Showing posts with label Howling Series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Howling Series. Show all posts

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.