HOWLING V: THE REBIRTH

Nine people, who apparently have nothing to do with each other, are invited by a mysterious count to spend a day inside an ancient castle in Hungary where no one has set foot in over five hundred years. During the afternoon, a violent snowstorm blocks the castle exits and all the guests of the old manor will start to disappear mysteriously, awakening in the count's mind the myth of the werewolf. "Howling V – The Rebirth" is the fifth chapter of the famous and unlucky saga "L'ululato" started with mastery in 1981 by Joe Dante and which began to deteriorate vertiginously from the already horrendous second chapter. This fifth chapter is a film on the theme of the werewolf that cannot be remembered neither for its too much beauty nor for its excessive ugliness; but that manages, although not much, to raise the quality of the series, which as previously mentioned, has produced after the first chapter, which immediately became a cult for the horror genre, only movies at the limits of watchability. The film in question, directed by a little-known Neal Sundstrom, relies on a story that is not original at all but seems to want to change style with respect to its predecessors by giving, to a subject of base purely horror, various giallo-thriller nuances. The screenplay turns out to be quite miserable and scarce in ideas and in the long run could reveal itself to be quite repetitive and predictable, but overall it still manages to capture the attention and interest of the viewer; moreover, it is too simple to arrive at the solution of the ending and there are several sillinesses (let's call them that) that a more experienced screenwriter would have been able to resolve calmly (a first question that the viewer asks after watching the film is: how is it possible that the werewolf, in his fleeting appearances, has powerful chains on his ankles?) The cast is certainly not the strong point of the film, in fact all the actors are quite incompetent and unknown, and it seems that they had no desire to act when it was time to start shooting; only slightly known faces are Philip Davis (Alien 3) and Ben Cole (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the edge of madness). Furthermore, other demerit points can be found in the low level of gore-splatter and in the rendering of the werewolf: as for the first, blood is present in small quantities, the murders all occur off-screen and there are only a few barely violent scenes; as for the second point, it must be said that, strangely for a film about werewolves, the werewolf is only made to "taste" showing when a paw, when a hand or the mouth, but the werewolf is never shown. The strong point lies in the suggestive scenery; the film is entirely set in the old castle that gives a nice eerie and fascinating atmosphere at just the right point and turns out to be the ideal place to set a horror film. In conclusion, this "Howling V - The Rebirth" is a little film with few pretensions that, despite several problems due to the amateur screenplay and certainly the very low budget, turns out to be rather pleasant and interesting managing to demonstrate that a decent film about werewolves can be made while avoiding showing the werewolves.