The Howling
The Howling swears up and down that it’s not a remake or related to the Joe Dante film in any way shape or form. Yet we open with a backlit girl (in the same stony underground set from “Doll Master” and a couple of Smith’s other films) being told by a male voice”turn around”. The whole thing feels very homage to the scene between Dee Wallace and Robert Picardo in the porn show from the 1981 Howling. It gets kissy and stabby though, and kind of goes it’s own way.
An “unsolved mysteries” kind of show recounts the local urban legend about a mad scientist and his creatures that lurk at his home in the wilderness. There’s even a blurry photo of something resembling….a werewolf?
That’s where the similarities end. (Seriously, WHY did he use this title?)
It’s halloween and a brother and sister (is it a brother and sister? Maybe she’s just the girlfriends BFF? It sure FEELS like a brother and sister relationship though) are talking about the legend of Dr. Rathborn. (That is…after the sister jokes about watching porn. I swear, between this and the constant schtupping…if this isn’t another backhanded reference to the first Howling….maybe I’m just seeing things because I JUST watched the movie?) Sister, Brother and his girlfriend head out to the woods and look for him and his creatures.
Into the woods we go. The lo-fi camera and whole black and white almost give it a Blair Witch feel…except for the girlfriend constantly complaining about no wifi. I hope she gets eaten by the werewolf first.
Sis gets tired of listeing to the brother and girlfriend and thier constant horizontal jogging in the tent next to her and decides to head out and search the woods at night. (Love it.) They find a dimly lit tunnel opening in the distance.They are greeted by a servant….I think….who leads them further into the building…a disused hospital looking place.
“Do you have wi-fi here?”
“What is wi-fi?”
He finds them beds to sleep in for the night., and dinner looks REALLY strange. A black room, a candelit table, cloth cover chairs- a two tier cake in the center and the strange servants who promise all questions will be answered by the master….
It’s Jon Paul Gates in strange glasses – he is the master… Rathbone. And this is his compound.
His lab is amazing (one of the best sets I’ve ever seen from Smith. I wish he would have loaned this one out to Louisa Warren for Doctor Carver!) and he scrubs and prepares for another ghastly experiment, aided by his assistant who keeps asking when he will fix her face. He promised!
As the shenanigans start up in the compound, Smith does an excellent job of creating tension and mood through lighting, using this black and white palette to it’s fullest. IT feels much like this is his attempt to do a straightforward universal/hammer horror film, within his limited budget. It’s a very Island of Dr. Moreu bit (or perhaps he’d prefer Frankenstein. There’s a touch of the Bride in on of his patients). We get 
color to see his atrocities. Blues to shock with lighting and reds to make the bloody faces pop.
Brother and sister have had enough. Time to leave. But no, the master needs to see the brother on a matter of some urgency. Some french speaking murder I think.
If there’s a real flaw here, it’s that the movies loses steam as it goes – running out of story too soon and compensating by upping the mayhem. It’s a good trick, and this provides us a satisfying amount of gore, but I can feel the whole thing beginning to drop off a cliff. Still, Smith shows some real flair here – knowing when to keep makeups in the dark shadows, and when to light them up. He never falls into the rookie mistake of lingering on them though. It’s flashes, enough to shock, but not enough for your mind to register the flaws. And even as we get to some of the weirder stuff (resurrections and commentary on humanity) towards the end, it’s still done with an almost art house flair, making this one of Smiths strongest films, and a definite must watch.
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