Marsupials: The Howling III

From Philippe Mora, director of The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, comes your classic in-name-only sequel. It's not even about werewolves; as the title implies, the monsters in this film are were-marsupials. It turns out that there's a hidden race of them that evolved in Australia, and one of them gets cast in some corny B-horror movie about shape-shifting monsters (meta-ness abound), but her secret is inadvertently exposed to the outside world, the government wants to study them, etc etc.

I like the new direction that Mora went with, but it is something of a shame that we never saw the original story some to closure with The Howling III: Your Father is Also Coincidentally a Werewolf and The Howling IV: Yo Momma So Werewolf, She Put Lon Chaney Out of Business.

Okay, I realize this was a fucked-up way to start off Your Vice is a Horror Movie Marathon and Only I Have the Netflix Queue: Year Two. It's the third movie in a series, I haven't blogged about the previous two, and neither Netflix nor Hollywood Video seem to have all the remaining sequels so I can't do much follow up. I should have at least kicked off the marathon this year with a standalone movie, but that's not how things worked out. I'm sorry. Deal with it.

Howling III is not quite funny enough to be called a good horror comedy, but it is strange and goofy enough that it provides suitable entertainment. There is in irresistible charm to it's silly hodge podge of weirdness: cheap but enthusiastic special effects, B-movie parodies, were-marsupial birth scene, an Alfred Hitchcock impersonator for some reason, a were-marsupial wins an Oscar but then transforms on stage. It doesn't make a lot of sense and the story never really seemed to go anywhere, but it is unique and not a total waste of time.