The first sequel to The Howling took three-to-four years to come out, which I think is something of a record for all the franchises we've covered so far. Joe Dante was not brought back to direct, not least because Gary Brandner, who wrote the books upon which the first film was based and also worked on the screenplay for this film, did not like Dante and what he had done with the first film. Quite what he thought of Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch (also known as Howling II: ...Your Sister is a Werewolf) isn't recorded but I can't imagine this improved things any.
Picking up where the first movie ends, Howling II starts at the funeral of Karen White, the heroine of the first film who we saw transforming into a werewolf on live television before being shot dead with silver bullets at the end of the film. That death has been retconned considerably, however, and now that broadcast never went out and so the werewolf revelation remains secret. What's more, the silver bullets were removed from Karen's body during the post-mortem, allowing her to rise again as a werewolf. There to stop this from happening is the mysterious Stefan Crosscoe, who has been hunting werewolves for a long time. He tries to convince Karen's brother Ben* and her former work colleague Jenny about the existence of werewolves, but they are varying degrees of sceptical until they see Karen's transformation themselves, as well as the attempts of several werewolves to rescue her. Stefan then tells them of the existence of Stirba, the 10,000-year-old werewolf queen and how he plans to track her down and kill her. Ben and Jenny then join him on his quest, travelling to Transylvania where Stirba resides and is preparing for a ritual to mark her 10,000th birthday that will give power to werewolves all over the world...
Oh, Sir Christopher Lee, why? Well, actually, he gave his reason for taking the lead role in Howling II as simply having never been in a werewolf movie before. I suspect another factor in this was that Howling II was directed by Phillipe Mora, with whom Lee had worked with in 1983 on The Return of Captain Invincible (where Lee played the supervillain Mr Midnight and which, incidentally, everyone should see because it's a funny film, a good satire and Christopher Lee sings in it). As it was, Lee seems to have regretted his decision to star in Howling II quite quickly - apparently having quite the low opinion of his co-stars' acting ability and, when cast in Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch, one of the first things he did was apologise to Dante for having appeared in Howling II. Certainly there's a couple of points in the film where I think I spotted him looking at his co-stars and silently counting the number of ways he could kill them.
So, Howling II is a mess. Its key points of notability are the afore-mentioned Sir Christopher Lee and the fact that the credits repeats the shot where Stirba, played by Sybil Danning, bares her breasts no less than 17 times. Other than that, it's got made-up werewolf lore coming out of its ears - werewolves can only be killed by silver bullets or blades, except for some who are immune to silver and so can only be killed by titanium. But holy water, holy medals and garlic can also be used to protect oneself from them, and at one point holy oil is thrown on a werewolf who goes up like it was napalm. It's bewildering, to say the least. Stirba is also a witch as well as a werewolf, which gives the film a couple of opportunities to perform some strange spells which either result in some gory special effects or some very dodgy cell-drawn ones. Originally, the film was meant to be a horror-comedy, which makes the movies title and alternate titles make more sense, but while director Mora was in Australia shooting another movie, the studio recut the film to make it more of a straight horror with some comedy elements. The fact that Brandner, who had been brought in to write the script originally, eventually quit because of executive meddling and so was replaced by another writer who re-wrote most of it couldn't have helped matters much either.
One thing that this sequel does carry over from the original is the female sexuality and empowerment themes, although even then they're given a beating with the silly stick. Apparently, if you're a female werewolf you're duty bound to wear leather underwear - the kinkier, the better. Stirba is described by many reviews as "bi-curious" but I'd say there's very little of the "curious" about her, and there is one infamous scene where she takes part in a threeway with her lover Vlad and another female werewolf, Mariana, where the three of them writhe erotically on a bed in mid-transformation, yet unable to touch each other in case the glued-on wolf hair fell off. Mora said that the film was inspired by New Wave Eroticism and that's certainly clear throughout the film, complete with a New Wave Punk band providing the movie's signature (and repeated throughout the film, so you know they got their money's worth from it) track, "Howling".
In the end, Howling II could just as easily have been a stand-alone movie instead of a sequel; it bearing so little resemblance to the first film other than the opening scenes (they don't even bother to use the same footage of Karen's on-air transformation, instead managing to make her werewolf makeup look even sillier than her look in the previous film). Sir Christopher Lee gives a fine performance despite everything, but the best that can be said for the rest of the film is that it would probably be a good film to watch with friends while getting drunk and making fun of it. Oh, and the 17 shots of Sybil Danning's breasts in the credits.
(* - For some reason I kept calling Ben "Mike" throughout this review. I don't know where the name "Mike" came from, but I think it says something about just how uninteresting the character was that I can't even keep his name right in my head...)
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