Thursday, June 11, 2015

Only now does it occur to me... HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS

Only now does it occur to me... that I would ever know the glory that is "werewolf nuns."
It's short-lived, but probably the standout image from HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS.  (I always assumed that if I saw such a thing, it'd be in a Ken Russell film.)

In any event, HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS is a primo grade slab of Ozploitation––a genre well-documented by the film NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD––and is a balls-to-the-wall, fun-time horror flick that essentially has nothing to do with THE HOWLING series as a whole (but does that matter?).

Naturally, Australian werewolves have evolved a little bit differently, and we're treated to some hideous marsupial action:

complete with pouches and orifices, the likes of which would make David Cronenberg proud.

The proceedings become sort of meta when a female werewolf is cast as an actress in a werewolf movie:

"SHAPE SHIFTERS PART VIII"

which is being directed by a poor man's Hitchcock (Australian character actor Frank Thring)

and there's plenty of fun, film-within-a-film commentary to be had.  There's not a great deal to report otherwise...  though I must say that there's a nice 1980s Sydney-in-summer vibe, appealingly photographed by Louis Irving (WATER RATS, COMMUNION),

and a bunch of knock-off Human League and ersatz a-ha songs from little-known synthpop bands with spectacular names like "Burt Reynolds Chest" and "Vitamin Z."

I also have to mention that there's a magnificent plot point involving a werewolf town named "Flow"––"Wolf" backwards!––which seems to have been an inspiration on glorious rip-off artist Claudio Fragasso, who put the brilliant town of "Nilbog––it's goblin backwards!" in his masterpiece TROLL 2.  Carry on.

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