free Action]]: Somewhat justified as he had her pinned, and she was probably too busy shitting herself to act.

* [[Fan Service]]: Virtually every moment that Sybil Danning spends on-screen in the film.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSTVPUFHM-8 Especially the end credits], which take it [[Up to Eleven]].

* [[Liquid Assets]]: Stirba's rejuvenating technique requires a young victim, from whom Stirba magically steals her youth.

* [[Monster Progenitor]]: Stirba.

* [[Rule of Sean Connery]]: [[Christopher Lee]] makes this movie at least tolerable in virtue of owning every single scene he's in.

* [[Time Abyss]]: Unlike other werewolves, Stirba can restore her youth. She is very nearly ten thousand years old.

* [[Weaksauce Weakness]]: Stirba is so old that she somehow became immune to silver. Luckily for the heroes, it appears that werewolves, including Stirba, also can be harmed by titanium weapons. For some odd reason {{spoiler|Karen}} is also immune to silver, despite only having been a werewolf for a couple of weeks at most.

 

== ''Howling V: The Rebirth'' ==

* [[Magic Pants]]: The werewolf is clearly a quick-change artist, due to how rapidly it appears and yet how fully clothed everyone is (including the werewolf's human form).

* [[Ten Little Murder Victims]]: There's exactly one werewolf among the castle guests - well, presumably, anyway. And the guests are killed one by one...

* [[Arc Welding]]: Clive Turner does a fairly admirable job at assembling the plots from the previous sequels into one narrative... unfortunately, these are delivered mainly in massive [[Info Dump|Info Dumps]].

* [[Franchise Killer]]: Effectively killed the franchise for sixteen years until 2011 when the series was rebooted.

* [[Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome]]: Subverted: two very minor characters in ''4'' and ''5'' are revealed to be the same person... who is also the hero of ''7''.

** Played straight in the same film -- the heroine of the ''4'' turns out to have survived the events of that film... only to be [[Killed Off for Real]] after an appearance lasting about ten minutes.

== ''The Howling: Reborn'' ==

* [[Darker and Edgier]]: Compared to the previous sequels.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]

[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]

[[Category:Film]]